Joe Farris, who began contributing to The New Yorker in 1957, died this morning according to a notice posted by his daughter on Facebook.
Born in 1924, in Newark, NJ, Joe was a longtime Connecticut resident. In his early days he was a student of another Connecticut cartoonist, the great Richard Taylor. Joe contributed close to 300 cartoons to the magazine, including two covers. Collections of his work include Just A Cog In The Wheel, published in 1989, and UFO — Ho Ho, published in 1968. His most recent book, A Soldier’s Sketchbook: From the Frontlines of World War II, was published in 2011 to excellent reviews.
Joe was a cartoonist’s cartoonist, able to deliver captionless cartoons, sometimes multi panelled, as well as cartoons of the moment, wrapping them up in a style that was his and his alone.
Above: his first drawing in The New Yorker, May 18, 1957. Left: his 1989 collection.
Left: from The New Yorker November 11, 1992
Link to Joe Farris’s biography on his website
Link here to see some of Joe Farris’s New Yorker work on the magazine’s Cartoon Bank site