As we’re in the second week of a double issue (the issue of April 24 & May 1, 2023), there’s no new issue to look at this Monday morning. In place of the normal Monday survey, I thought it would be fun to take a quick look at a small group of work on a mantel in the Spill‘s cartoon library.
Most of the original art in this room is not hanging on walls. There simply isn’t enough space (shelves of cartoon books and stacks of back issues of The New Yorker rule). With a shortage of empty walls to hang pieces, the mantel in the room serves as a sort of way station as well as a good place to let certain pieces be in the spotlight for a few weeks, or longer. One of these days most of these pieces will hang elsewhere.
Below we see a framed Roz Chast drawing (upper right), and a Dana Fradon drawing (just below the Chast) — both were published in The New Yorker.* The large piece is a Steinberg proof sheet, rescued from a Manhattan curb outside The New Yorker many years ago (about 40). The Steinberg piece is so large it has yet to find a proper resting place. On the bottom right is one of the very first books I bought based on the book’s illustrator, (R.Taylor in this case) and not the author.
*Roz Chast, The New Yorker, December 23, 1985
A note about the Chast original on the mantel: sharp-eyed readers might see that the first panel is ever-so-slightly askew — i.e., not as it appeared in the published drawing. Ms. Chast had glued (pasted?) a new drawing over the original first panel. Over time, that pasted-on first panel lost its grip and began to slip. Had it not, I don’t know if I ever would’ve noticed there was another drawing beneath. I like that the first panel has slid, and am probably not going to “fix” it (mostly because I’d feel badly for the pasted over original drawing).
Roz Chast (pictured above. Photo by Bill Franzen) Born, Brooklyn, NY. New Yorker work: July 3, 1978 – . Key books: Unscientific Americans (Dolphin/Doubleday, 1982), Theories of Everything ( Bloomsbury, 2006) Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir (Bloomsbury, 2014). Website: rozchast.com
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Dana Fradon, The New Yorker, November 25, 1974:
Dana Fradon (photo: 1978). Born, Chicago, Illinois, 1922. Died, October 3, 2019, Woodstock, NY. Studied at the Art Institute of Chicago prior to service in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. Following his service, he attended the Art Students League of New York, New Yorker work: May 1, 1948 – April 21, 2003. Collection: Insincerely Yours (Scribners, 1978) To read Ink Spill’s 2013 interview with Mr. Fradon, “Harold Ross’s Last Cartoonist” link here.
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Sir Galahad and Other Rimes, by Christopher Ward. Illustrations by R. Taylor. Simon & Schuster, 1936
Richard Taylor (self portrait from Meet the Artist) Born in Fort William, Ontario, Sept. 18, 1902. Died in 1970. NYer 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.”