39. Marcel Marceau
(1923-2007)
Three Clowns

(click on image to print)
Marceau: Three Clowns

Three Clowns

Lithograph, ca. 1960, 640 x 480 mm., signed in pencil. It is not well known that the late, truly great mime, Marcel Marceau was also a lithographic artist and produced a number of works in that medium. We have here an image of three clowns, never identified as Marceau himself, dressed like Marceau, looking alike and like Marceau, posing alike but one smiling, one frowning, one passive and each holding a daisy in his mouth. The background, of course, is Paris. Marceau was perhaps the last in the long, great tradition of French mimes and the sunniness of his personality and of his routines is only magnified by the knowledge that he was a survivor of the Nazi occupation whose father died in Auschwitz.