The Tilley Watch Online, The Week Of August 14 -18, 2023
An end of the week listing of New Yorker artists whose work has appeared on newyorker.com features
The Daily Cartoon: Sarah Kempa, Maggie Larson, Lynn Hsu, Anjali Chandrashekar, Emily Bernstein.
Daily Shouts: Zoe Si, Adam Douglas Thompson.
Barry Blitt’s Kvetchbook: “Indictment NO. 4 Is Revealed”
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89 Years Ago This Week In The New Yorker
Here’s a quick look at some of the art in the issue of August 25, 1934. The cover is by the great Rea Irvin.
As happens so often with these issues, the small drawings in Goings On About Town (GOAT) are impressive.
As for the cartoons, Thurber has one of his fun hound series (“The Hound And The Hat” — 8 parts) as well as an illustrated written piece (I may talk about those next Thurber Thursday). Flipping through the issue, the one drawing that immediately caught my eye is this one by Al Frueh:
It wasn’t what the drawing is about, or the way it was drawn that got my attention. It was the fact that it is an Al Frueh cartoon. Some New Yorker readers might recall that Mr. Frueh was, for decades, the Al Hirschfeld of The New Yorker, illustrating the magazine’s theater reviews. It’s not that Mr. Frueh (pronounced “free”) hardly did cartoons — it’s just that I don’t recall running across many of the 200 he contributed. It’s his theater drawings that, for me, have made a lasting impression.
Pick out any New Yorker from its earlier years and you will notice how cartoons ruled the pages. This issue is not an exception. Besides the Thurber 8 parter, there’s a full page Peter Arno as well as well a full page W.C. Galbraith:
Other cartoonists in the issue include Robt. Day (who has two drawings), Syd Hoff, William Steig (with another “Small Fry” installment), Helen Hokinson, Garrett Price, Alan Dunn (with two drawings; he also had the GOAT drawing shown above of the oil truck at the old home), Barbara Shermund, Richard Decker, and Helen Hokinson.
As an example of how cartoons received their deserved space on the page, here’s this terrif Hokinson drawing.
Here’s Richard Decker’s drawing. I love how the text follows the shape of the drawing (something you see a lot of in the early issues):
So there you have it. A summertime issue filled with variety, and cartoons beautifully drawn.
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