The late great New Yorker artist, Peter Arno was born 110 years ago today at home in Morningside Heights, New York. As many regular visitors to Ink Spill know, I began a biography of Mr. Arno back in 1999. Someday, a publisher willing, Mad At Something: The Life and Times of Peter
Read moreTag: Mischa Richter
Cartoon Life 50 Years Ago: New Yorker Cartoonists’ Paperback Collections
Before my recent interview with Dana Fradon, I did some research — as much as the internet allowed, which wasn’t a heck of a lot — and ran into this first collection of his from 1961. My copy arrived today — the pages yellowed and stiff, but the early ’60s humor intact (over on Mike Lynch’s site you’ll find a
Read moreHarold Ross’s Last Cartoonist: Dana Fradon
By the late 1940s, Harold Ross, The New Yorker’s legendary founder and first editor, had assembled either by happy accident or design (depending on which version of the magazine’s history you want to believe) a stable of magazine cartoonists unrivaled in American publishing. Some have called that era of the magazine’s cartoons its Golden Age. The guiding forces of the
Read moreAstaire Cartoonists vrs Kelly Cartoonists
Someone once said that the greatest difference between Fred Astaire’s dancing and Gene Kelly’s dancing is that you could see Gene Kelly’s sweat. Pauline Kael, writing in The New Yorker in 1972 said, “Kelly isn’t a winged dancer; he’s a hoofer and more earthbound” which she compared to “Astaire’s grasshopper lightness.” Here are some
Read more