Mister D: Robert Risko is a great caricaturist. I love his response to the interviewers description of Bette’s face. He has a book out, The Risko Book (The Monacelli Press) …” a lavish, nonstop whirl through popular culture, a bright and brilliant illuminated manuscript representing the flash of our age.”
A new book celebrates American fame and the artist who has drawn everybody…
Whom have you drawn the most?Bette Midler. I met her once very quickly at a party that a friend of mine, Brett Benedict, threw many years ago for a book he did called Fame. Bette wrote the foreword and we all went to a restaurant in Little Italy. We were introduced and I said, ‘Oh, I have a great drawing of you.’ And she said, ‘Oh, I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to see it.’ She’s hysterical. I love her. Since then I have drawn her several times for The New Yorker. I just did her for Entertainment Weekly for her television show, and I did her for an HBO videocassette package. She is a very pleasant caricature.
She has a mushy face, though.
And yet when she smiles. It has the same effect as mustard on a hot dog.
