Elvis, Iggy, no problem. But Whitney...

[From Electric New Paper - Singapore]

Elvis, Iggy, no problem. But Whitney...
By Jeanmarie Tan
jeanm@sph.com.sg

WHITNEY Houston, we have a problem.

It figures that art would imitate life when it comes to the R&B diva. Just ask Israeli caricaturist Hanoch Piven, who was asked to design the album covers for the recently-released BMG Artist Collection 14-CD compilation a year ago.

It features artistes like Santana, Kenny G, Kylie Minogue, Iggy Pop, TLC and Elvis Presley among others.

Piven uses everyday objects to make his colourful, minimal and witty 3-D portraits come alive. And even though it looks the most simple, Houston's proved to be the most difficult to draw, according to Piven, 41.

Where Iggy Pop or Kylie Minogue took him only days to complete, Houston took him two months.

He told The New Paper over the phone from Barcelona: 'It's harder to do women than men. Whitney does have some gestures that are very sweet and nice and delicate, like when she opens her mouth or her semi-closed-eye gaze.

CAPTURING TRAITS

'But there's a fine line between cuteness and grotesqueness, so it was a question of capturing her joy and laughter without making it look grotesque.

'Her facial gestures are so delicate that a couple of lines could bring it here or there.'

According to Piven, the more extreme-looking the artistes and the more they lend themselves to humour, the easier it was to connect with them.

Which is why he also had a hard time with R&B diva Toni Braxton's 'generic look'.

Piven explained: 'I look for the difference, the extreme, the visually iconic. She's beautiful, and she used to look special when she had short hair. But once she went for the black panther look, she looks like so many other women.'

In the last 12 years, Piven's award-winning work - the most famous being Faces: 78 Portraits From Madonna To The Pope - has been published in Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The New York Times and many more.

But the BMG Artist Collection was a different project for him.

'Usually my job is to create humorous satirical portraits, but the challenge is to find something respectful and glamorise the image yet keep it honest and comfortable for me,' he explained.

Even though he's not a great fan of pop music, Britney Spears may be next on his to-do list. 'I am interested in celebrities from an anthropological point of view, so I would like to explore her image.'
 

NEWSFILE: 11 OCTOBER 2004