Sorel's subjects vary from politics to history, art, religion, film, and fantasy, covering an emotional range from outrage to nostalgia. In the late 1970s, Sorel, along with David Levine and Walter Bernard, tried to start a magazine called the New York Film Review. Sorel was assigned the center spread. He finally finished his illustration of the Warner Brothers "mob" in pastel, a technique that offered some relief from the "sudden death" finality of pen and ink. The journal project collapsed because of financing problems, but Sorel recycled his Warner Brothers image in American Heritage and on a poster advertising the New School. The elaborate group portrait revealed Sorel's passionate interest in the film industry. Employing a curled lip, a sidelong glance, a sneering smile, or a characteristic flick of the cigarette, he evokes Warner's leading gangsters of the 1930s with a nuanced familiarity.
The Warner Mob
George Raft (1895-1980), Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957), Eduardo Cianelli (1887-1969), Jack L. Warner (1892-1978), James Cagney (1899-1986), Barton MacLaine (1900-1969), Edward G. Robinson (1893-1973), John Garfield (1913-1952)
Ink and watercolor, 1977
Private collection
All original artwork © Edward Sorel
