Richard Merkin
Richard Marshall Merkin (1938 – September 5, 2009) was an American painter, illustrator and arts educator. Merkin's fascination with the 1920s and 1930s defined his art and shaped his identity as a professional dandy. Many of his works depict the interwar years, painting narrative scenes in bright colors of jazz musicians, film stars, writers, and sports heroes. Merkin was as well known for his outré sense of clothing style and collections of vintage pornography (in particular Tijuana bibles) as he was for his painting and illustration work. Biography. Merkin was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1938, and  held an undergraduate degree in fine art from Syracuse University in 1960, a Master's Degree in art from Michigan State University in 1961, and a master's degree in painting (MFA) from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1963. In 1962–63 he received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship in Painting and, in 1975, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Merkin began teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1963 and remained there for 42 years, during which time he built his reputation in New York . After he moved back to New York in 1967, he commuted every week to RISD to teach painting and drawing. At RISD, Merkin was loved and revered. One alum described him as "fearless beyond measure." Some notable students Merkin taught at RISD include Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of the band Talking Heads and Martin Mull. Before Merkin was well known as an artist, his friend Peter Blake featured him on the cover of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1967). He appears in a party scene in the 1974 film "The Great Gatsby". Beginning in 1986 , Merkin was a contributing editor for "Vanity Fair". Starting in 1988, he was a regular contributor of illustrations to "The New Yorker", as well as "Harper's" and "The New York Times" Sunday magazine. From 1988–1991, he wrote a monthly style column called "Merkin on Style" for "Gentlemen's Quarterly". Merkin also designed several album covers for the jazz record label Chiaroscuro Records for artists such as Mary Lou Williams, Ruby Braff, and Ellis Larkins. Merkin died on September 5, 2009, at his home in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, after a long illness. He was 70 years old. He  was survived by his wife Heather Merkin. Merkin's career at "The New Yorker" spanned twenty years, three covers, and nearly three hundred illustrations. Merkin is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian Institution, Brooklyn Museum and the Whitney Museum, among others. Style. Merkin was known for his dandy sensibility. He told "The New York Times", "I deplore fashion. ... What I like is style." In 1986, Merkin told the "Daily News Record", a fashion publication: "Dressing, like painting, should have a residual stability, plus punctuation and surprise ... Somewhere, like in "Krazy Kat", you've  got to throw the brick." Upon his death, his friend, menswear designer Alan Flusser said of him, Merkin's friend, the writer Tom Wolfe wrote: "The New Yorker" noted that Merkin