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The Monday Tilley Watch, The New Yorker Issue Of November 25, 2019; Today’s Daily Cartoon & Daily Shouts Cartoonists

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The Cover: It’s the Food Issue and it’s the Thanksgiving issue, so surprise: a turkey. You can read a Q&A with the cover artist here.

The Cartoonists:

The Cartoons… random comments on a few of the cartoons in this issue:

…Mick Stevens delivers a fab caveman drawing (it’s on page 69).  Beautiful drawing with a great caption.

…another fine drawing/caption from Bruce Eric Kaplan (p.50).

…a full page color “Sketchbook” by Kendra Allenby, as well as drawings by Amy Kurzweil and Lonnie Millsap reflect the issue’s food theme (and, for good measure, a drink drawing by Ellie Black).

…a Thanksgiving drawing by one of The New Yorker‘s Cartoon Gods, Gahan Wilson.

… a fun evergreen caption by Frank Cotham.

…I wonder how many of you will turn T.S. McCoy’s drawing (p.72) upside down.

The Rea Irvin Missing Talk Masthead Watch:

Sadly still missing from The New Yorker (but you can see it directly below). Read about it here.

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Meet The Artist (1943): Richard Taylor

Another in a series of self portraits of New Yorker artists included in the Meet The Artist catalog published by the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in 1943.

Richard Taylor’s entry on the Spill‘s A-Z:

Richard Taylor Born in Fort William, Ontario, Sept. 18, 1902. Died in 1970. New Yorker work: 1935 -1967. Collections: The Better Taylors ( Random House, 1944, and a reprint edition by World Publishing, 1945), Richard Taylor’s Wrong Bag (Simon & Schuster, 1961). Taylor also authored Introduction to Cartooning (Watson -Guptill, 1947). From Taylor’s introduction: the “book is not intended to be a ‘course in cartooning’…instead, it attempts to outline a plan of study — something to be kept at the elbow to steer by.”

Below, the great photo of Richard Taylor from his book Introduction To Cartooning.

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Today’s Daily Cartoon & Daily Shouts Cartoonists

Today’s Daily Cartoonist & Cartoon: Robert Leighton on government officials. Mr. Leighton began contributing to The New Yorker in 2002. Visit his website here.

Today’s Daily Shouts: “Dating Material: Stalking Your Ex Throughout History”  by Julia Edelman & Olivia de Recat.  Ms. de Recat has been contributing to The New Yorker (print magazine) since 2018. Visit her website here. Ms. Edelman is a writer who has contributed Daily Shouts pieces illustrated by New Yorker artists.

 

James Thurber, Cartoon Critic; William Steig Drawings At Auction; Meet The Artist (1943): Gluyas Williams

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James Thurber, Cartoon Critic

On a recent search through Thurber biographies in the Spill library I happened upon a Thurber letter I’d forgotten about. Written to Harold Ross, and dated October 20, 1941, it appears in the mother ship of all Thurber biographies, Harrison Kinney’s twelve hundred and thirty-eight page Thurber: His Life And Times (Henry Holt, 1995).

Thurber, unhappy his ideas supplied for the artist, Mary Petty have been rejected, takes issue with five drawings in the current issue — the issue of October 18, 1941.  After Thurber reminds Ross that this letter is not his first complaint (all Thurber quotes in this post are bolded):

You already have filed away for your autobiography some 50 or 100 blasphemous notes from me on what is the matter with the magazine.

he goes on to say:

The really great New Yorker drawings have had to do with people sitting in chairs, lying on the beach, or walking along the street.  The easy answer the art meeting always gives to the dearth of ideas like the ones I am trying to describe is that they are hard to get or that nobody sends them in anymore. It seems to me that the principle reason for this is that the artists take their cue from the type of drawing which they see constantly published in the magazine.

Here are those first three drawings, by Richard Decker, Alan Dunn, and Ned Hilton. (Mr. Decker’s caption, difficult to read in the scan, is: “Where have you been. Your plane crashed half an hour ago.”)

Thurber writes of these drawings:

Years ago I wrote a story for The New Yorker in which a woman who tried to put together a cream separator suddenly snarled at those who were looking at her and said, “Why doesn’t somebody take this god damned thing away from me?”  I want to help take the cream separators, parachutes, fire extinguishers, paint brushes and tomahawks away from four-fifths of the characters that appear in the The New Yorker idea drawings…

Thurber goes on to talk about two other drawings in the issue. Here’s Thurber on this drawing by  Leonard Dove:

It must have been six years ago you told me drawings about psychoanalysts were terribly out of date. The next week I turned in one in which the analyst says, “A moment ago, Mrs. Ridgway, you said that everybody you looked at seemed to be a rabbit. Now just what did you mean by that?”* …But you can’t publish a drawing about an analyst and a woman with the caption, “Your only trouble is, Mrs. Markham, that you’re so horribly normal.” This is one of the oldest, tritest, and most often repeated lines in the world.

And then Thurber moved on to this Chon Day drawing:

…this is such an extravagant distortion of reality, it is so far removed from what any salesman would ever say, that to be successful it has to be fantastic. But since the situation is not fantastic, it ends up simply being a bad gag…No sales man ever said to any housewife what you have him saying in the cartoon I am talking about. That is a gag man’s idea.

