The Monday Tilley Watch Takes A Glancing Look At Some Of The Art & Artists Of The Latest Issue Of The New Yorker
The Cover: a somewhat ominous fire in the hearth by David Hockney. It’s not the first time The New Yorker has brought in someone from the art with a capital “A” world for cover duty (Red Grooms comes to mind, and more recently, Wayne Thiebaud).
The Cartoonists:
Kate Isenberg, Lonnie Millsap, Joe Dator, Sophie Lucido Johnson and Sammi Skolmoski, Roz Chast, Charlie Hankin, Zoe Si, Zachary Kanin, Juan Astasio, Bruce Eric Kaplan, George Booth
Eleven cartoons, eleven cartoonists (the Spill counts duos, such as this week’s duo, Sophie Lucido Johnson and Sammi Skolmoski, as one cartoonist). Love seeing George Booth’s work in the issue. For those keeping track, Mr. Booth is #4 on the list of The New Yorker‘s longest active regular cartoonist contributors. His first drawing appeared in the June 14, 1969 issue of the magazine. #7 on that list, Roz Chast is also represented in this new issue. She began contributing to the magazine in the issue of July 3, 1978.
The Cartoons:
No newbies this week. With one issue left in 2020 (next week’s issue), the #s are as follows:
New cartoonists added this year: 25
New cartoonists added since Emma Allen became cartoon editor in the Spring of 2017: 78
Total number of New Yorker cartoonists 1925 -2020: for those who like #s, here is, as close to an accurate count as I can get of the total number of cartoonists (give or take perhaps a slight few cartoonists who fell through the cracks over time and remain unaccounted for) who have contributed to The New Yorker since its first issue right up to today: 478 in almost 96 years (February is the magazine’s 96th birthday).
Speaking of olden times, it was 74 years ago this week, in The New Yorker dated December 21, 1946, that one of the magazine’s most famous cartoons appeared. It is, as well, one of Charles Addams’s most remembered drawings. Addams spoke about the drawing on “The Dick Cavett” show aired in March of 1978. Mr. Cavett asked Addams what was in the cauldron, and Addams answered:
“I’ve always thought of it as boiling oil, but Ross [Harold Ross, The New Yorker‘s founder and first editor] insisted it was boiling lead….but anyway, it’s nothing we have against Christmas carols, it’s intrusion on your privacy is what’s coming up here.”
…Well, back to the new issue. There are at least two holiday themed drawings, one by the aforementioned Roz Chast and the other by Bruce Eric Kaplan (with a bit of a pun in the caption).
Charlie Hankin’s (non-holiday) drawing on page 43 caught my eye; it’s an evergreen (as is Mr. Kaplan’s). It works this week, it would’ve worked 50 years ago, and it will work 50 years from now.
The Rea Irvin Talk Masthead Watch
Mr. Irvin’s classic Talk Of The Town design (below) remains on the shelf, replaced by a redraw (!) in the Spring of 2017. Read more here.
