Pierre Auguste Cot's The Storm, a popular painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, provided Sorel with an apt metaphor for an illustration of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow accompanying a film review of Husbands and Wives. Indeed, the torrent of publicity caused by their scandalous breakup was called "Hurricane Tabloid" by one reviewer. The 1992 movie, telling the story of disintegrating marriages and the impermanence of love, seemed to be buried by the stars' real-life situation. In his Rolling Stone review, Peter Travers found the film groundbreaking but wondered if anyone would notice. Like the sweet-faced lovers of Cot's original, Sorel's pair flee the tempest together under a billowing cloak, but Allen's leering glance and groping hand, and Farrow's expression of suppressed fury, suggest the less-than-romantic denouement.



Ink and watercolor, 1992
Original illustration for Rolling Stone, October 1, 1992
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
© Edward Sorel

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