Attempted Bloggery: condor

Showing posts with label condor. Show all posts

Sunday, May 12, 2019

A Robert Day Mother's Day

Friend and contributor Dick Buchanan writes, "Just in the nick of time, a Mother's Day gag—sort of." Robert Day's 1955 cartoon for True magazine depicts two adventurous men gathering Andean condor eggs on an isolated cliff. One of them experiences an understandable pang of regret, but seemingly only on account of the calendar date.

"I feel like a heel. Today is Mother's Day."
Robert Day
True, May 1955, page 117

Scan by Dick Buchanan

Note: My thanks to Dick Buchanan for providing Attempted Bloggery with another fine scan right out of the storied Dick Buchanan Cartoon Clip Files. Dick contributes regularly to Mike Lynch Cartoons, most recently an essential post entitled "From the Dick Buchanan Files: Perry Barlow 1932 - 1961."

Attempted Bloggery seeks images of original art by Robert Day as well as other scans of long-forgotten published rarities like the one shown here.

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Friday, February 22, 2019

Peter Arno: A Suspended Search

Back in the 1980s, if you were shopping for original Charles Addams New Yorker cartoons, you could expect much of his work to fall into a standard price range. If you wanted an Addams Family drawing, though, you would have to pay a steep premium. If you were willing to take a cartoon about a tribe of African cannibals drawn in questionable taste, you could get a real discount.

Next week the British auction market will test the salability of an original work by Peter Arno published in The New Yorker in the summer of 1941. The drawing includes a pair of shockingly insensitive caricatures of African natives. Arno is one of the best cartoonists ever, but the conventions of racial caricature that were deemed acceptable, apparently, in the 1940s are quite rightly anathema today. Arno himself had no qualms about collecting this cartoon as late as 1957 in The Penguin Peter Arno.

Bidding for the framed original art starts at 480 GBP ($625) with a presale auction estimate of 600-800 GBP ($780-$1045). Will such an image find a buyer today?

Peter Arno
"Pardon me. Have you seen any condor eggs?"
Framed original art
The New Yorker, July 26, 1941, page 17
Peter Arno's Man in the Shower, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944
The Penguin Peter Arno, 1957

The caption written on the matte in calligraphy

Peter Arno's signature

Langton Gallery exhibition label

Back of frame with Langton Gallery label

Peter Arno
"Pardon me. Have you seen any condor eggs?"
Original art
The New Yorker, July 26, 1941, page 17
Peter Arno's Man in the Shower, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944
The Penguin Peter Arno, 1957

Peter Arno
John Nicholsons Fine Art Auctioneer & Valuer
February 27, 2019, Haslemere, UK
Lot 137

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/-1-c-50E438E8D8?utm_source=inv_kwalert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=keywordalertlive&utm_term=2

Peter Arno
"Pardon me. Have you seen any condor eggs?"
Framed original art
The New Yorker, July 26, 1941, page 17
Peter Arno's Man in the Shower, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944
The Penguin Peter Arno, 1957