Vonnegut wrote an Introduction in Faces, a collection of portraits by the artist Paul Davis, published in 1985. In Davis' own introduction, he remarks on his obsession with faces, billions of which are a combination of similar "eyes, ears, noses, mouths, foreheads, hairlines, cheeks, chins", yet we can tell each other apart. The arrangement of these components of faces are seemingly infinite, and the possibilities of expression through them likewise endless. When we instantly recognize someone we've not seen for a long time, there is something beyond "the physical—call it a soul—that further defines an individual's uniqueness".[1] Vonnegut would make a similar point about faces in his article "Al Hirschfeld, the Maker of Icons".
Summary[]
Davis once remarked that he never would have become an artist had he known how much art already existed. However, growing up in rural Oklahoma and later Tulsa, he was instead "flabbergasted" when his junior high school art teacher thought him gifted enough to be a professional. There was little in the family history to portend this artistic inclination, although a grandfather had published a newspaper and his mother had aspired to be a typesetter before her marriage and encourage Davis in his pursuits. During the Second World War, his father also sent home "crude but amusing drawings of military life" which encouraged Davis to send pictures back.
West 21st Street buildings, School of Visual Arts
After winning an art contest sponsored by Scholastic magazine, he was given a full scholarship to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, a place so foreign it "might as well be in Europe... [or] Oz". Within three years he dropped out to become a professional illustrator for periodicals like Playboy, Ladies' Home Journal, and the Saturday Evening Post. Now his works adorn the city in the form of theatrical posters that are "marvelous, first as works of art and second as encapsulations of the souls of the plays". All of Davis' portraits make the subjects look like actors about to reveal character. Vonnegut's personal favorite is of his "hero", George Orwell, whose portrait conveys "the wit and importance of his writings". Unlike many portraits from the distant past, these pictures can demonstrate to the future "how alive we were". Saul Steinberg once said that artists either respond to life or the history of their art form. Davis is surely the first kind, and his responses are beautiful.[2]