The Monday Tilley Watch takes a glancing look at the art and artists of the latest issue of The New Yorker
The Cartoonists and Cartoons:
Thirteen cartoons, fourteen cartoonists (Jeremy Nguyen has Spots). No newbies. No duos (that we know of). The longest active cartoonist in the issue is this cartoonist (I began contributing to The New Yorker in 1977).
See this week’s cartoons here (in a slide show)
This week’s Cartoon Caption Contest (Amy Hwang supplies this weeks captionless cartoon).
The Rea Irvin Talk Watch
Rea Irvin was The New Yorker‘s art/cartoon guru — the fellow who guided and instructed Harold Ross (the magazine’s founder and first editor) about art in the earliest days of the magazine. Cartoonists, cover artists (and readers) owe him plenty.
Irvin drew the perfect Talk heading you see above; it sat in that spot for 92 years before being yanked in the Spring of 2017 and replaced by — get this! — a redrawn version by a contemporary illustrator. The Spill continues to hope that Mr. Irvin’s work returns. Read more.
Rea Irvin’s A-Z Entry:
Rea Irvin (pictured above. Self portrait above from Meet the Artist) Born, San Francisco, 1881; died in the Virgin Islands,1972. Irvin was the cover artist for the New Yorker’s first issue, February 21, 1925. He was the magazine’s first art and only art supervisor (some refer to him as its first art editor) holding the position from 1925 until 1939 when James Geraghty assumed the title of art editor. Irvin then became art director and remained in that position until William Shawn officially succeeded Harold Ross in early 1952. Irvin’s last original work for the magazine was the magazine’s cover of July 12, 1958. The February 21, 1925 Eustace Tilley cover had been reproduced every year on the magazine’s anniversary until 1994, when R. Crumb’s Tilley-inspired cover appeared. Tilley has since reappeared, with other artists substituting from time-to-time. Number of New Yorker covers (not including the repeat appearances of the first cover every anniversary up to 1991): 179. Number of cartoons contributed: 261.