Eric Drooker
Eric Drooker is an American painter and graphic novelist.
Drooker grew up on New York's Lower East Side, which was then a working-class immigrant neighborhood with a tradition of left-wing political activism. Drooker developed an early interest in graphic arts and cartoons, particularly the woodcut novels of Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward and the underground comics of Robert Crumb.
After studying sculpture at Cooper Union, Drooker turned to poster art, creating flyers on local political issues while working as a tenant organizer. His images, done in a striking black-and-white style reminiscent of Masereel and other 1930s expressionist illustrators, were widely copied and reused by others—sometimes for unrelated purposes such as advertising concerts—and were popular enough that he could make a small income selling artwork on the street. During the 1980s, Drooker was further radicalized by his experiences with the police, due to their actions against squatters in the rapidly gentrifying Tompkins Square Park area and their increasing intolerance of unlicensed street artists and musicians.
His first published work appeared in leftist magazines such as the People's Daily World and The Progressive, and other underground publications such as Screw. When World War 3 Illustrated was founded by Seth Tobocman and Peter Kuper, who shared Drooker's political beliefs and graphic approach, Drooker became one of the magazine's co-editors and frequent contributors. Eventually he began to sell illustrations to more mainstream publications, and became more widely known as a cartoonist when his short story "L" appeared in Heavy Metal. "L", along with two other stories, made up his first graphic novel, FLOOD! A Novel in Pictures—a wordless, dream-like narrative of powerless citizens' struggles with authority in a rapidly deteriorating New York City—which won an American Book Award.
In the 1990s, Drooker broadened his scope from graphic arts to painting, creating several covers for The New Yorker and a book of illustrations of Allen Ginsberg's poetry, Illuminated Poems. His third book, Street Posters and Ballads of the Lower East Side, is a compilation of comics, paintings, essays and music. He also designed the album covers for California alternative metal band Faith No More's King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime and Canadian punk band Propagandhi's Potemkin City Limits. Drooker's artwork has recently been featured on the back cover and in the accompanying booklet of the Leftover Crack/Citizen Fish split release Deadline.
In 2006, the Library of Congress acquired the original art for FLOOD! A Novel in Pictures, including preliminary drawings, sketches and cover paintings. The complete Flood Archive is housed in the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, which is open to the public.
Cultural References
His painting "Native New York" inspired Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Poem #7 from his book A Far Rockaway of the Heart ("By Brooklyn Bridge an elephant stands under the Elevated in Eric Drooker's painting in Nation magazine in its issue on The Corporatization of the World...").
Bibliography
- FLOOD! A Novel in Pictures. (1998, reprinted 2002) Dark Horse Comics. ISBN 1-56971-821-0
- Illuminated Poems (with Allen Ginsberg). (1992) Four Walls Eight Windows. ISBN 1-56858-070-3
- Street Posters and Ballads of the Lower East Side. A Selection of Songs, Poems, and Graphics. (1998) Seven Stories Press. ISBN 1-888363-77-0
- Blood Song. A Silent Ballad. (2002) Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-600884-X