The Monday Tilley Watch Takes A Glancing Look At The Art & Artists Of The Latest Issue Of The New Yorker
The Cover: The city aglow by Mark Ulriksen. Fabulous.
The Cartoonists & Cartoons:
Sixteen cartoons, seventeen cartoonists (Liana Finck has a “Sketchbook”). One duo that we know of (Pia Guerra and Ian Boothby. The Spill counts duos as one cartoonist), and one newbie: Gabrielle Drolet, the 8th new cartoonist added to the magazine’s stable this year, and the 108th new cartoonist added under Emma Allen, the cartoon editor since May of 2017. The longest active contributor in the issue is this cartoonist.
Here are a few of the cartoons in the issue that caught my eye: Zach Kanin’s whale & mermaid drawing (page 31). Mr. Kanin has visited the beached whale scenario at least once before, if not more than once. Here’s hoping he continues to do so. Liza Donnelly’s see-saw drawing is a delight*, as is P.C. Vey’s people standing in line drawing P.45), Ellis Rosen’s kid in a high chair drawing (p.28), and Chris Weyant’s I’ll be in the other room cartoon (it’s on page 23).
The Rea Irvin Talk Watch:
Which Tilley came first: the “Talk Of The Town” heading Tilley (more precisely, the “Of All Things”) heading, or The New Yorker‘s first cover Tilley?
The other day I was enjoying scattershot re-reading Jane Grant’s memoir, Ross, The New Yorker, and Me (Reynal And Company, 1968) when I came across this nugget concerning (her husband) Harold Ross making a decision about the magazine’s first cover:
“Ross rejected the first drawings that were shown him. I remember one submitted by a young German artist which, with a curtain rising to disclose the New York skyline, was so literal, that it drove Ross into a frenzy of annoyance. Time was closing in on him, and he made a desperate appeal to [Rea] Irvin to draw something. The result was not a curtain-raiser to Manhattan, but a far more subtle presentation — the cavalier boulevardier inspecting a butterfly through his monocle. Ross was so entranced with it that it has since decorated the cover of each anniversary issue. It was a variation of the figure Irvin had already designed for the masthead, which still heads ‘The Talk Of The Town.'”
Although I’ve been through Ms. Grant’s book numerous times, this never stuck with me:
“It was a variation of the figure Irvin had already designed for the masthead, which still heads “The Talk Of The Town.”
The inaugural issue cover Tilley came out of the Talk heading Tilley! Until yesterday I was under the (wrong) impression that the cover Tilley begat all the other Tilleys that showed up within the magazine.
Below is what the very first heading looked like (as you can see, it appeared over “Of All Things,” not “The Talk Of The Town.” “Talk” moved over under this heading in the very next issue (The New Yorker‘s second issue)…I’ve shown that directly below the “Of All Things” heading.
All of this causes even more hand wringing here at the Spill due to the continued use of the current “Talk” heading — the redrawn version that bounced Rea Irvin’s 92 year old heading out of its spot in 2017. Below is the classic 92 year old heading:
It appeared in the January 30, 1926 issue and remained unchanged for 92 years (one small change: the tiny little white dots on Eustace Tilley’s shoulder — they faded away somewhere in time).
Summing up (finally!): the artist who designed the first “Talk” heading, the heading that begat the New Yorker‘s mascot, Eustace Tilley, is no longer represented on the magazine’s lead page. And a not-so-separate issue: that very same artist’s classic first cover Tilley has not appeared on the cover since 2011.
________________________________________________________
* Liza Donnelly is my wife, but I’d have mentioned her drawing in the issue even if she wasn’t.