David Weidman, 93, did "Mr. Magoo" cartoons

[Bob Of Burleson]

David Weidman dies at 93;
artist associated
with Midcentury Modernism

By David Colker
Los Angeles Times

Artist David Weidman worked on "Mr. Magoo," "Gerald McBoing-Boing" and other animated cartoons in the 1950s and 1960s, but he was mostly a flop as a commercial artist. The thousands of silk-screen prints he made, by hand, hardly sold, even though some were priced at $10 and lower.

But then when he was in his 80s, the Midcentury Modern craze hit. Suddenly Weidman's artworks that featured abstract pools of color, mosaic motifs and stylized depictions of animals and people were in demand. They were shown in galleries, embedded on textiles sold at Urban Outfitters and even used as props on the TV show that became the epitome of Midcentury chic, "Mad Men."

"I am pleased," he said of his delayed recognition in a 2010 Los Angeles Times interview. "I can't say that I'm not." But most of all, he was happy that artworks he stopped making in about 1980 had come to be accepted not just as retro objects, but as the creations of an artist with a distinct style.

Weidman, 93, died Wednesday at his home in Highland Park. The cause was congestive heart failure, said his daughter, Lenna Weidman.

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