The perfect New Yorker cartoon
My friend Casey shared on Facebook the cool news that one of his friends had a cartoon published in the latest issue of The New Yorker, the holy grail of publications that feature cartoons (at least in my eyes!). It reminds me of this wonderful essay by the New Yorker Cartoon editor Bob Mankoff on what he considers to be “the perfect cartoon” which was drawn by Chon Day in 1946 (seen above) and selected from the thousands published in their magazine. At first glance I found it relatively unexceptional, but the brilliance of the cartoon, as Mankoff explains, is the subtlety of its dark humor which is achieved with a high degree of difficulty.
Read More »First covers of famous magazines
From The Atlantic Monthly in 1857 to Wired in 1993, here’s a fascinating look at the covers of the first issues of famous magazines, including, I’m sure, at least one of your favorites. It’s kind of amazing to see how these magazines have evolved over the years. Some are radically different in terms of design, focus and content, while others – most notably The New Yorker, whose first issue stars Eustace Tilley, or New York Magazine, with its breathtaking photo of the most beautiful skyline in the world – look as timeless and instantly familiar then as they do today…
Read More »Roger Ebert’s winning New Yorker caption
After years of submitting his punchline to The New Yorker’s caption contest found in each issue, film critic Roger Ebert finally won after 107 attempts with the above entry to the accompanying cartoon. Of course, not every winner gets a write-up by the magazine’s cartoon editor Robert Mankoff who shared some of Ebert’s previous entries. My juvenile alter-ego found the one below, which didn’t get past the cartoon censors, plane-ly hysterical. Congrats Mr. Ebert!
Read More »Covering Christoph Niemann’s nuclear flowers
The New Yorker has an interesting look behind the process that led to the final design of their recent cover (see above) created by Christoph Niemann (a SUNfiltered favorite) which reflects the delicate ongoing struggle and tragedy in Japan. This assignment was difficult because, as Niemann explained, “A drawing often comes across as lighthearted, and [...]
Read More »Photographing art audiences
Jessie Wender touches on one of the truisms about art: sometimes the audience can be just as, if not more interesting. For The New Yorker, she highlights a selection of photographs, including one of my favorites picture above (Elliott Erwitt, “57th Street Gallery, New York City, USA,” 1963) that reflects the lens back at the [...]
Read More »Creation of a New Yorker cover
Familiar readers of SUNfiltered might have noticed my obsession with all things The New Yorker covers related. This is a bit older, but I just came across it and apropos to the recent State of the Union address by President Obama, watch how Bob Staake created the cover of the October 13, 2008 issue. It’s [...]
Read More »Literal New Yorker cartoon captions
My new favorite website for high-brow chuckles: Literal New Yorker Cartoon Captions. [Via]
Read More »Collection of rejected New Yorker cover ideas
New York City based artist and teacher at SVA Tomer Hanuka shared some of his rejected New Yorker cover concepts. This one went so far as a final version, but I like this one above that he describes as “one about Winter / Valentine’s day / over-heated apartments / relationships.” Who knows, maybe it’s just [...]
Read More »RIP Leo Cullum, New Yorker cartoonist
Leo Cullum, a New Yorker cartoonist for 33 years (and a TWA pilot for 30 years) passed away on October 23. He was 68. You may not immediately recognize his name, but most SunFiltered readers I’m sure have chuckled at more than a few of his 819 cartoons published in the magazine. By the 1980s [...]
Read More »New Yorker covers via iPhone art
Artist Jorge Colombo now has four New Yorker covers under his belt, which may or may not be his preferred method of carrying his iPhone, which also happens to be the tool that he uses to create and paint the art for these covers. As the iPhone and the apps have built quite a active [...]
Read More »New Yorker analyzes readers’ bookshelves
The New Yorker’s blog “The Book Bench” has recently been poetically analyzing their readers’ bookshelves from the photographs they submit. Here, they interpret Italian reader Maria Sepa’s: From the celestial sphere, knowledge, immaterial at first, rains gently into the minds of men; from there it falls onto the pages of books; and from there it [...]
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