A Meta New Yorker Cartoon By Warren Miller
Yesterday, taking a break from drawing, I began poking through a stack of New Yorkers from the late 1960s. An Andre Francois cover on the issue of July 26, 1969 grabbed my attention. I’ve always loved Mr. Francois’s cover work (it’s possible I’m especially fond of it because he had the cover for the issue containing my first New Yorker cartoon — the first under my own name that is).
Not remembering what drawings were in this summer of ’69 issue, I put it aside to sit with later in the day. As usual, the wait was worth it; there are a number of cartoon rewards in the issue. For starters, there’s the six page piece (“Baseball Centennial Souvenir Program”) jointly contributed by James Stevenson and Roger Angell. Cartoon-wise, there are a couple of fab Steigs, as well as a couple of early Charles Barsotti drawings –his 7th and 8th for The New Yorker, according to the magazine’s database. But the drawing in the issue that really captured my attention is this terrific one by Warren Miller:
As there are very few meta New Yorker cartoons — I only know of three others — I felt Mr. Miller’s needed mentioning.
Joe Duffy’s multi-panel published, October 31, 2011 was the first modern day meta New Yorker cartoon:
As Stephen Nadler mentioned in his Attempted Bloggery post of May 3, 2015, Gardner Rea seems to have had the very first meta New Yorker cartoon (it appeared in the issue of May 2, 1925).
Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, a meta cartoon I did well after Mr. Duffy’s (and, of course, after Mr. Rea’s) is similar to Mr. Miller’s cartoon in the somewhat unorthodox use of text. Before my drawing was published, I heard through the magazine’s editorial grape vine that messing with the caption, as I wanted, might be tricky. But whoever was responsible for manipulating the text did a great job. It appeared in the issue of April 11, 2016:
____________________________________________________________
A-Z Entries For The Meta Cartoon Artists Mentioned Above:
.jpg)
Warren Miller (photo above by Liza Donnelly, NYC, Sept. 1997) Born 1936, Chicago, Ill. The following biographical information comes from The Phoenix Gallery site which hosted a group exhibit of New Yorker cartoonists work (Lorenz, Harris, Modell, and Miller) in 2007: “Warren Miller studied commercial and fine art at the American Academy of Art, Chicago. He started selling cartoons to Playboy and The New Yorker in 1961 and moved to New York City later that year. Miller’s work has also appeared in Esquire, Punch, Rolling Stone, Audubon, Harvard Business Review, Barrons, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, and the London Sunday Times. Mr. Miller is a painter and a sculptor as well. He has exhibited his work in a number of shows in the New York area and in the Midwest.” Key collections: All Thumbs (Bobbs-Merrill,1967); Prince and Mrs. Charming (Bobbs-Merril, 1970). New Yorker work: 1959 –.
J.C. Duffy New Yorker work: November 9, 1998 – .Website
Gardner Rea (self portrait above from Collier’s Collects Its Wits. Photo from Rea’s NYTs obit, 1966.) Born, Ironton, Ohio 1892. Died, 1966. Collections: The Gentleman Says It’s Pixies / Collier’s Cartoons by Gardner Rea (Robert McBride & Co. 1944), Gardner Rea’s Sideshow (Robert McBride & Co, 1945). NYer work: 1st issue (February 21, 1925) – 1965