Name Mara McAfee | Books The Art of Mara McAfee | |
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Died 1984, Los Angeles, California, United States | ||
Mara McAfee (1929-1984) was an American Pop artist and illustrator best known for her satirical depictions of historical figures, contemporary subjects, and high art traditions. During the 1950s McAfee was also an actress and a dancer who appeared in a number of popular films and television shows.
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Biography
McAfee attended Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts) in Los Angeles and the Art Students League in New York City. She credited Frank Mason at the Art Students League for her classical art technique, saying: "It was no easy task to find a teacher who even knew how the great artists of the past painted." She went on to spend two years copying the masters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. "Learning to work in almost any style was the basis for my success as an illustrator."
While others sacrificed to get into the theater and movies, she became an actress and dancer to pay for her art education. "Although I had very little talent and no love of performing, I did have a photogenic face and plenty of nerve." She acted and danced in many small film and television roles. McAfee appeared in Robert Aldrich’s film noir classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955) as well as in My Sister Eileen (1955), Man with a Gun (1955), Pal Joey (1957), on The Phil Silvers Show (c. 1956) as "Corporal Sandberg," and on Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life.
McAfee began exhibiting her work at New York's Amel Gallery in 1962 to mild critical acclaim. Her early works included references to national heroes (George Washington, John F. Kennedy), boxers, burlesque dancers, business men, comic book characters, fashion models, and Keane waifs. Her paintings were included in major early Pop shows such as Pop Goes the Easel (1963), Mixed Media and Pop Art (1963), and Pop Art USA (1964).
McAfee later became an illustrator for National Lampoon in the 1970s. She produced numerous parodic illustrations for the humor magazine, many of which were featured on the cover. They often spoofed classic works of Western art, sometimes with a feminist twist. The most well known of her covers was the cover of the August 1978 issue titled "Today's Teens". Some cover examples include:
Her re-interpretation of Édouard Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, in which the men appear naked and the women are clothed, was published in Titters: The First Collection of Humor by Women (1976).
In 1974 she illustrated an edition of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.