The New Yorker Issue Of January 1, 1979
Yesterday, while in the Spill library, I closed my eyes for a moment and grabbed a bound volume of New Yorkers off the shelf. By happy accident, I selected January-February 1979. Opening to the first issue I saw this:
Although there have been many many great New Yorker New Year’s covers in the magazine’s history, this — for me– ranks in the top ten. I’ve no idea when Addams’ work peaked at the magazine — maybe his entire career was at peak, but this particular piece certainly stands out. It’s a beautiful thing. I have to imagine he was very pleased with it when he sat back away from the finished art and looked it over.
There is a slight graphic connection –at least in my mind — to his great cover for Brendan Gill’s Here At The New Yorker, published just a few years earlier, in 1975. The magazine cover’s colors (the bricks, the blues) are richer, the lightkeeper more detailed than the hall of fame New Yorker contributors, artists and editors peopling Gill’s cover. Still — there’s a lovely thread (the archways).
Taking a quick tour through the issue itself, focusing on the cartoons (or “drawings” if you’re a purist), I see there are twenty. Twenty in what was often the slimmest issue of the year (this one’s 67 pages). Of the twenty, three are by artists actively contributing to this very day: Edward Koren, Edward Frascino, and Sam Gross (two other cartoonists are still with us, but no longer contribute). All the rest have gone to that big drawing board in the clouds. So many were masters of the single panel cartoon; just to name a few: Robert Weber, George Price, Jack Ziegler, William Hamilton, Frank Modell, James Stevenson, Lee Lorenz, and William Steig. My-oh-my, what a crowd!