Of all the duties Wolcott Gibbs attended to during his thirty-one years at The New Yorker (and his duties were many: editor, writer, theater critic), his relationship to the magazine’s cartoonists (or “artists” as the magazine calls them) is probably the least examined. When Gibbs began at The New Yorker, working under Katharine Angell (later, after marrying E.B. White,
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A blast from the past: Meet the Artist
In 1943, San Francisco’s M.H. De Young Memorial Museum held an exhibit of artist’s self portraits called “Meet the Artist.” The catalog, 8 1/2″ x 7 3/4″ is a gem. Of the 188 artists represented, a number are New Yorker contributors: James Thurber, Saul Steinberg, Otto Soglow, Mischa Richter, Richard Taylor, Alajalov, Whitney Darrow, Jr., Richard Decker, Roberta MacDonald,
Read more“What’s So Funny About Red?” Color Cartoons in The New Yorker
I’m betting that a good number of The New Yorker’s readers (you know, those folks who go to the cartoons before looking at anything else in the magazine) have noticed something colorful going on with the cartoons. Four out of the first five issues of the new year have a color cartoon (the cartoons in the issue of January 24th
Read moreThe First New Yorker Cartoon
As the 86th anniversary of The New Yorker approaches, I’ve played a bit of New Yorker Trivial Pursuit, thinking about the first issue, and wondering who had the very first cartoon in the first issue of The New Yorker. Once you’ve made your way past the famous Rea Irvin Eustace Tilley cover, and have turned the first page (with its
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