Attempted Bloggery: Peter Arno's Cartoon Revue

Showing posts with label Peter Arno's Cartoon Revue. Show all posts

Saturday, May 18, 2024

Peter Arno: All Aboard the Elevator

A classic cartoon by The New Yorker's Peter Arno was sold on eBay this past Sunday:

"I told you we should have given them something for Christmas."
Peter Arno
Original art
The New Yorker, January 1, 1938, p. 16

True, we don't usually see manually-operated elevators these days, but they were once commonplace in New York apartment buildings. Arno extracts an awful lot of physical humor from the situation. Contrast the couple's awkwardness with the upright posture of the elevator operator.

"I told you we should have given them something for Christmas."
Peter Arno
Original art
The New Yorker, January 1, 1938, p. 16

Each of Arno's faces adds to the comedy.

The typed caption is affixed to the art, a no-no. The word told isn't even underlined.

Peter Arno's signature

Evidently the frame is not perfect.

Peter Arno
eBay listing ended May 12, 2024

https://www.ebay.com/itm/276453401977

Peter Arno
eBay item description

"I told you we should have given them something for Christmas."
Peter Arno
The New Yorker, January 1, 1938, p. 16

"I told you we should have given them something for Christmas."
Peter Arno
Original art
The New Yorker, January 1, 1938, p. 16

With a cartoon by Peter Arno and a spot drawing by Susanne Suba

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1938-01-01/flipbook/016/

A copy of this issue offered on Amazon clearly shows the cartoon to be on page 14, not 16. If the photograph looks familiar, it's because the seller used a lower-resolution version of this image as the final one in the listing. This magazine listed on Amazon is no doubt one of the regional variants lacking some of the pages in the New York metropolitan edition which the magazine kept as file copies.

Page variant

https://www.amazon.com/Jan-1-1938-New-Yorker-Midgettes/dp/B00ODDX8JK

In addition, the cartoon was collected in Peter Arno's Cartoon Revue (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1941), Cartoon Cavalcade (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943), The Penguin Peter Arno (Penguin, 1949, 1957), and no doubt elsewhere.

Peter Arno's Cartoon Revue (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1941)

Craven, Thomas, ed. Cartoon Cavalcade (Chicago: Consolidated Book Publishers, 1945 edition)

The Penguin Peter Arno (Penguin, 1957)

* * *

Spot of a woman unbuttoning by a mirror
Susanne Suba
The New Yorker, January 1, 1938, p. 17

Note: Original cartoon art by Peter Arno comes to eBay only when it is changing hands. We can enjoy even more Arno originals here when generous collectors choose to share their art virtually here. You may take that as a hint. Thank you, and don't forget to tip your blogger.

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Thursday, May 16, 2024

Speaking of Pictures: Life Magazine on Peter Arno, 1941

In its October 13, 1941 issue, Life magazine gave its readers a generous sampling of ten Peter Arno cartoons from The New Yorker collected in his seventh book, Cartoon Revue. The looming wartime themes are evident, but there's also the 1939 World's Fair, a wedding night scenario, and a gag about aging—or is it about publicity?

Peter Arno
Life, October 13, 1941, pp. 8-9

I think Life made an obvious mistake here: placing the captions on the lower half of the page at the top of the cartoons could only have been dreamed up by an art director too concerned about "balance." The idea, I suppose, was to keep the captions from being trimmed off the lower edge of the page.

Peter Arno
eBay listing accessed April 27, 2024

https://www.ebay.com/itm/135035220279?mkpid=0&emsid=e11021.m43.l1120&ch=osgood&euid=1dbda975180346dda416fb7e6a54111d&bu=43186000575&ut=RU&osub=-1%7E1&crd=20240427013620&segname=11021

Peter Arno
eBay item description

EBay paper sellers often don't disclose specific issue dates—I mean, why buy the two pages on offer when you could get a copy of the full magazine for probably not too much more?—but that withheld information is increasingly searchable. My own formidable Google skills gave me not only the issue date, but an additional page, numbered 11, with the final two Arno cartoons. Here, I'm pleased to report, both captions are placed underneath the drawing, where they belong.

https://books.google.com/books?id=uk4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA8&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Note: I've been at this game long enough to have written a few comprehensive posts on some of these classic Peter Arno cartoons, including:

"You're making a grave mistake, Miss Loesch . . . "

"Well, what's the excuse t his time?"

"Why, George Carter! . . . "

As for "Well, back to the old drawing board," Paul Karasik explains why this is his candidate for the perfect cartoon here.

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Friday, June 3, 2016

Peter Arno: The Scoutmaster's Secret

A preliminary New Yorker drawing by Peter Arno seen at Skinner in 2007 is almost good enough to publish, but it does have a problem or two. The speaker, trying to correct a misunderstanding, is depicted a little too awkwardly with his back toward us and his legs at odd angles as he tries to pull away from an exotic and seductive woman. The artist could twist him around so that he faces us, and that might help, but there is still another problem. The situation we're encountering here is a complicated one, and we might read it better the way we read everything, from left to right, seeing the seductress before we see the man's reaction to her. And then there is that obtrusive pillow in the foreground, blocking the woman's leg. Surely that doesn't help the diagonal sweep.

Arno fixes all these problems in the published version, but he goes further. He leaves the scoutmaster's legs parallel, improving the visual flow. He redecorates, moving the flowers forward and leaving the hat on the floor in the foreground. The end result has much greater immediacy. Meanwhile the editors have tweaked the word great into grave, further emphasizing the laughable earnestness of the honest scoutmaster.

"You're making a great mistake, Miss Loesch. We scoutmasters

are not entrusted with military secrets."

Peter Arno

Preliminary art
The New Yorker, July 27, 1940, page 18

Peter Arno's signature

Skinner, September 7, 2007, Sale 2371, Lot 788

https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2371/lots/788

The published version:

"You're making a grave mistake, Miss Loesch. We scoutmasters are not entrusted with military secrets."

Peter Arno,

The New Yorker, July 27, 1940, page 18

"You're making a great mistake, Miss Loesch. We scoutmasters

are not entrusted with military secrets."

Peter Arno

Preliminary art
The New Yorker, July 27, 1940, page 18

May 7, 2017 Update: The published New Yorker cartoon was collected in Peter Arno's Cartoon Revue (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1941), where it also appeared on the back of the dust jacket.

Peter Arno's Cartoon Revue
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1941)
Front Cover

http://www.panoplybooks.com/product/peter-arnos-cartoon-revue-by-peter-arno-1941-first-edition

Peter Arno's Cartoon Revue (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1941)

http://www.panoplybooks.com/product/peter-arnos-cartoon-revue-by-peter-arno-1941-first-edition

Peter Arno's Cartoon Revue
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1941)
Back Cover

http://www.panoplybooks.com/product/peter-arnos-cartoon-revue-by-peter-arno-1941-first-edition

Note: Well, there you have it: a lesson from the great Peter Arno in how to turn a work of preliminary New Yorker cartoon art into the real deal. He makes it looks so easy!

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Saturday, May 14, 2016

Richard Merkin's Peter Arno

Richard Merkin's illustration of Peter Arno appeared in the New Yorker's 1993 anniversary issue. The cartoonist is shown in profile with a cigarette in his mouth, presiding over the city he loves. His outrageously bold shirt is a real attention grabber. Mr. Merkin's source is a photograph of Arno that appears in Peter Arno's Cartoon Revue from 1941. Arno's actual shirt, if anything, is more wild than Merkin has depicted it.