*Thurber didn’t quite get his own caption right. The actual caption: “You said just a moment ago that everybody you look at seems to be a rabbit.  Now just what do you mean by that, Mrs. Sprague?” It appeared in The New Yorker February 13, 1937.

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William Steig Drawings At Auction

The other day it was noted here that the Swann Galleries will auction New Yorker work December 10th. Yesterday a Spill visitor sent me this listing of Steig drawings to be auctioned December 5th by Bonhams. Some beautiful work by one of The New Yorker‘s Cartoon Gods!

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Meet The Artist (1943): Gluyas Williams

Speaking of NYer Cartoon Gods, here’s a self portrait of Gluyas Williams from the 1943 catalog published by the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum.

…and here’s Mr. Williams’s entry on the Spill‘s A-Z:

Gluyas Williams (above left undated; right: 1 975) Born, San Francisco, 1888. Died, Boston, Mass., 1982. One of the pillars of Harold Ross’s stable of artists, and one of Ross’s favorite cartoonists. His beautiful full page drawings were a regular feature in the magazine. Mr. Williams illustrated a number of Robert Benchley’s collections, providing the cover art as well as illustrations. New Yorker work: March 13, 1926 – Aug 25, 1951. Key collections: The Gluyas Williams Book ( Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1929), The Gluyas Williams Gallery (Harper, 1956). Website: http://www.gluyaswilliams.com/

 

 

 

Weekend Spill: 64 Works By Steinberg Go To Long Island Museum; The Tilley Watch Online; Meet The Artist (1943): Alan Dunn; Liza Donnelly Speaks on Drawing For Change; Upcoming Swann Auction Loaded With New Yorker Art

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64 Steinberg Works To Long Island Museum

From ArtNews, November 15, 2019, “Parrish Art Museum Acquires 64 Works By Famed Cartoonist Saul Steinberg” 

Mr. Steinberg’s entry on the Spill’s A-Z:

Saul Steinberg Born, June 15, 1914, Ramnic-Sarat, Rumania. Died in 1999. New Yorker work: 1941 – (The New Yorker publishes his work posthumously). Steinberg is one of the giants of The New Yorker.  Go here to visit the saulsteinbergfoundation where you’ll find  much essential information and examples of his work.

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An end of the week listing of New Yorker artists who contributed to the Daily Cartoon and/or Daily Shouts, November 11-15, 2019.

The Daily Cartoon: Kim Warp, Emily Flake, Ellis Rosen, Elisabeth McNair, Christopher Weyant.

Daily Shouts: Teresa Burns Parkhurst, Liana Finck (another in her Dear Pepper series), Tim Hamilton.

…and Barry Blitt’s Kvetchbook.

See all of the above and more here.

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Liza Donnelly Speaks On Drawing For Change

From Elon University, November 15, 2019, “Cartoonist Liza Donnelly offers look at using visual humor to affect change” — a piece on Ms. Donnelly’s recent talk at the university.

Ms. Donnelly began contributing to The New Yorker in 1982. Visit her website here.

 

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Meet The Artist (1943): Alan Dunn

One of a number of self portraits of New Yorker artists included in the catalog Meet The Artist, published in 1943 by the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum.

Alan Dunn’s entry on the Spill‘s A-Z:

Alan Dunn Born in Belmar, New Jersey, August 11, 1900, died in New York City, 1975. New Yorker work: 1926 – 1974 Key collections: Rejections (Knopf, 1931), Who’s Paying For This Cab? (Simon & Schuster, 1945), A Portfolio of Social Cartoons ( Simon & Schuster, 1968). One of the most published New Yorker cartoonists (1,906 cartoons) , Mr. Dunn was married to Mary Petty — together they lived and worked at 12 East 88th Street, where, according to the NYTs, Alan worked “seated in a small chair at a card table, drawing in charcoal and grease pencil.”

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Upcoming Swann Auction Abounds With New Yorker Art

The December 10th Swann Illustration Auction catalog is now available online and, as usual, there is a New Yorker section loaded with original pieces.  This particular offering includes a large number of contemporary contributors as well as work by such Golden Age luminaries as Peter Arno, Charles Saxon, Charles Addams, and Steinberg.

See it all here.

Happy bidding!

“The Table In Mr. Ross’s Office Where We Used To Sit To Work On Pictures”; Book Of Interest: Alay-Oop By William Gropper; A Case For Pencils On Maddie Dai’s Tools Of The Trade; Daily Shouts & Daily Cartoon Cartoonists; Meet The Artist (1943): Dorothy McKay

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“The Table Where We Used To Sit To Work On Pictures”

A photo I’ve seen before on the web, but never with the note attached you see above. The letter, signed “Jim”  was written by the then art editor James Geraghty.* The “Gardner” it’s addressed to was likely Gardner Rea, one of the magazine’s artists. There’s another possibility: the “Gardner” could’ve been Gardner Botsford, a New Yorker editor, but it makes more sense that the art editor was sending one of his artist’s a photo of the art table.  You’ll notice up on the wall is a poster listing some of the magazine’s artists, from Charles Addams to Gluyas Williams.  Also on the wall are five Thurber drawings on the Art Meeting, titled The Art Conference. You can see the series on pages 157-160 in Collecting Himself: James Thurber On Writers And Writing, Humor And Himself.  Edited by Michael Rosen. Published by Harper & Row, 1989.

