How often does it happen that two top cartoonists come up with virtually the same idea? Actually, it's not all that rare, and often it does not involve intentional or even inadvertent copying. Charles Addams (1912-1988) and Ronald Searle (1920-2011) were two of the leading cartoonists of the twentieth century. It happens that at some point they each pursued the idea of a tired clown taking off his shoes at the end of the day and they both arrived at a strikingly similar place. Addams's version exists as a rough, probably submitted to The New Yorker, and published posthumously as a postcard by the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation; Searle's is a finished drawing with watercolor collected in his 1978 eponymous monograph. Searle's cartoon was created for the XIVth Circus Gala, Paris, 1971, and it was in the collection of his wife Monica Searle. The date of Addams's is presumably unknown to the Addams Foundation, but it doesn't particularly matter which came first. The artists were separated by an ocean and were probably unaware of each other's clown pictures. The drawings are here presented in alphabetical order by cartoonist.
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Clown Feet
Charles Addams
The Tee and Charles Addams Foundation
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Clown, 1971
Ronald Searle
XIVth Circus Gala, Paris, 1971
Ronald Searle: exposition, Cabinet des estampes, Bibliothèque nationale, 26 janvier-31 mars 1973, Paris, catalogue no. 99
Ronald Searle, Mayflower Books, New York, 1978, no. 92
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First off, Addams gets a lot of points for subtlety. Just hinting at the size of the clown's feet, rather than showing them to us outright, is ingenious. Searle, as is his wont, gives us a lot of extraordinary detail that is ultimately extraneous to the main point of the drawing. We're shown the clown's newspaper, Le Monde (this was created for a Paris Circus Gala), his ash tray full of spent cigarettes, and his liquor. We even get to see his street clothes and his umbrella. And what a wonderful water pitcher Searle has given us! The details are very specific.
So, which do you prefer?
August 16, 2023 Update: Postcard sold!
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