From The Vault Of Art Shay: "Funny Coincidences"

By Art Shay in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 15, 2012 8:00PM

(Art Shay)

The computer has made life a lot simpler for legitimate copiers and well-meaning artists who find one of your pictures useful. Take the great,late David Levine, King of the New York Reviews images of authors for years and years. He artfully purloined my book jacket picture of my pal Nelson Algren. Not only the image, but the pool cue I had given him, the V-necked shirt with right hand pocket, and even the wristwatch Simone de Beauvoir had bought for him in the Paris bourse, (their equivalent to Chicago\'s Maxwell Street Market). Not only that, but he used my playful conceit of Algren behind the 8-ball. He liked it so much he enlarged the ball and moved it to dead center. (Art Shay)\r\n\r\n\tIt was a great week for me. A French artist had copied a picture of Algren and Simone de Beauvoir for a New Yorker article- averring to his art editor that he thought I was dead and no longer had need of a New Yorker check! So I got two secondary sales checks, both generous, the same week!\r\n\r\n\tIt does pay, I should say, to have a high priced intellectual property and copyright lawyer as a daughter.

My keen-eyed archivist Erica flashed this second funny coincidence \<em\>New Yorker\<\/em\> cover at me, beside my own 2000 \<em\>Animals\<\/em\> book jacket of a woman in a faux leopard coat strolling by a real leopard in Chicago\'s Lincoln Park Zoo. (Art Shay)\r\nThe newer picture has a sleeker lady,longer leopard and adds a faux skirt and leash. (I can\'t wait for WW III to end so I can rush to Times Square and recreate my own funny coincidence of Eisenstaedt\'s sailor kissing a girl... maybe one or the other in drag.) [Art Shay]\r\n\r\nBut still...I can\'t wait for WW3 to end so I can rush to Times Square and recreate my own funny coincidence of Eisenstaedt\'s sailor kissing a girl...maybe one or the other in drag...

\<em\>The New Yorker\<\/em\>, of course, has a lot of fun with minor plagiarism. They run the original paragraph or phrase on the left and the \"funny coincidence\" interpolation on the indefensible right. I would do that with my 1990 \<em\>Sports Illustrated\<\/em\> picture at Wrigley Field\'s right field wall and run the funny coincidence picture they used as a cover on April 7, 2008. (Art Shay)

(Legendary Chicago-based photographer Art Shay has taken photos of kings, queens, celebrities and the common man in a 60-year career. In this week's look at his archives, Art reminds us that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.)

The National Portrait Gallery in Washington is a determinedly serious place. In its austere halls, even rubber soles echo. I was there a few years ago to enjoy the hanging of several of my photos their chief buyer had noticed on the walls of several galleries in Chicago. She especially liked my portrait of Hugh Hefner. They had considered 200 photos of affable Hef but she chose mine because, "You captured his spirit without making fun of him." Really?

You don't start out shooting a National Portrait. I was shooting Hef for a Time cover. In its kooky way, Time fixed its attention on a statue of the man done by the brilliant sculptor Marisol Escobar. Marisol had reduced Hef to the elements she enjoyed in him: his red sweater; his love of concupiscent women; his high life; a few of my candid snaps of the guy. He had a circular bed that rotated so that he could view himself in mirrors—and in the super mirrors of TV cameras—and re-enact his wonderful life, piece by piece, as it were. I thought for sure Time would use one of the frames I made from the rotating bed.

The picture of Hef the Gallery bought showed him hard at work in his editing room, loupe and typewriter at the ready, and four or five beauties arrayed on one or two of the beds in the office.

So I was enjoying the Hef picture and one of legendary baseball manager Leo Durocher in full cry on the third base line, exhorting some player or berating an ump. (A typical Life magazine page of the era, when my eye wandered away from my snapshots to the next gallery.) There, in prominent space, was a great Boris Chaliapin. Boris was the son of the famous Russian bass singer Feodor Chaliapin. His talent was making color artwork for Time from errant scraps of Kodachrome provided by journeymen such as I.

I recognized the blown up 1962 Time cover as one of my hasty candids of Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. I was speechless seeing Chaliapin's bold byline on a picture he'd copied line for line from one of my 2-1/4 inch Rolleiflex ektachromes. I remembered the size because the airline had lost my gear that morning and I had borrowed the Rollei from a camera store owner who knew my name. I marveled at how Boris got every fold of Vince's face and raiment, adding the players and crowd. The only thing missing was my byline for an assist.

Of course I knew how my picture would be employed. But sometimes you don't have a clue.

If you can't wait until this time every Wednesday to get your Art Shay fix, please check out the photographer's blog, which is updated regularly. Art Shay's book, Chicago’s Nelson Algren, is also available at Amazon.