Maira Kalman: A Strong Voice

Charlie Melcher:

Hi, I’m Charlie Melcher, founder of the Future of Storytelling. Welcome to the FoST podcast. I first came to know Maira Kalman as an illustrator of children’s books with a unique style that was at once playful, smart, funny, and sophisticated. Over the years, her portfolio has grown to include exhibits, films, design, and stories of all kinds, all while remaining true to that same vision and voice that is so distinctly her own. It’s not always easy for artists to remain steadfastly themselves, especially with so many different kinds of projects, clients and collaborators. And yet Maira has managed to do just that. She’s published more than 30 books for adults and children is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Times, and has had her art exhibited in galleries and museums across the globe, all while staying true to her signature style. She’s built an incredible career worthy of great respect without ever forsaking the whimsy and intelligence that makes her work instantly recognizable. That’s why I’m such a long-term fan of her art, whatever medium it may be in, because I know it’ll always say something authentically about herself and the quirky, curious and insightful way that she sees the world. I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation with Maira as much as I did, and through it come to appreciate her as an artist and as a human being as much as I do. Please join me in welcoming Maira Kalman.

Maira, it’s such a delight to get to sit down and have a cup of tea with you today. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Charlie. Here. I’m raising my cup to you. Cheers and welcome, Maira, I was thinking about how long I’ve known you. I realized that you and I met 30 years ago in Rome, literally 30 years ago. You were living there with your husband and your two young kids, and I know Tibor was there to run Colors magazine for Benetton, and I was unbelievably honored to be invited to come over to interview, to be publisher for that magazine. And I just remember going to your apartment and you handing me a stack of these beautiful books that you had created, the Max series and the Stay Up All Night collaboration that you did with the lyrics from David Byrne. And I just thought, well, this is the life. I mean, what a cool family. What an amazing, creative, talented person you are, and you are a storyteller, a visual storyteller. How do you describe yourself?

Maira Kalman:

Well, it’s very nice because I change what I say about myself every few hours, but I guess I am a storyteller and I think of myself as a journalist and somebody who’s wandering around the world writing and painting and just telling what I see. The job description includes not knowing anything and not knowing when I wake up, what I’m going to see, what I’m going to hear, what I’m going to be drawn to. So it’s so varied and it’s so extraordinarily broad that it can be a painting of Proust dead or a bowl of fruit or writing about aire. My landscape changes all the time and there’s a fluidity in how I respond to that.

Charlie Melcher:

And when you choose something as a subject, are you doing that as a way to learn about it? What is it that your translation process does for you?

Maira Kalman:

I think I’m translating what fills me with awe and what fills me with some kind of amazement in a very wide range of things. And it is wonderful to be curious and to learn about new things, and that’s the basis. I mean, if you’re not curious, you might as well just stay in bed, which is my favorite place, by the way.

Charlie Melcher:

So you constantly have a tension then between staying in bed and being curious.

Maira Kalman:

Such a horrible tension. And I don’t want to tell you how often the bed wins out, but anyway, the sense of always learning, always not knowing, and we can talk about not thinking in the next portion of our conversation, which I mean we’ll have to talk about that

Charlie Melcher:

You say not thinking, and I could see in a way maybe why you say that because you want to be open to what’s there and you’re responding with fresh eyes. But on the other hand, your work is also always so thoughtful and smart. It has this amazing combination of things. It’s not just superficial by any means, although it’s beautiful and playful and fun on the surface, colorful and delightful, but then it’s also challenging and complex and edgy, and it’s one of the things I’ve always loved. I think it’s filled with those contradictions of things that you would think don’t fit together so well.

Maira Kalman:

I think that inconsistency and also embracing extremely contradictory feelings is the only way to live. How can you not embrace tragedy and humor in the complexity of living that out of doing your work about that? Then there’s a constant interplay between being joyous and being miserable. It’s not easy, but it seems easy. It seems very whimsical and very lighthearted, but I always say the tears are invisible because it’s embarking on a journey that really explores what it means to be human.

Charlie Melcher:

Okay. So where does all of this understanding and curiosity and path start for you?

Maira Kalman:

Well, my mother is a source as I am constantly talking about her. She was a source of incredible inspiration and her sense of the absurd and her sense of the kind of storytelling that all the women in my family did, the stories of Belarus and then coming to Palestine and then coming to New York, but it was always imbued with a freshness of observation. Her sense of information and knowledge was that it was born of imagination and there were no rules and you didn’t ever have to provide the right answer. She never told me what to do, which is extraordinary once you have kids. I mean, that’s beyond understanding. So she was this beacon for me of how to live in this world.