For further reading on The New Yorker‘s weekly meeting where the table played a part, here’s a Spill post, “The Art Meeting“ from 2012.

*it has been suggested to me that the “Jim” is actually James Thurber as the provenance of the photo mentions Mr. Thurber but not Mr. Geraghty (the photo is part of the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art’s holdings). I have my doubts it’s “Jim” Thurber, but put the suggestion out there for anyone to confirm, if possible.

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Books Of Interest: Alay-Oop By William Gropper

Out this past June from New York Review Books, Alay-Oop by William Gropper. Mr. Gropper contributed to The New Yorker just once, meaning he’s a Spill One Clubber. More about Alay-Oop here.

Here’s Mr. Gropper’s A-Z entry:

William Gropper (Self portrait, from The Business of Cartooning, 1939) Born, December 3, 1897, NYC. Died, January 6, 1977, Manhasset, NY. 1 drawing, April 11, 1942. Quote:”I owe a great deal to the east side of New York. I was hit on the head with a rock in a gangfight…that’s how I became an artist.” [Quote from catalogue, Meet the Artist, 1943]. For a brief bio of Gropper “the workingman’s protector” visit: http://specialcollections.wichita.edu/

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A Case For Pencils On Maddie Dai’s Tools Of The Trade

Jane Mattimoe’s latest A Case For Pencils post features Maddie Dai, who began contributing to The New Yorker in 2017.

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Daily Shouts & Daily Cartoon Cartoonists

Today’s Daily Cartoonist & Cartoon: Politics as an energy boost from Kim Warp who began contributing to The New Yorker in 1999. Visit Ms. Warp’s website here.

Yesterday’s Daily Shouts cartoonist: Liana Finck (part of her “Dear Pepper” series). Ms. Finck began contributing to The New Yorker in 2013.  Visit her website here.

Yesterday’s Daily cartoonist: Emily Flake, who began contributing to The New Yorker 2008.  Visit her website here.

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Meet The Artist (1943): Dorothy McKay

The third in a series of New Yorker artists included in Meet The Artist, a catalog published in 1943 by the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum.

Here’s Ms. McKay’s entry on the Spill’s A-Z:


Dorothy McKay  (Photo from Cartoon Humor, 1938) Born c.1904, died June, 1974 New York City. New Yorker work: 1934 -1936.

 

 

Special Screening Of Stevenson Lost And Found For New Yorker Cartoonists; Meet The Artist (1943): Mischa Richter; David Remnick On Ross And Shawn

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Special Screening Of Stevenson Lost And Found For New Yorker Cartoonists

The Spill has learned there’ll be a special screening for all New Yorker cartoonists next Tuesday of the documentary film, Stevenson Lost And Found. I asked the film’s director, Sally Williams to explain how this came about:

The idea for this screening came about from Nathan Fitch who is making the George Booth documentary.  We met up prior to our STEVENSON – LOST AND FOUND world premiere to compare notes and see how we could help each other out.  I think I found the idea of a New Yorker Cartoonist screening appealing because it creates a space for a different dialogue around the film.  There will be aspects that cartoonists recognize and connect with that others do not, I thought it would be interesting and valuable to have that insight from the current pool of New Yorker cartoonists.  As filmmakers, artists, illustrators it can be a bit of a sequestered road at times – so any excuse to interrupt that and bring people together is worth it I think.

(If you are a New Yorker cartoonist and want further info on the showing, please contact me).

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Meet The Artist : Mischa Richter

This is the second in a series of New Yorker artist’s self portraits included in the 1943 catalog, Meet The Artist

Here’s Mr. Richter’s entry on the Spill‘s A-Z:

Mischa Richter (photo courtesy of Sarah Geraghty Herndon). Born, Kharkov, Russia, 1910. Died, March 23, 2001. New Yorker work: January 10, 1942 – January 20, 2003 ; Key books: This One’s On Me! (McGraw-Hill, 1945) , The Cartoonist’s Muse, co-authored by Harald Bakken (Contemporary Books, 1992). )

 

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David Remnick On Harold Ross And William Shawn

If you, like me, never got around to picking up a copy of The New Yorker‘s 2016  anthology The 50s: The Story Of A Decade (Random House), you probably missed New Yorker editor David Remnick’s Introduction.  Lithub has the intro here.

Here’s a sample, with Mr. Remnick talking about the Shawn style of editing the magazine vs Ross’s.

“…Shawn assumed for himself far more authority than Ross, who was prepared to delegate a greater amount to his various deputies, or “Jesuses.” Shawn was also quiet, subtle, secretive, elliptical, and, to some, quite strange. He was a variety of genius who enjoyed funny writing as well as serious fiction, supported completely the individual artists and writers on a profoundly variegated staff, and expressed his myriad curiosities about the world by sending writers out to explore its many corners.”