Exhibit Of Interest: William Steig
A current exhibit at The Carle Museum focused on William Steig’s classic Sylvester and the Magic Pebble includes “Steig’s preliminary sketches, story boards, and dummy books related to the seminal publication.” Info here.
William Steig’s entry on the A-Z:
Born in Brooklyn, NY, Nov. 14, 1907, died in Boston, Mass., Oct. 3, 2003. In a New Yorker career that lasted well over half a century and a publishing history that contains more than a cart load of books, both children’s and otherwise, it’s impossible to sum up Steig’s influence here on Ink Spill. He was among the giants of the New Yorker cartoon world, along with James Thurber, Saul Steinberg, Charles Addams, Helen Hokinson and Peter Arno. Lee Lorenz’s World of William Steig (Artisan, 1998) is an excellent way to begin exploring Steig’s life and work. New Yorker work: 1930 -2003.
Of Note: From The New Yorker, June 3, 2019, Rumaan Alam’s “William Steig’s Books Explored The Reality Adults Don’t Want Children To Know About”
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Profile Of Interest: Frank Cotham
From Memphis Magazine, The Well-Drawn World of Frank Cotham— this piece on the long-time contributor to The New Yorker.
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Today’s Daily Cartoonist/Cartoon
A Maddie Dai Kingly drawing. Ms. Dai began contributing to The New Yorker in 2017.
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A Weekend Daily Shouts…
…by Liana Finck. Another installment in Ms. Finck’s “Dear Pepper” series.
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The Tilley Watch For The New Yorker (Combined) Issue Of June 10 & 17, 2019
The Cover: A fitting Bruce Eric Kaplan cover for the “fiction Issue” — it’s always a pleasure to see one of the magazine’s cartoonists work appear there. Read more about Mr. Kaplan’s cover here.
More “Tweaking” Of Note: This is the second issue of the magazine in a row not listing the Cover Artist on The Contributors page (Barry Blitt was not credited there last week). The last issue to credit the cover artist (Malika Favre) was the issue of May 27th. The cover artists are still credited on the table of contents. Example:
As tweaking continues to occur it’s perhaps a good time to recall what the magazine’s Creative Director, Nicholas Blechman told MAGCulture in June of 2017:
The New Yorker is a magazine shaped by time. Very little has changed since the first issue in 1925, and that respect for legacy is part of our visual identity. Since I arrived in 2015, we’ve been fine tuning an incredibly resilient and elegant design. Our road map for design changes in the print magazine is mostly complete. I think the table of contents could be tweaked, and the design of the Fiction page could also be tinkered with. Most of the big innovations you will be seeing at The New Yorker will be online, as we contemplate a web redesign and introduce improvements to The New Yorker Today app.
While I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Blechman’s first sentence (The New Yorker is a magazine shaped by time) I must disagree with the first half of the sentence that follows:
Very little has changed since the first issue in 1925, and that respect for legacy is part of our visual identity.
There was in fact an enormous design change (and changes in the magazine’s DNA) beginning with Tina Brown’s first issue, October 5 1992. Here’s a link to Walter Goodman’s September 29, 1992 New York Times piece assessing that issue.
The Cartoonists:
Of Note: The lead cartoon by George Booth, one of the New Yorker‘s all-time great artists, appears on the 50th anniversary of Mr. Booth’s first cartoon in magazine, June 14, 1969 (the Spill will celebrate accordingly on June 14th).
Of the 14 cartoonists in this issue, two are making their New Yorker print debut: Eugenia Viti and Lydia Conklin, making them the 15th and 16th new cartoonists brought into the magazine’s stable in 2019, and the 41st & 42nd to be brought in since Emma Allen became cartoon editor in May of 2017. With 16 new cartoonists, the magazine has now tied the 2016 record for new artists. And, of course, we’re only half-way through the year.
Rea Irvin: Mr. Irvin’s iconic Talk masthead is still a-missin. Read about it here. Here’s the real deal:
A Spill round of applause for several cartoons in the issue that caught my eye: Tim Hamilton’s lion at a party (p.65) is a stand out. Perhaps I’m a sucker for drawings depicting a person held in clenched jaws. I’m also quite fond of P.C. Vey’s worked-his-way-up-the-ladder chef in a cubicle (p.63). Mr. Vey has given us a very good drawing. Lila Ash’s trapeze artists (p.79) are also a lot of fun; the drawing clicks perfectly with a caption that heavily depends — even more so than usual in this case — on timing.