Charlie Melcher:

I remember when I was little, my mom used to take my sister and I on these nature walks up in Massachusetts where we would rent for the summers and we would bring Audubon field guide books with us, and she would have a search for really beautiful flowers or insects or mushrooms, and we would look them up in the books. And I realized that she was just getting us to try to pay attention and to see what was around us, to slow down enough and to see what was around us. And I sometimes feel that way when I look through your work that you are doing a similar thing, that you’re choosing things and getting us to stop and pay attention to them. I mean, they’re not necessarily all in the woods. It’s more like a walkthrough contemporary culture or history or maybe your own walk through New York City, but that you’re doing a similar thing in terms of getting us to pay attention to see the world with childlike eyes. And I wondered if that sort of came from your mom too.

Maira Kalman:

I think that it did, but I don’t think she was aware of any of that, even though she took us to concerts and museums and there were piano lessons and dance lessons, there was a tremendous amount of culture, but it never came with any imperative. It was just here it is. And I think that one of the things that happens is that you do stop thinking and the incredible things in the world can be observed and absorbed without trying

Charlie Melcher:

One thing again, as I was thinking about your mom, I happened to know that she only wore white, and yet I thought about that in contrast to your extraordinary palette of color. That must not be a coincidence that you work in so many brilliant colors,

Maira Kalman:

But most of the time I only wear white also or black in New York. But the palette is very subdued. And what she did was pretty much when she got divorced, she really codified it to only wearing white. And so it was a lot of fun to go shopping with her because it was easy to look for only the white things. But that sense of how do you edit what’s not important as you get older, how do you discard what isn’t nurturing you, whether it’s people or objects that you have surrounding you? So I think that I’m constantly aware of what it means to have clarity and clarity of purpose.

Charlie Melcher:

Tell me about collaboration, how you approach that and you’ve had,

Maira Kalman:

I hate it. I won’t do it. Actually, what’s interesting is that to approach collaboration, not wanting to do it is actually not a stupid thing to say because it makes you really choosy about who you’re going to collaborate with. And of course, over the years you can figure out this works better and this doesn’t work better. This appeals to me. And so I like to work with people who I know respect me and will leave me alone in my process. And that collaborating means almost having the minimum of contact on some level, that there’s some space that you can keep in yourself that’s sacred and nobody’s going to interfere with that process.

Charlie Melcher:

Who have been some of your favorite collaborators?

Maira Kalman:

I’ll start with Tibor. Tibor has to be my all time favorite, most extraordinary collaborator and soulmate to have had the extraordinary good luck to fall in love with somebody who I could work with for 30 years, and to inspire each other in such a way that it’s not like we never had a fight by the way,

But that sense of being able to be honest with a collaborator is also something that really to protect your own space and to say what you believe in. But so Tibor was the guiding light, and then I think of David Byrne, who is really an extraordinary person and has developed over the years into a very generous spirit and with a great sense of humor and allows me the freedom to do what I want to do. And then now most importantly is my son, Alex Kaman, who was an incredible collaborator of sensitivity and humor and the conversations that we have. I’m a very lucky woman to have a son like that.

Charlie Melcher:

First of all, it seems like an unbelievable gift to be able to work with your child. I mean, most kids don’t really want to even spend time with their parents, let alone work with them.

Maira Kalman:

He designs all of the books. He’s my chief editor, my consigliere, before I even write. And as I’m writing an encourager of, also an encourager of me to be as much myself and as comfortable with myself as I can possibly be with an honesty and a delicacy that I just am amazed by, it’s awe inspiring. So we’ll take advantage of these years together, hope they last many a year and have fun.

Charlie Melcher:

I first know of your collaborating on that exhibit at his museum that you did to honor your mother. Right.

Maira Kalman:

Well, Alex has a museum called Museum two s in the front, two s in the back in a defunct elevator shaft on Cortland Alley in New York City. And in that he installs objects, he said, calls it visual journalism, objects of our life that are explaining people’s lives and the world around us with humor and with empathy. And in the little niche, we recreated my mother’s closet when she died because not only did she wear white, but it was such a pristine, beautiful, beautiful installation from my point of view of her closet that when she died, I said, this is going to be a museum installation one day. So we kept everything. And then 10 years later, Alex and I were talking and we thought, okay, this is the time to install Sarah Berman’s closet in this niche on the alleyway. So we did that. It was all her bras and underpants, and then all her bras and underpants went to the Met for nine months.

