Attempted Bloggery: Apples

Showing posts with label Apples. Show all posts

Friday, November 24, 2023

MDLinx Comic Consult #13

The MDLinx Comic Consult is a caption contest open only to doctors with a sense of humor. Prizes are a $100 Amazon gift card for first place, and $50 gift cards for up to four runners up. I won a $50 gift card for contest #12 and immediately spent it, so I'm fired up. This is contest #13 and it features a physician exercising questionable judgment. Five entries are permitted; each of mine is shown below. The cartoon is by Jonny Hawkins.

"Now I'm going to check your reaction time."
"There's nothing to worry about. I hardly ever miss."
"Don't move. My malpractice insurance is riding on this."
"There. That's everything but the informed consent."
"Are you sure you wouldn't rather have a prostate exam?"

December 3, 2023 Update: The Winner

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Saturday, April 23, 2022

Robert Kraus: Quoting Shakespeare in a Bar

Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand,
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover’s fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!

"A Midsummer Night's Dream," III.2

This last line is a most famous quotation from William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." It generally would have been well known to the educated readers of The New Yorker. Cartoonist Robert Kraus made good use of it in 1963 with a drawing of two businessmen sitting in a bar after work. His original artwork showed up on eBay in 2015. In the magazine, the printed cartoon looks somewhat slapdash, but clearly some work went into the original, particularly with the highlighting. The artwork sold for an undisclosed Best Offer price for something less than $599.

"What fools these mortals be—present company excepted, of course."
Robert Kraus
Original cartoon art
The New Yorker, September 28, 1963, page 45

Detail of two heads

Detail of the speaker's head

Detail of two figures at the bar

Printer's marks

Robert Kraus's signature

Verso

The caption, more or less

Robert Kraus
eBay Listing ended August 4, 2015

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Robert-Kraus-63-Rare-Original-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Noted-Cartoonist-Illustrator-/371338035346?hash=item567578c092%3Am%3AmS2s0TPBL7tcFHh5E_pd6Xg&nma=true&si=YQGb25QThn5Fxe78BW8tTy6VzZY%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Robert Kraus
eBay Item Description

"What fools these mortals be—present company excepted, of course."
Robert Kraus
Original cartoon art
The New Yorker, September 28, 1963, page 45

A cartoon by Robert Kraus

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1963-09-28/flipbook/044/

A cartoon by Dana Fradon from 1976 is set in a corporate board room. It riffs on the same familiar quotation in a somewhat related way:

A spot by Henry Martin and a cartoon by Dana Fradon

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1976-08-30/flipbook/036/

Note: Original New Yorker artwork by Robert Kraus is something of a rarity even on this blog, but I would happily post more should good images happen to come my way.

Henry Martin

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Friday, June 19, 2020

Reamer Keller in College Humor, March 1939

Cartoonist Reamer Keller published two gags in the March 1939 issue of College Humor. The first is set in a classroom and is a joke about the cliche of giving an apple to the teacher. Written on the chalk board is puss and the rhyme schus, a reference to College Humor cartoonist Adolph Schus. On the other side of the dunce cap are the words pin, bin, and linn. Linn must be a name; possibly it is a reference to cartoonist Bandel Linn, but was he on College Humor's cartooning roster at the time?

"Only 23 apples! Who's absent today?"
Reamer Keller
College Humor, Volume 9, No. 3, March 1939, page 23

The second cartoon shows a sultan playing favorites:

"You're holding a few of my wives for shoplifting—I'd like to bail out the tall blonde."

Reamer Keller
College Humor, Volume 9, No. 3, March 1939, page 40

Note: The March 1939 issue of College Humor referenced above is one of more than 5,600 magazines in the Steven Boss humor magazine collection at Columbia University. I photographed these two cartoons and quite a few others in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library on March 10, 2016. The Butler Library opened in 1934 just five years before this issue of College Humor that it now holds was published. In addition to the Boss collection, the Butler Library houses a couple of million other volumes. It is currently closed until further notice, but when it does reopen Curator for Comics and Cartoons Karen Green can give members of the general public access to the collection if they bring her an apple.

Attempted Bloggery seeks additional published work by Reamer Keller, from College Humor and elsewhere. Today I'm sharing the final College Humor Keller cartoons I was able to photograph at the RBML. Fortunately I still have work by a few other cartoonists to share.

I'd like to have some sort of corroboration regarding Keller's reference to Linn or to hear alternative possibilities.

External Links:

Reamer Keller's Wikipedia Entry

Reamer Keller on Lambiek Comiclopedia

Stripper's Guide: "Reamer Keller, Portsmouth Gift To The Pen-And-Ink Brigade, Tells How" by Wayne Paulson (Portsmouth Times, October 24, 1937)

Daily Reamer

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Reamer Keller

Adolph Schus

College Humor

Attempted Bloggery's Primary School Index

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Friday, September 23, 2011

Charles Demuth: Apples and Crocuses

Charles Demuth was a master watercolorist. Two of his works in this medium are going up on the auction block this coming Tuesday. Crocuses is one of those floral watercolors that just seems absolutely luminous. Apples is mostly unpainted and its estimate seems on the high side to me. Still, it's clearly similar to other Demuth watercolors of the same subject.