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The Chosen Ones: An Interview With Maira Kalman

The writer and illustrator on celebrating Judaism, the ‘magical place’ that is Tel Aviv, and why it’s essential to have a sense of humor

by
Periel Aschenbrand
November 18, 2016
Photo credit Cyndi Stivers
Illustration by Andrea Sparacio / Tablet Magazine Photo credit Cyndi Stivers
Photo credit Cyndi Stivers
Illustration by Andrea Sparacio / Tablet Magazine Photo credit Cyndi Stivers

The Chosen Ones is a weekly column by author and comedian Periel Aschenbrand, who interviews Jews doing fabulous things.

Maira Kalman is a New York institution.

Though she moved to New York in the fifties, she’s Israeli-born and has never strayed far from her roots. Kalman is a writer and an artist who has written and illustrated almost twenty children books and thirteen books for grown ups. She’s illustrated more than fifteen covers for The New Yorker, has created two monthly online columns for The New York Times, has had countless exhibits of her work, designed sets for Mark Morris, fabrics for Isaac Mizrahi… and the list goes on.

It’s no surprise given that, amongst other things, she was married to Tibor Kalman, who was a trailblazer and is a legend in the world of graphic design. He was a provocateur in the truest sense of the word. Until his death in 1991, he pushed boundaries and rocked the establishment. Indeed, as legend has it, when they met, in university, Tibor was trying to figure out how to blow up the math building because of the math department’s ties with “the military industrial complex.”

One thing that has become increasingly clear in the past week is that art is probably the only thing that will save us. Or maybe it won’t save us. Maybe it will just keep us sane.

Or maybe being sane is overrated. But being funny isn’t…

Periel Aschenbrand: This may sound like a weird place to start, but bear with me. I’m obsessed with RuPaul who, as you may or may not know, preaches that there are four attributes that every drag queen needs in order to succeed: charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent.

Maira Kalman: A-ha.

PA: You said something in your TED talk that reminded me of that. You said that the four things that are seminal in your work are humor, surprise, elegance, and humanity.

MK: I said that? I have no recollection of that. But that’s funny because I have a friend who is obsessed with Drag Race and he always says, “I can’t believe you haven’t seen it.” It’s just because I don’t remember when or what time.

PA: Anyway, the point is that you talk about humor a lot. I’m interested in that because I feel like most artists don’t talk that much about humor.

MK: Should I say something now?

PA: Yes. You should say something funny right now.

MK: I choke when I eat brussel sprouts. That’s the funniest thing I could think of…

PA: It’s not terrible.

MK: My approach is as a writer and the work that I do is completely connected to my life and to the work that I do in my life, it’s not a separate issue and it was always something that made sense. The narrative of the women in my family and their irreverence and the unsentimentality but with wonderful and funny stories and in that way, everything always wound up being funny. Alongside of being horribly tragic…. But in a hilarious way.

PA: In other words?

MK: If you don’t have a sense of humor, you’re dead.

PA: True.

MK: And there it is.

PA: It saves your life.

MK Literally.

PA: Literally. Tell me a little about that photo of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas on the wall.

MK: I’m besotted by them.

PA: Me too. And the other one? Who is that?

MK: My mother. She wore all white. My mother was stunningly beautiful and very interesting and someone who is fantastically important in many ways. Gertrude & Alice, I adore and can’t get enough of. I’m doing an illustrated version of the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

PA: That’s so much fun.

MK: So much fun.

PA: Gertrude Stein was screamingly funny. One of my favorite books is Paris, France, in which she tells this story about how Picasso becomes irate because her standard poodle, Basket, dies and she got another one and named that one Basket, too, and Picasso went ballistic. He was like, ‘If I died would you get another friend named Pablo?’

MK: He’s an idiot. It’s not about you, Pablo!

PA: That’s so funny. In the Strunk & White book, can you tell me why you chose to depict Coco Chanel’s lover in one of the illustrations?

MK: E.B. White’s granddaughter had to agree and approve and sign on and once they said yes, there was absolutely no supervision.

PA: That’s how it should be!

MK: What she did tell me is that E.B. White would have loved it because he had a very irreverent sense of humor.

PA: There it is again. Can you tell me a little bit about the things you have around you?

MK: Things change and thus the narrow shelves and nothing nailed to the walls. Everything is moveable and changeable and that makes me very happy. The photo of the girl dancing is a William Klein photo, the dolls on the mantle are made by nuns in Mexico in the 1930s were a gift. The scissors are handmade Japanese scissors to snip Bonsai that my daughter gave me.

PA: Do you snip bonsai?

MK: No.

PA: No.

MK: But I love scissors. And I have moss and lichen in a little dish from the mental institution where Zelda Fitzgerald lived. From the tree she used to sit under in. The chairs on the mantle are Vitra and he’s a good friend.

PA: I love those chairs! But I digress…

One of the things that’s so exciting about you is not just now that you’re so successful and accomplished but it seems that you’ve always done just exactly what you’ve wanted. This is very inspiring to someone like me who’s not really qualified to do anything else.

MK: Well, who’s qualified to do anything? Nobody knows what’s going on. I always say, I don’t know anything, I don’t know what’s going on, goodnight. The kind of family that I came from, my mother, who didn’t tell me what to do, the courage that Tibor had, it was imperative to do exactly what you wanted to do. There was no conversation. And within that, you have to find out the way to do it. It’s not a straight line. You do what you need to do. If you need to be a waitress, you be a waitress. And I always thought you either do something or you don’t. In the end it’s very simple. I don’t know what luck means but that has something to do with it.

PA: That’s so true. Tell me a little about Israel. Do you go back a lot?

