The Tilley Watch Online, March 24-28, 2025
An end of the week listing of New Yorker artists whose work has appeared on newyorker.com features
Daily Cartoon: Becky Barnicoat, Guy Richards Smit, Niall Maher, Adam Douglas Thompson, Peter Kuper, Lia Strasser and Bizzy Coy (a duo)
Shouts & Murmurs: “Raising Felix: Google Misunderstood” by Julia Wertz
Barry Blitt’s Kvetchbook: “Sunday In The Amusement Park With Elon”
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Long Lost Lee Lorenz Interview Found
Eleven years ago, The Westport (Connecticut) Historical Society put on a terrific exhibit, “Cover Story: The New Yorker In Wesport.” As part of the event, I was asked to interview Lee Lorenz, the magazine’s former Art/Cartoon editor. As Lee was the person responsible for my getting into the magazine (with William Shawn’s stamp of approval, of course) this was one of those peculiar dream come true/out-of-body experiences.
The interview was filmed and promptly uploaded onto Youtube. After some time (I’m not sure how long — perhaps a year, probably less), the video was removed. Not only did it disappear from Youtube, it vanished entirely. Apparently no one had a copy. The only thing I had left of the video was the screenshot you see here. Occasionally I’d check in with the filmmaker and the Historical Society to see if a copy had turned up. I don’t want to say I’d given up, but with a decade past, the idea of giving up crossed my mind. And then, just the other day, I received an email from the past President of the Historical Society. She had discovered a disc of the video in a drawer.
A copy (there are now at least two copies) is now on its way to Spill headquarters, and soon I hope to be able to share it.
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Lee Lorenz’s A-Z Entry:
Lee Lorenz ( Pictured above. Photograph taken 1995 by Liza Donnelly) Born 1932, Hackensack, NJ. Died, December 8., 2022, Connecticut. Lorenz was the art editor of The New Yorker from 1973 to 1993 and its cartoon editor until 1997. During his tenure, a new wave of New Yorker cartoonists began appearing in the magazine — cartoonists who no longer depended on idea men. Cartoon collections: Here It Comes (Bobbs-Merrrill Co., Inc. 1968) ; Now Look What You’ve Done! (Pantheon, 1977) ; The Golden Age of Trash ( Chronicle Books, 1987); The Essential series, all published by Workman: : Booth (pub: 1998), Barsotti ( pub: 1998), Ziegler (pub: 2001), The Art of The New Yorker 1925 -1995, (Knopf, 1995), The World of William Steig (Artisan, 1998). New Yorker work: 1958 – 2022.
More Reading: The Spill‘s Appreciation of Lee Lorenz
A perfect example of why you can’t trust YouTube or any other for profit company to do your archiving for you. I recently wrote an article about the problem of trying to track interviews like this for an article on comics bibliography.
Mike, would you share the link to your article?
Sorry, I missed the question – a version of it is here – https://www.academia.edu/109130272/Comics_bibliography_for_the_21st_century_PREPRINT