Now That’s A Cover!
Ilonka Karasz again returns to the Spill’s cover series not long after appearing in the Spring. It might seem I’m in a Karasz phase, but the truth of it is I don’t look for any particular artist’s work as I go through the New Yorker‘s covers (often using The Complete Book Of Covers From The New Yorker: 1925-1989, but sometimes online, where, of course, the archive is right up to date). What I’m looking for is art beyond design. This morning, I found it in the cover above. To quote the late great New Yorker cartoonist and cover artist, Jack Ziegler, “…It’s always nice when cartoonists know how to draw so that they can give us something pleasant and fun to look at.” Ms. Karasz wasn’t a cartoonist, but I believe Jack’s sentiment applies to cover artists as well.
There’s a surety of design in Ms. Karasz’s cover — that skyline and the frontal view of the ferryboat — as well as a playfulness — the handling of the water and waves — the sum of the parts “..give us something pleasant and fun to look at.”
I admit I may be a bit sentimental about the scene. The very first time my mother took me to the big city — I was four or five years old — was on a ferryboat out of Weehawken.
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Ilonka Karasz (photo by Nickolas Muray) Born, Budapest, July 13, 1893. Died, Warwick, New York, May 26, 1981. New Yorker work: Ms. Karasz was a prolific New Yorker cover artist, with 185 published. Her first appeared on the issue of April 4, 1925; her last appeared on the issue of October 22, 1973. Her Wikipedia entry