MK: Yes. We have the same apartment that I lived in with parents. They bought the apartment in ‘40 or ‘41 and we left in 1954 and we kept the apartment all these years.

Israel is a big part of my life. I’m actually going to do a project for the museum in Jerusalem. Now, I want to carve out more time to just be there and walk around Tel Aviv, which I think is just the greatest city.

PA: It’s a magical place

MK: It is a magical place. And so interesting and so smart.

PA: And scary, too.

MK: It’s odd. I guess every place to be interesting has to have jarring energy once in a while.

PA: Your kids speak Hebrew?

MK: My daughter does. My son less so, because my mother helped raise my daughter so it was very natural.

PA: Tell me about when you came to New York.

MK: We came to the Hotel Monterey, the one that Chantal Ackerman did a movie about. When she was there it was like sleazy place in the 70’s but we were there in 1954 and it was very New York-in-the-’50s. We were there for a year and then we moved to Riverdale.

PA: And did you go back to Israel a lot, even then?

MK: We went back every other summer. It was Zionist youth camp or Israel. So I was able to really maintain a relationship with my cousins and have all of that continuity relating to another group of people.

PA: I grew up with a notion that I had a very special place. There are other benefits, as well. When I was there a few years ago, during the war, I went straight to Dizengoff Center because H&M just did their collaboration with Margiela and it was totally sold out in NY.

MK: Oh, I thought it was going to be some terrible war story, but it’s a shopping story. I love that, that’s very funny.

PA: You do everything you want. You do fashion, you do Gertrude Stein… you were the duck in Isaac Mizrahi’s Peter and The Wolf ballet. How does it work?

MK: It’s organic and serendipity. Like My Mother’s Closet

PA: I read about that! “Sara Berman’s Closet,” which was a recreation of your mother’s closet at Mmuseumm. Is it still up?

MK: No, but it’s going to the Met and it opens March 10, so you can put it in your calendar.

PA: I will! Go on.

MK: I think the general enthusiasm and curiosity I have for projects is that when I fall in love with something, I really fall in love with it and I’m not half hearted about it even though I can procrastinate. I think my deep soul is in it and so, does that allow me to do whatever I want? I can’t think of the rejections right now though I’m sure there are.

PA: There’s a pile of wreckage somewhere?

MK: There’s a nice stack of rejections from The New Yorker, when you try to get in before they want you. But I think there was also a sense of, well of course I’m going to continue to do this, what else would I do?

PA: Yes. That’s right.

MK: And it has to feel like it’s really you even though you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing.

PA: What are you some of the other projects you’re working on right now?

MK: The main projects are the ballet with John Heginbotham, which is based very loosely and abstractly on my book, The Principles of Uncertainty.

PA: I love that book!

MK: That was the inspiration for the ballet. I’m also working on a cake book—stories and painting about cake and eating cake. Cookbook author, Barbara Scott Goodman is doing the recipes and we’re tasting different cakes.

PA: That sounds like a tough job, eating cake all day! And you have a studio, I imagine?

MK: It’s on the 9th floor of this building.

PA: Convenient. You go everyday?

MK: Some days I go every day, other days I’m just wandering about.

PA: That’s important too.

MK: That’s really important.

PA: Can you tell me a little about snacks? I’ve understood you’re a huge fan of snacks.

MK: Who isn’t a fan of snacks? Is there anyone who isn’t?

PA: I think they are but not everyone talks about it.

MK: They are the celebratory moment you create for yourself in the middle of a given day. For me that’s usually a cup of coffee and a cookie.

PA: Do you have a vice?

MK: I don’t think so. Not in the deep dark sense. I wouldn’t tell you if I did.

PA: I don’t believe that, I think you would! What’s your favorite drink?

MK: Coca-Cola.

PA: Really?!

MK: I don’t drink it but if I had to tell you the greatest drink that was ever invented, it’s Coca-Cola.

PA: How do you eat your eggs?

MK: Well it’s interesting. I like poached eggs. But I also like a six-minute egg, not too hard, not too soft.

PA: How do you drink your coffee?

MK: Very dark with a splash of half and half.

PA: What’s your favorite Jewish holiday?

MK: I like Sukkot because of the etrog. I love etrogs and I buy them every year.

PA: Do you go to synagogue?

MK: Just for Kol Nidre. I went to the Bialystoker Synagogue in LES and I vowed I’m not doing this again. I’ve had it with the women being upstairs even though the conversations were hilarious.

PA: I know. It’s insane.

MK: But I adore ritual. My family and I get together constantly, all the time, for every holiday, we’re always celebrating something Jewish.

PA: Did you have a bat mitzvah?

MK: No.

PA: What shampoo do you use?

MK: That’s such a complicated question.

PA: I know, that’s why I ask it.

MK: It’s a Japanese shampoo that I get from my Japanese salon. I can’t think of the name.

PA: Lox or gefilte fish?

MK: First of all, it’s nova, I wouldn’t say lox. Spicy, peppery gefilte fish, if any. But always salmon. Smoked salmon.

PA: Five things in your bag right now?

MK: My sketchbook, my wallet, 3 pens.

PA: Favorite pair of shoes?

MK: If I’m gong to be lyrical, I could say the shoes that slow down time. They’re bowling oxfords that I bought in a thrift shop in London and they’re a little big for me so I have to be very careful how I walk in them so they literally slow down time. So those are my literary favorites. Otherwise, Cole Haan Zero Grande.

PA: That sounds like a Starbucks drink.

MK: With an extra shot.

Periel Aschenbrand, a comedian at heart, is the author of On My Kneesand The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own.