Those who leave a lasting impression

Q: Name three famous Impressionists.

A: Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne and Frank Caliendo.

OK, one of these names does not belong. The first two are renowned art stars who artfully smeared pigment onto stretched canvas while the third is a contemporary comic who artfully smears the stars by stretching his body into a canvas of caricature.

Indeed, as embodied by the likes of Caliendo, who has appeared on MADtv and most recently as headliner of “Frank TV” -- a TBS series that fared well in its first five episodes, then went dark in mid-December because of the writers strike -- celebrity parody is alive and well and subversively mocking those adrift in the Sargasso Sea of pop notoriety.

And as is true of “Saturday Night Live” and “MADtv,” what Caliendo and confreres do owes a debt to that holy grail of contemporary TV sketch comedy, “Second City Television.” For “SCTV” pioneered exquisitely staged routines that fricasseed the famous by plunging them into absurd circumstance -- Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley as sleazy drunks at a bar, Yassir Arafat as a guest on the Merv Griffin show. And so in this tradition Caliendo has rendered John Madden as a buffoonish bloviator unhinged to reality, Bill Clinton as an oily ex-president with a lascivious agenda, William Shatner as a scenery-chomping ham compulsively overacting, Jack Nicholson as a slightly deranged old lech, and Al Pacino and Robert De Niro as loopy, self-referential versions of themselves.

Smartly seizing a gesture here and cagily copping a mannerism there, the impressionist zeros in on the traits of superstar actors, national politicians and those merely known for being known. With the upturn of an eyebrow or the well-timed twitch of a lower lip, the celebrity mimic captures his or her prey’s essence; reassembling and then amplifying movement and vocal intonation into crafty caricature.

Witnessing such sly comic interpretations of the famous reminds us just how satisfying celebrity spoofing can be. In fact, mocking the eminent and ridiculing the mighty has enjoyed a long and lively history.

Many a Borscht Belt kibitzer parlayed imitations of Jack Kennedy, Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Stewart into tidy careers. And in the smoky lounges and after-hour haunts of Las Vegas, more than a few stand-up funnymen would saunter onstage to ape James Cagney’s cocky cadence or Elvis’s syrupy sincerity, bringing it all home with a swaggering John Wayne.

Even today, in more than a few spots on and off the strip, celebrity impersonation thrives. One current Vegas attraction features impressionists resurrecting the Rat Pack; giving life and voice to such swingers as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin. In the hit show “Jersey Boys,” a restaging of the history and music of the harmonizing Four Seasons, celebrity imitation rousingly resonates.

Perhaps the popularity of mimicry mining the 1960s and 1970s should come as no surprise, since these decades now appear as a sort of golden age of celebrity impersonation. This was the heyday of Rich Little and Frank Gorshin, George Kirby and Charlie Callas, Marilyn Michaels and Fred Travalena, David Frye and Edie Adams. And, in fact, during the impression-rich presidency of Richard “I am not a crook!” Nixon, ABC aired a short-lived variety series featuring many of these impersonators collected in a comedy troupe called The Kopycats. Nixon even satirized himself when he appeared on the breakthrough network comedy “Laugh-in,” popping on-screen to demand in the ultimate and most authentic Nixonian deadpan, “Sock it to me.”

Moreover, considering the proliferation of celebrity parodies streaming on the Internet, a new impressionist renaissance might be in the offing. YouTube abounds with herky-jerky vids by amateurs and professionals dissing everyone from Barack Obama to Osama Bin Laden.

One arch offering, “How to be an Impressionist,” transmits a postmodern vamp on the celebrity impersonator’s craft. Here, after advising the would-be mimic to first check if she or he has a mouth (a mouth being essential equipment in this line of work), the video counsels not to “ . . . attempt an impression in the dark.”

But not everyone has been historically sold on the value of assuming another’s aspects. No less an authority on how to behave than Ralph Waldo Emerson harrumphed that “Imitation is suicide.” Consequently, what’s so funny about watching a celebrity impersonator masquerade as contemporary luminary? Honestly, why do get such a kick out of seeing someone who is moderately famous pretending to be someone who is monstrously famous? Could the glee wrung from belittling this narcissistic screen star or that gasbag politician gratify a basic human instinct to kick pedestals out from under the obnoxiously rich and portentously famous?

Kaboom goes the pop idol and we roar. In no small measure, the impressionist lets us experience the high as anything but mighty and the great as barely kissing second-rate. Buffoons, simpletons and dimwit scammers; the impressionist renders the giants of our age as nonsensical gnomes.

Moreover, the impersonator suggests that the emperor is not only sans clothes but talks funny and walks funny and radiates about as much charisma as a back seat bobble doll. Watching the impressionist channel evasive presidents and preachy pundits, publicity-crazed CEOs and disingenuous senior officials, who among us cannot help wondering if there are not more idiots than villages, more schlemiels than statesmen, populating our world?

Surely the impressionist’s art is raw and perishable; the showbiz equivalent of day-old sushi. It is time-dependent, linked like clockwork to an accelerating blur of famous folk who, once out of the limelight, cease existing.

Today, even the most acidly exacting imitation of Richard Nixon would hardly generate a wan chuckle. Impersonation is always about “now,” always tabbed to performers and pols pilloried in current gossip magazines and smacked down on today’s talk radio. For the celebrity impersonator, nothing is as dated or as moribund as yesterday’s big name.

But if there is something beyond the momentary, something revelatory and sustaining in what impressionists have been doing for decades, it undoubtedly involves distilling and then delineating an entire age from select details.

By crafting living caricatures spun from an era’s most feted real characters, greater concerns stand revealed. In the impressionist’s deconstruction of celebrities behaving badly emerges -- take a deep breath here -- the zeitgeist.

For to some degree, we are whom we lampoon; locked in a love-hate relationship with Paris Hilton, Dick Cheney and Simon Cowell. In the air-sucking ego of Donald Trump (a Caliendo favorite), in the grammatically-challenged palaver of George W. Bush (who is almost too easy for Caliendo and other impressionists) surfaces a keenly expressed sense of place and time.

The impressionist renders a funny but no less telling representation of here and now, cutting far deeper than most other artistic imitations of life -- Monet and Cezanne included.