It went from his alleyway. I mean, it was such an extraordinary trajectory. We couldn’t even believe it. We couldn’t even believe it. But anyway, the Met beautifully installed in the American wing next to the closet of the richest woman in America in 1882, and this was the closet of a humble woman in 1982, and talking about story again, telling the story of a humble human being of no provenance, of no wealth, of no anything that you would expect in a museum. And its touring. It’s just came back from Sarasota, and hopefully it’ll go to Israel when things are better.

Charlie Melcher:

Well, just for those who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing this exhibit and understanding what museum is, it’s the size of a closet, this museum in a back alley south of Canal. And then the idea that you would recreate your mother’s closet in this back alley of all these pristine white things, and then the fact that the Met would take it, it’s just an extraordinary story, and I think a tribute to the innovative and fresh way that you and Alex see the world and how other people, once they can see what you see, appreciate it.

Maira Kalman:

And it’s also a lesson in listening to your instincts and allowing whatever seems outlandish to say, oh, I could do that. It was the same thing with becoming Alice B Toklas. When we made the little that Alex and I made the film where I was Alice B Toklas. It seemed ludicrous, but actually it was so much fun. And now we’re going to make a film where I’m Martha Graham and Clara Schumann and Franz Kafka among others just say, so it might be a disaster, but it’s very much fun to just try these things and say, how could we not try it? And I think that’s one of the lessons from Tibor. He was fearless and he always said, why would you ever not pursue an idea? What’s the worst that can happen?

Charlie Melcher:

I’m also so in awe of your fearlessness about working across media that you are not someone stuck on one type of canvas. Is that intentional? How much do you really think about that? I mean, you’ve designed for theater and opera and dance. I mean a ton of things in dance. You’re actually, as you say, acting. You’ve done over 30 books, museum exhibits, covers of the New Yorker, articles, humor. How is it that you work across so many things? Maybe that’s a simple question.

Maira Kalman:

I think that I have an ambi-curious brain and some kind of indefatigable optimism coupled with great despair. So I latch onto those optimistic moments. I hold on for dear life, but there wasn’t a backup plan. There wasn’t plan B. I mean, being a waitress was plan A because I loved being a waitress, but that was not the real plan. What I learned quickly is that about not giving up and about persevering through whatever challenges there are or obstacles. And so I did run around trying to get work, and little by little it grew and I guess as my confidence grew too, because I saw that I was able to do what I wanted to do so that you can’t ignore that trajectory success. I think that also one of the things is that I haven’t tried to second guess what anybody would want, that I have a very strong voice, which I haven’t let go of. And so the people who come to me for work are coming because of my voice, not because I can do whatever they want. So that’s nice.

Charlie Melcher:

And then so over the years, you then just found yourself with more and more options or maybe being able to choose amongst your options and

Maira Kalman:

To be able to say, no time is precious. What are you going to put your energies into if you’re fortunate enough to be able to choose? And not everybody can, it’s not easy to say no, because it’s very flattering when people come to you, but it’s essential, and then you go on to the next thing.

Charlie Melcher:

Right, it leaves space for the better thing for the thing that you want. It seems to me though, that some piece of that just comes from that curiosity, right? You must be interested in trying to work in all these different ways. There must be just something that draws you to it. And so then you try or you ask someone, can I do this with you? Or you just launch in and do it. But maybe it comes back to that curiosity, and

Maira Kalman:

I think it comes to the desire to create, the need to create desperate need to create. You could say that work is a salvation and it keeps you from going crazy, literally, as does reading Proust, by the way. But that’s another conversation. But that actually that to make work, family, and work the centerpieces of life in the most intense way is extraordinarily liberating and gives you energy to do many different things.

Charlie Melcher:

You’ve talked about the importance of dance. I’ve heard you say that, and I believe you on some other podcast quoted Nietzsche about a day without dance is a lost day or something like that.

Maira Kalman:

Who could believe that? He would say that. That’s crazy. But yeah, but he did. Okay.

Charlie Melcher:

So tell me about that connection for you or the physical movement and dance.

Maira Kalman:

Well, I think that walking is very close to dancing for me in many ways. And music enrich the soul in ways that you can’t even describe. The minute you start to sing or dance, everything falls away.

Charlie Melcher:

And you’ve had some amazing collaborations with dancers, dance troops. I have to shout out or give it up for the fact that one of my favorite artistic experiences was the collaboration that you did with Monica Bill Barnes at The Met, where I found myself doing a morning of calisthenics, running the galleries of the Met, stopping in front of different pieces, I guess that you had curated the selections of art and the two dancers who were leading us with music and sneakers and jogging and calisthenics. That was just a crazy, fun way to reinvent a museum.

