Sam Viviano

Sam Viviano
Viviano at the 2012 New York Comic Con
Born	(1953-03-13) March 13, 1953 (age 64) Detroit, Michigan
Nationality	American
Area(s)	Caricature, Art Director
Notable works	Mad magazine

Sam Viviano (born March 13, 1953 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American caricature artist and art director. Viviano’s caricatures are known for their wide jaws, which Viviano has explained is a result of his incorporation of side views as well as front views into his distortions of the human face. He has also developed a reputation for his ability to do crowd scenes. Explaining his twice-yearly covers for Institutional Investor magazine, Viviano has said that his upper limit is sixty caricatures in nine days.

Viviano grew up on Detroit’s east side, and attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, graduating summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

In 1975, he drove up the East Coast to New York City, where he attempted to show art directors his portfolio, which consisted of various types of work he did in art school, including cartoons, abstract expressionist paintings, etc. When no assignments came his way, he took a job as a textile designer, while he pondered his lack of success in the illustration market. He soon came to the realization that, in order to compete in the field, he needed to choose a specialty, stating that what one sacrifices in width and breadth one gains in depth. He decided that he enjoyed doing caricature the most, and took out ads featuring his caricature work in trade directories such as Showcase and Black Book (against the advice of publishers who insisted that depictions of children and products would be more marketable). These advertisements yielded his first notable advertising illustration, a full-page ad in the New York Times for "On TV", a satellite service presenting the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker.

By this time, Viviano was already working for many titles published by Scholastic Magazines (most notably Dynamite and Bananas). Because of the nature and style of his illustration, he was encouraged by a number of colleagues to show his work to Mad Magazine. Although Viviano’s samples were well-liked, he was told that there were no openings at that magazine, as it was a "closed shop" of about a dozen artists. However, in 1980, he was contacted by Mad Editor Al Feldstein, who told him that their usual cover artist had died, and asked Viviano if he would provide one for the magazine. The cover, Viviano's first, was for Mad #223 (June 1980). It depicted actor Larry Hagman in his role of J. R. Ewing from the television series Dallas, and spoofed that show’s "Who shot J. R.?" storyline. Viviano has stated that he was so nervous about his first Mad job that he made the illustration twice. His next assignment from MAD came four years later, at which point he began regular contributions, including the movie parodies and mock advertisements that magazine is known for.