Sunday, November 19, 2006
Life Drawing Sunday 16: Thanksgiving
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Monday, November 13, 2006
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Life Drawing Sunday 15: T.S. Sullivant - "Fables for the Times"
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Life Drawing Sunday 14: Alice Harvey
Yes, there actually were women cartoonists who contributed to Life. The list is a short one, and most of the contributions came in the 1920s. Until that time, apparently, women weren't considered capable of being funny. Hysterical, sure, but not funny.
Alice Harvey came to New York from Chicago with her friend Helen Hokinson in the early 1920's. Both had studied at the Art Institute, shared a studio on N. Michigan Ave. and worked as fashion illustrators for Marshall Fields. In New York they found work immediately in the comic art department of the Daily Mirror, where they created the short-lived strip "Sylvia in the Big City". They continued studying art at Parsons and Harvey found early success submitting to Life, Judge and other magazines. Her appearances in Life seem to have been as frequent as those of almost any other contributor.
In February of 1925 The New Yorker was launched and both Harvey and Hokinson soon found a home there. This isn't surprising since Harvey had pretty much been doing New Yorkerish cartoons for years before it existed, something Harold Ross seemed aware of in a letter he wrote to Harvey:
Ross was right in another regard: "This kid's got stuff, this kid can draw!" *
*These quotes and much of the biographical information here have been unrepentently cribbed from Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists And Their Cartoons by Liza Donnelly.
July 27, 1922
December 14, 1922
December 28, 1922
January 4, 1923
February 22, 1923
February 15, 1923
April 12, 1923
May 31, 1923
June 28, 1923
June 28, 1923
September 6, 1923
November 8, 1923
August 21, 1924
October 2, 1924
July 22, 1926
September 16, 1926
September 23, 1926
November 18, 1926
December 2, 1926
October 27, 1927
Alice Harvey came to New York from Chicago with her friend Helen Hokinson in the early 1920's. Both had studied at the Art Institute, shared a studio on N. Michigan Ave. and worked as fashion illustrators for Marshall Fields. In New York they found work immediately in the comic art department of the Daily Mirror, where they created the short-lived strip "Sylvia in the Big City". They continued studying art at Parsons and Harvey found early success submitting to Life, Judge and other magazines. Her appearances in Life seem to have been as frequent as those of almost any other contributor.
In February of 1925 The New Yorker was launched and both Harvey and Hokinson soon found a home there. This isn't surprising since Harvey had pretty much been doing New Yorkerish cartoons for years before it existed, something Harold Ross seemed aware of in a letter he wrote to Harvey:
I judge from your letter that you apparently don't realize that you are one of the three or four pathfinders in what is called the new school of American humor. Your stuff in Life before The New Yorker started might well be considered the first notes of the new humor. I remember seeing it and being encouraged by it when I was thinking of starting The New Yorker. It had a lot to do with convincing me that there was a new talent around for a magazine like this.
Ross was right in another regard: "This kid's got stuff, this kid can draw!" *
*These quotes and much of the biographical information here have been unrepentently cribbed from Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists And Their Cartoons by Liza Donnelly.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Life Drawing Sunday XIII: Boo!
I found only one drawing that was even remotely related to the subject of Halloween, an editorial cartoon by Charles Sykes. Eighty-four years later it couldn't be more timely, though a looming punkin'-head doesn't even begin to capture the monstrosity that is the 109th Congress.
Charles Sykes, November 9, 1922
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Life Drawing Sunday XII: J.M. Flagg's "Why They Married"
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These drawings are all from 1906. I'm assuming that Flagg wrote the verse also. I don't know how many issues this series ran in. I wish I had more of them.
UPDATE, 8/30/08: Google Books has a copy of Flagg's "Why They Married" available for download in PDF. Unfortunately, they did an inexcusably crappy job with some of the scanning.
Further UPDATE: Project Guttenberg has a better version here.
Yet more UPDATE, 10/3/11: Another drawing in this series uploaded.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Life Drawing Sunday XI: E.W. Kemble
Edward Winsor Kemble's drawings began appearing in Life almost from its inception in 1883 and his association with the magazine continued into the 1920s. His drawings caught the attention of Mark Twain and brought him the work for which he is probably best known today, illustrating The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the first of several collaborations between the two.
It's easy to guess at what Twain might have found so appealing in Kemble's drawings. His characters were alive, animated and full of expression. He made funny drawings, which was not often the case in Life's cartoons or 19th century cartoons generally. He was one of a very few of Life's contributors (F.P.W. "Chip" Bellew was another) to use sequential panels, often laid out across a couple of pages. (The examples here have been re-arranged in a more conventional comic strip format for easier readability. You're welcome.)
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Kemble used a variety of ethnic types in his cartoons, which was not uncommon in the WASPy pages of Life or in other forms of 19th and early 20th century entertainment. His most popular work in his time, for Life and other magazines such as Century and Colliers, were his cartoons of contemporary Negro life.The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons described these drawings as "often sympathetic" which may seem, looking at some of the few examples here, an elastic use of the word. It goes on to say that "[w]hile his treatments were usually comic, Kemble took care to study the real urban and rural environments and living conditions of blacks. His caricatures were never absurdly exaggerated, although every convention - wild dress, chicken stealing, etc. - was thematically exploited to the fullest."
Possibly because these drawings were so popular, Kemble may have felt a commercial need to use black characters in situations that make the choice seem arbitrary (.pdf file). In these drawings - and I haven't found a lot of them - he seems to have stumbled into some kind of cartooning ideal where ethnicity doesn't imply or symbolize anything except humanity. If Kemble did this consciously, which doesn't seem all that likely, he would have been way ahead of his time, and ours.
UPDATE (10/15/06): All of Kemble's Huck Finn illustrations can be viewed here. Don't miss the obscenely defaced sales prospectus illustration and the revelation of its existence by The New York World. Thanks to Tom Mazzocco for the links.
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