Then and Now: Traffic Cones and The New Yorker

New York City's orange traffic cones can be seen all over town. They have occasionally made their way from the streets into the art of The New Yorker magazine. There is, for example, cartoonist Mort Gerberg's seasonally-themed "Sketchbook" from the issue of October 26, 1998:

"Sketchbook"
Mort Gerberg
The New Yorker, October 26, 1998, p. 258

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1998-10-26/flipbook/258/

This year, The New Yorker didn't publish a Halloween cover, or so the magazine would have us believe. Still, it is hard to imagine that the September 23 cover by Christoph Niemann wasn't at some point considered for the last week in October. Orange steam funnels and traffic cones inspire the evening fashion of one of the city's denizens. The New Yorker can call this the Fall Style & Design cover all it wants, but to me it still looks like a Halloween cover. I see what I see.

"Smoke and Mirrors"
Christoph Niemann
The New Yorker, September 23, 2024

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/2024-09-23/flipbook/CV1/

Note:  Interested coneheads can find the original 1998 art by Mort Gerberg at the end of my post on his New-York Historical Society exhibition here. Christoph Niemann's original art, on the other hand, is presumably not a work on paper and never to be displayed on a gallery wall.

Last month, on his Ink Spill blog, cartoonist Michael Maslin noted how magazine cover art imitates life, citing this 2017 Halloween costume.

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