Attempted Bloggery: Jack Ziegler's Cow: An Epilogue

Sunday, August 16, 2020

Jack Ziegler's Cow: An Epilogue

In yesterday's post, or rather in 1976, cartoonist Jack Ziegler drew a misshapen cow in a copy of The Art in Cartooning (1975) and then a couple of other first-rate New Yorker cartoonists had some devastating fun with it. I ended my little narrative with Sam Gross having one of the great cow cartoons of all time published in The New Yorker, easily redeeming himself from this whole fiasco, not that he required any redemption. But I left Jack Ziegler in his hole admiring the "nice goods" on his misbegotten cow. There is an epilogue to this story which still needs to be told. Like all good epilogues, it involves the triumphant publication of a cartoon in The New Yorker.

But I've already gotten ahead of myself. To recap: Scott Burns responded to my plea for a peek into copies of The Art in Cartooning signed by a bunch of cartoonists back in the day. It happens that he has an outstanding copy that was inscribed to one Steve, an implausible name for a cartoon collector, but we'll let that pass because it's a good name for a leather goods guy who wants to obtain drawings of cows in his new book. The cartoonists happily comply but then Ziegler draws himself into a hole, above, with a cow that looks more like the she-wolf that saved Romulus and Remus. So then George Booth prays for divine intervention:

And Sam Gross does some Trumanesque plain speaking...

...which prompts Dana Fradon to produce a mock-recrimination drawn in mock-anger aimed at Gross:

Soon enough though all is forgotten. The book goes into a private collection and Ziegler never has to think about or see the unfortunate drawing again. Yet something about this germ of an idea, about a man inappropriately admiring a cow's udder, stays with him, perhaps on a subconscious level, perhaps not—I refuse to psychoanalyze him about this—until some seventeen years later when The New Yorker accepts and prints the most unlikely of Ziegler cartoons:

"By the way, dollface, nice hooters."
Jack Ziegler
The New Yorker, August 9, 1983, page 44

Lo and behold, Jack Ziegler has drawn a fine cow that even looks like a cow. George Booth's prayers have been answered. But why is the udder hidden away?

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1993-08-09/flipbook/044/

Even my epilogue has an epilogue. The original artwork showed up at a small auction house in Connecticut last month, where it sold for barely the price of a few magic beans.

Jack Ziegler's signature

Jack Ziegler
Litchfield Auctions, July 22, 2020

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/jack-ziegler-cartoon-ink-wash-on-paper-456-c-7b34f15a3f

Note: Thanks once again to Scott Burns of Burns Bizarre for imaging his fabulous book. One blog post just wasn't enough to do it justice.

There are other copies out there of The Art in Cartooning signed, inscribed, and sketched upon by multiple cartoonists back in March of 1976. I would be delighted to post scans or photos of many more of these.