The Monday Tilley Watch Takes A Glancing Look At The Art & Artists Of The Latest Issue Of The New Yorker
The Cover: A cat in the window. This is, at the least, the 5th cat in a window New Yorker cover since the early 1970s (I’ll eventually go all the way back to the beginning of the magazine’s run looking for more). If you count Ronald Searle’s cat on a balcony (May 6, 1972) — it could easily have been a cat in a window instead of on a balcony — there’d be at least 6.
Ronald Searle…(cat on balcony) May 6, 1972
Andre Francois…May 12, 1973
J.J. Sempe…March 1, 1982
Robert Tallon…July 1, 1985
Peter De Seve…October 5, 2015
And then there’s this Garrett Price cover, having nothing to do with cats, from July 16, 1955, which sort of mirrors this week’s cover (by Kim DeMarco):
Cartoonists & Cartoons
Thirteen cartoons, thirteen cartoonists. No newbies. One duo that we know of — the Spill counts duo efforts as one cartoonist.
Just for fun, I thought I’d go through all the cartoons and assign each a keyword. I first noticed this keyword usage in a book that was published in 1986: Index To The Cartoons Of The New Yorker Magazine, by Janet Utts (John Gordon Burke Publisher, Inc.). The New Yorker library had been using keywords for indexing the magazine’s contents for ages before Ms. Utts’ book, but I hadn’t seen keywords put to use in a book until her book arrived in the mail.
Here’s a sample of the contents (I hope she won’t mind):
I used to study these columns, but finally was overwhelmed by the sheer number of cartoons about, say, “Chickens.” If you’re in the world of creating cartoons it can, if you let it, undo you as you’re tossing around a chicken idea knowing that hundreds of other cartoons were already published that featured chickens. Flip side: it can also present a challenge.
Nowadays, the keyword is standard fare on The New Yorker‘s Cartoon Bank site. So useful when you want to see a list of New Yorker chicken drawings or whatever.
Anywho, let’s return to the keyword just for the cartoons in this issue of November 8, 2021. I’m just adding the first word that comes to mind looking at each drawing. There are obviously other keywords that work for each. In Ms. Utts book she often, or almost always, adds other keywords to help define the work. for example, for Ed Steed’s, she might list it as: bananas, fruit; cars; neighborhood…etc., etc..
Ed Steed: bananas
Ben Schwartz: chimp
Zoe Si: dogs
Mick Stevens: sleep
Chris Weyant: fishbowl
Roz Chast: art
Emily Bernstein: witches
Liana Finck: gift
Pat Achilles: business
Victoria Roberts: dining
Ostow/Salomon: heaven
Jimmy Craig: school
Mike Twohy: museum
What I’m reminded of by doing this is how it sucks the humor out of the work. But it also provides inspiration, of sorts, for future beginnings. You could toss a dart at any of these keywords and attempt to come up with a brand new never-been-done-before idea. Give it a try.
Link here to see all of this week’s cartoons.
____________________________________________________________________
The Rea Irvin Talk Watch
Above is the real deal, not the — gasp! — redraw that’s been sitting awkwardly atop The Talk Of The Town since May of 2017. Read all about it here.