Baseball Player

 

Bernard Handelsman

  1922 - 2007 (biography)

c. 1940  

color lithograph 

8 1/2 x 11 15/16" image size 

pencil signed "Bud Handelsman", lower right 

not stated 

pencil titled; attached label reads "for reproduction" at lower left sheet edge, possibly for printing in a magazine or newspaper 

 

cream Basingwerk Parchment watermarked wove 

proof 

 

24388 

$450.00 

Bernard Handelsman's image of a little boy practicing his swing in the stairwell of a New York apartment building is an homage to childhood dreaming. Handelsman, born and raised in the Bronx, began drawing early in life and dedicated himself to a career in illustration and cartooning after a brief stint as a student of electrical engineering. He was known for his ability to distill humor and poignancy into simple, single-cell cartoons and vignettes, contributing nearly 1,000 cartoons and five covers to The New Yorker, and countless more to Punch in London, Playboy, and more.

Here, Handelsman effectively uses a birdseye view from an apartment window onto a stairwell landing. Below, the tiny aspiring baseball player uses crumpled paper for baseballs, an economical (and quiet) choice. To the left, the viewer can spot the forgotten victims of laundry day: hangers fallen from a clothesline located somewhere above. The image is made compelling by Handelman's use of the everyday to highlight the child and his bat: he's surrounded by an unremarkable New York tenement building complete with cracks in the concrete wall, but he is clearly elsewhere in his imagination, facing the roar of a devoted crowd, his teammates at the ready to cheer on his impending home run.