The title of Peter de Sève’s lemming cover art for the 7/24/23 New Yorker issue, which I reproduce here for its delightful playfulness:
These are of course the lemmings of the pop-cultural imagination, bearing only a distant relationship to actual lemmings
In fact, these sportive lemmings are only a stand-in for the beach-goers of July.
The New Yorker cover story for this issue: “Peter de Sève’s “To the Sea!”: the artist discusses his relationship to spontaneity and his affinity for drawings done by hand” by Françoise Mouly, beginning:
When the heat of summer sets in, those of us who yearn to get to the shore don’t often think of ourselves as part of the herd. Yet the scene in Peter de Sève’s new cover for the July 24, 2023, issue renders that experience recognizable: rushing to the beach in July will often land us in the midst of a boisterous army of umbrella- and picnic-wielding beachgoers, like lemmings eager to jump in the water. I talked to the artist about what fuels his urge to draw and bring a menagerie of characters to life.
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