Maira Kalman:

We started out by perhaps I would be dancing with them, and then we quickly discarded that idea. I should keep my dancing to myself in the living room. But we also ended up afterwards, I insisted that we all get together, if you remember, for Bread and butter and Clementines and coffee in the, I think it was the American Wings, the sculpture court. So it was a complete experience of being able to dance. And I mean, also I’ve danced with John Higginbotham who has such an incredible company, such an incredible choreographer, and well, it’s lots of fun. You have to do fun things.

Charlie Melcher:

Let’s talk a little bit about books and we share a real passion and love for books. Your first book was the book of illustrations you do with David Byrne lyrics, right?

Maira Kalman:

For Stay Up Late.

Charlie Melcher:

Yeah, Stay up Late. And then you did that amazing series of max books about the dog. How do you think about your relationship to publishing you both as an artist and as a writer?

Maira Kalman:

I’m grateful beyond measure that there are people who have printed my books and sold my books and allowed me to do what I want to do to go into the world of writing for adults and painting for adults. And now that Alex and I are self-publishing our mini books where we are completely in control, we make decisions at the kitchen table and every single step of the way is under our control, which is joy. Well, you know what that feels like. It’s joyous. And to me, the book is a holy object that I never thought of myself as a painter who wanted art sold in a gallery, even though I do, it didn’t make sense to me. What makes sense is the book and holding it in your hand. And I also say the way that work is a salvation, that reading is a salvation. I mean, I think reading does save your life too. So now I’m in a Shakespeare book club, a Proust book club for the second time around, and a modernist French poetry book club, which we’re starting with Baudelaire. I can barely understand him, except that I love that he hated everybody and everything.

Charlie Melcher:

Another of my favorite of your work, obviously this is one that everybody sort of knows, is that most famous of New Yorker covers that you did. New York Istan, just a brilliant idea. Remind us of that project. Well,

Maira Kalman:

That was with another really fantastic collaborator, Rick Meyerowitz, who is illustrator, cartoonist, writer, and to create a cover for the New Yorker after nine 11 that’s poked fun at New York and poked fun at the confusion that we all have of which tribe do we belong to. It was far enough away from the event so that it didn’t seem like we were lunatics making fun of the situation, but it was soon enough to make people feel that there was an ability to laugh, and it was a cathartic experience, of course,

Charlie Melcher:

And hysterically funny in the way that good humorous can be very truthful. But also just another note of you being a humorist, that you’re out there often doing things that are funny, that make you laugh. What about that other nine 11 project that you did? What was that called again? That was,

Maira Kalman:

It was called Fireboat, the Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey, and that was the name of the Fireboat that was owned by a group of friends of mine, a decommissioned fireboat. But when 9-11 hit, all the water sources were covered. So they volunteered and pumped water from the Hudson into the site for four days and nights, and they were heroes, and the boat was a hero, and the boat got decorated by the fire department. So it was one of those extraordinary stories of what can anybody do in a disaster to help? And it was a difficult time for me to be doing that, but also the story was really beautiful, and at first I didn’t want to do it, but then I said, because it wasn’t about humor, but then I thought, I thought that it was a story that I could tell.

Charlie Melcher:

Do you have a favorite? There’s something that you’ve worked on that you found to be one of the truly most rewarding things you’ve ever done?

Maira Kalman:

I think that probably the books, well, I don’t know. I think that everything works together in one crazy symphony, and I think it’s all some kind of ocean of work that works together. What I do say is that I hope that the next thing I do will be the best thing that I do.

Charlie Melcher:

Tell me a little bit about how you think about your art and craft in that role of almost journalist where you can be playing a social role.

Maira Kalman:

I think that I never want to have an agenda of doing good. That would not be what I want to do. I just want to have an agenda of being a human. And sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s not. So writing children’s books, the best ones I always thought are, of course, they’re also good for adults, and it transcends

Charlie Melcher:

Age. Well, this has been a delight. Thank you so much. Come over for tea at my place or your place. We’re a block away from each other as you know. Thank you so much. Have a sweet day. Thank you. You too. Great to see you.

I’m Charlie Melcher, and this has been the Future of Storytelling Podcast. Thank you for listening. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many incredible people over the years and the even greater delight of being able to share their wisdom and talents with the FoST community to become part of the FoST family and stay up to date on all the insights it has to offer. Please consider subscribing to this show, signing up for our free monthly newsletter, or applying to become a member of the 2024 FoST Explorers Club. You can learn more about all of our offerings on our website at fost.org.

The FoST podcast is produced by Melcher Media in collaboration with our talented friends and production partners, charts and leisure. I hope to see you again soon for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please be safe, stay strong, and story on.