Here’s a volume I spent a lot of time with some years back when writing Peter Arno’s biography (Brendan Gill’s Arno obit is in the issue of March 9th). Arno was, at the time of his death, still fully engaged with the magazine; his New Yorker contract for the coming year awaited his signature; he had finished off what would be his last published New Yorker drawing (in his lifetime) just months before he died. It appears in the issue of February 24th within this volume, as does his second to last published New Yorker drawing, appearing in the issue of January 13th.
This bound volume contains a turning point of sorts for the New Yorker cartoon world, a marker separating The New Yorker cartoon world dominated by Arno (he was, after all, still Peter Arno, “the greatest artist in the world” according to Harold Ross) to the modern world of cartoons.
I believe that the earliest stirrings of a transition began in the mid-to-late 1950s as the then newbie artists determined that their captions (their “ideas”) stayed with their drawings and were not given to veterans (we know that William Shawn, the magazine’s editor in those years, was all for this). While many of the veteran artists were not involved in this practice, using ideas by others was a life line for a number of the magazine’s top tier artists (George Price is an example).
Another sort of transition began in the early sixties when Edward Koren’s work began appearing in the magazine. That the magazine was now open to “beasts” as recurring characters was new. I see it as the true beginning of the modern world that later saw Jack Ziegler blow the roof off the idea of what a New Yorker cartoon could be.