From John McIntyre on Facebook, this link to the TED blog of 7/26/13, “Bob Mankoff picks his 11 favorite New Yorker cartoons ever” by Helen Waters. (Mankoff is the cartoon editor of the New Yorker.) Hard to choose, but here are four I especially like.
From Charles Barsotti:
(#1)
Pasta to pasta. Wonderfully silly. There’s another Barsotti (of 5/22/09) on this blog, here, on a Memorial Day cookout. On Barsotti (born 1933):
Barsotti has been the cartoon editor of The Saturday Evening Post and has been a staff cartoonist at The New Yorker since 1970. His work has also appeared in Playboy and Fast Company, among other publications. A signature artist whose rounded, elegant, sparsely detailed style evokes both the traditional world of a James Thurber and the contemporary sensibility of a Roz Chast.
Barsotti’s work features a simple repertory including a nameless, lovable pooch and a monarch whose kingdom consists of a guard and a telephone. (Wikipedia link)
A connection to Chast, who’s appeared on Language Log on 7/4/09 and on this blog on 8/23/11. Mankoff’s choice:
(#2)
Ouch.
On Chast:
Rosalind “Roz” Chast (born November 26, 1954) is an American cartoonist and a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker.
… Her first New Yorker cartoon showed a small collection of “Little Things,” strangely named, oddly shaped small objects such as “chent,” “spak,” and “tiv”. Chast’s drawing style shuns conventional craft in her figure drawing, perspective, shading, etc.; this approach is similar to that of several other female cartoonists, notably Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Lynda Barry. A significant part of the humor in Chast’s cartoons appears in the background and the corners of the frames. (Wikipedia link)
Then, from an earlier time, a wordless Chon Day:
(#3)
On Day:
Chauncey Addison Day, better known as Chon Day, (April 6, 1907 – 2000) was an American cartoonist whose cartoons appeared in The New Yorker and other magazines. (Wikipedia link)
An finally Bruce Eric Kaplan (BEK):
(#4)
This one is specifically linguistic, displaying one complement clause embedded inside another, with shifting points of view.
On BEK:
Bruce Eric Kaplan (born September 9, 1964), known as BEK, is an American cartoonist whose single-panel cartoons frequently appear in The New Yorker. His cartoons are known for their signature simplistic style and often dark humor. Kaplan is also a screenwriter and has worked on Seinfeld and on Six Feet Under. (Wikipedia link)
January 14, 2014 at 8:18 am |
The 11 cartoons again arouse my wonderment at The New Yorker’s cartoon selections. Their cartoon editor was probably the worst possible person to pick these. The Roz Chast cartoon, to be sure, is hilarious. I can see the humor in the Chon Day one. How many of the others would really make someone laugh, or even smile slightly? It’s hard to believe that this magazine once ran cartoons by Thurber and Addams, among other greats.
June 22, 2014 at 6:46 am |
[…] there’s the talking pasta, #1 in “New Yorker cartoons” of 1/14/14 (here), which comes with a note on Barsotti. The pasta, apparently penne rigate (a hollow ribbed tube), […]