Constantin Alajálov: The Graduate Looks to His Future

The idea that new college graduates might face limited employment prospects has been around for quite a while. We know that such concerns become especially prominent in times of economic uncertainty such as the current moment. Constantin Alajálov's New Yorker cover art for the issue of June 22, 1935, was published in the midst of the Great Depression.

Constantin Alajálov
Full original art
The New Yorker, June 22, 1935

The graduate, we see, faces a variety of job possibilities, the ones on the left being fantasies of prosperity while the ones on the right suggest a workaday hustle to which the college degree might not contribute very much.

Constantin Alajálov
Original art
The New Yorker, June 22, 1935

Alajálov's original was sold in the Illustration Art sale at Swann Auction Galleries in December.

Constantin Alajálov
Swann Auction Galleries Illustration Art sale of December 4, 2025

https://www.swanngalleries.com/auction-lot/new-yorker-constantin-alajalov-1900-1987-the-grad_067c029639

Constantin Alajálov
Swann Auction Galleries Illustration Art sale item description

A comparison of the art with the published cover leads to one very obvious observation: the original has no color.

Constantin Alajálov
Original art
The New Yorker, June 22, 1935

Constantin Alajálov
The New Yorker, June 22, 1935

This raises one of two possibilities: either all the color has faded over the past ninety years or Alajálov added the color during the magazine's color separation process.

Have we seen this before? Twelve years ago I posted another Alajálov cover, this one showing a dog's family tree from 1938, with what Bonhams described as its study. I followed the auction house's lead here, but the cover and its supposed preliminary art are close to identical except for the matter of color.

Constantin Alajálov
The New Yorker, February 12, 1938

Constantin Alajálov
Preliminary art [?]
The New Yorker, February 12, 1938

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A Powerful Dream: Otto Soglow in College Humor, September 1937

A man asleep in bed dreams up some increasingly incredible feats of strength. But how will he feel by the morning? In this full-page cartoon from the September 1937 issue of College Humor, cartoonist Otto Soglow gives us six clean panels with no shading and no speech. Note that Soglow has drawn male characters with a straight nose, a hooked nose, and an upturned nose. In 1937, this constituted diversity.

Otto Soglow
College Humor, Vol. 6, No. 1, September 1937, page 27

Note:  I photographed this cartoon in a copy of the September 1937 issue of College Humor, just one delightful page out of some 5,600 publications in the Steven Boss humor magazine collection. I found it, as you might very well guess, in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University. The comic art collection is always growing and is accessible to the general public. Just contact Curator for Comics and Cartoons Karen Green. She'll make sure you find what you're looking for and don't fall asleep in the stacks.

Does Otto Soglow's work leave you weak at the knees? Help me keep his art in the public eye right here on Attempted Bloggery. I am looking for high-quality scans or photographs of original cartoon art by Soglow and other artists of his ilk whose work appeared in magazines like College Humor or The New Yorker. Please send along examples of rare or even forgotten published work like this beautiful dreamer cartoon.

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