Attempted Bloggery: sexism

Showing posts with label sexism. Show all posts

Saturday, January 20, 2024

Barney Tobey: The Baseball Scout's Discovery

An original published cartoon by Barney Tobey from the 1940s was sold on eBay in October. Set in the business office of a baseball team, its humor reflects some broadly accepted sexist attitudes towards women at the time. The sale price for the artwork was a best offer somewhere below $324.99.

"One of our scouts discovered her sitting next to him in the stands one day."
Barney Tobey
Original cartoon art
IAC?, April 1940s

Caption

Barney Tobey's signature

Barney Tobey
eBay listing ended October 25, 2023

https://www.ebay.com/itm/154403168724?hash=item23f32561d4:g:JtEAAOSwdZJgVzcA

Barney Tobey
eBay item description

Note: I don't know what IAC stood for in the 1940s or where this drawing may have been published, but I'm willing to learn. Those in the know should enlighten me.

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Friday, June 30, 2023

Peter Arno: Romancing the Natives

On June 15, Swann Galleries sold two preliminary drawings by The New Yorker's Peter Arno. Neither is signed, but both are unmistakably the master's work. Swann's listing states, "He probably submitted them to the editors as initial ideas for cartoons, but apparently never followed through on them." Except that he did follow through, at least on one of them.

Arno's first sketch in the listing has an oval border and depicts a fully dressed white man in the embrace of two young Polynesian women wearing only grass skirts and flowers in their hair. They are reclining very publicly in an elevated hut, his pith helmet resting on the floor in front of the young women. Their arms are wrapped around him affectionately. A group of native men observe the scene in consternation. One, mostly out of the frame, is pointing out the objectionable behavior.

This sketch has no caption but was apparently meant to find humor in the jealousy of the men. The idea evolved, perhaps with editorial assistance, and went in a somewhat different direction when it was published in 1938 in The New Yorker. The man is now addressed by one of his fellow explorers with, "But, Professor, remember the thousands of little school children who gave their pennies to send us on this expedition." Visually, Arno's instincts did not serve him well here. He abandoned the depiction of tenderness that made the preliminary sketch so memorable and further objectified the women, who are now African and fully naked except for their neck rings.

"But, Professor, remember the thousands of little school children
who gave their pennies to send us on this expedition."
Peter Arno
The New Yorker, October 8, 1938, p. 16

This sort of gag cartoon was a popular trope which today strikes us as sexist and racist, but was widely accepted in American print media in the 1930s. The drawing was collected in 1945 in The Peter Arno Pocket Book without an apparent second thought.

"But, Professor, remember the thousands of little school
children who gave their pennies to
send us on this expedition."
Peter Arno
The Peter Arno Pocket Book (1945)

https://flashbak.com/18-great-cartoons-peter-arno-pocket-book-1945-61156/

The second Arno rough shows three performers backstage at a vaudeville or variety show peeking through the curtains, probably with varying degrees of anxiety, at a laughing audience. It might have been a study for a New Yorker spot, or a cover, or perhaps a cartoon. It does not have, or seem to require, a caption. Arno may or may not have worked this idea up further.

Both drawings together had a presale estimate of $600 to $900. They sold for a hammer price of $500, or for $625 with the buyer's premium.

Peter Arno
Swann Galleries, June 15, 2023

https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/Lots/auction-lot/ARNO-PETER-(1904-1968)-Two-cartoons?saleno=2641&lotNo=236&refNo=807209

Incidentally, on the page opposite Arno's cartoon in The New Yorker is an outstanding short piece, "The Letters of James Thurber." You can read it in its entirety right here and, no doubt, guess the identity of the author who here goes by Anon.

A cartoon by Peter Arno and "The Letters of James Thurber" by "Anon"

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1938-10-08/flipbook/016/

July 12, 2024 Update: Peter Arno's original art has come to light.

"But, Professor, remember the thousands of children who gave their pennies to send us on this expedition."
Peter Arno
Original art
The New Yorker, October 8, 1938, p. 16

The typed caption is affixed to the art.

Note: Unpublished work by Peter Arno isn't so easy to come by but for anyone who does, you're looking at a blog that can publicize it.

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Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Edward Koren: The Breadwinner Comes Home

Contributor David from Manhattan writes about an original 1970 New Yorker cartoon by the one and only Edward Koren:

This captionless drawing, fairly large at 17 ¼ x 23" (inside the matte) and framed, turned up at an Aston, PA Modern Design Auction by Uniques & Antiques on Dec. 12, 2017, estimated at $200-300, and where it sold for $175. The buyer must have been passing through Aston as the item was on eBay only a few days later and sold on Dec. 19th to me for $414.02 including shipping. On Dec. 28 it was in hand from Minnesota, via USPS. For the holiday season, that's pretty impressive. The hard part was sitting with it on the bus at 5:30 p.m. for an hour and a half. I haven't examined that many original Korens, so I wonder if all the collage work visible here is typical. I remember reading somewhere that a George Booth cartoon, as part of a traveling New Yorker exhibit, now and then shed a piece of art and had to be glued back. Despite the travel involved, and my own moves in deciding where it should hang, that hasn't happened. I've included some close ups of his "repair" work; the running dog (?) in two pieces seems the most extreme. Still, there's a lot going on here: children, parents, posters, furniture, and plenty of living room crapola. He could have started over, but he managed to keep his image of what it should look like alive in his head. Certainly the cartoon that appeared in the magazine on July 4, 1970 gives no hint of difficulties.

Edward Koren
Original art
The New Yorker, July 4, 1970, p. 35

By the way, the original auction description, after calling it "Comical Political Illustration," adds "Women's movement. Pen & ink illustration sketches in progress," the latter presumably a reference to Koren's collage work. Politically it has held up fairly well, and outlived the Playboy Clubs, though the image of bunny ears on the central poster may one day require some further information. For now though, Koren fans know where to find it: on the unnumbered pages of Do You Want to Talk About It? (1976).

David provides more of the eBay photos of the original art:

The eBay photos are clearer than the Pennsylvania Modern Design Auction by Uniques & Antiques:

Edward Koren's signature

Edward Koren
Uniques & Antiques auction of December 12, 2017

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/edward-koren-comical-political-illustration-wome-228-c-e3f478f9eb#

Edward Koren
Uniques & Antiques auction item description

Here's how the cartoon first appeared in The New Yorker alongside the original art:

Edward Koren
Original art
The New Yorker, July 4, 1970, p. 35

A spot drawing by Raymond Davidson and a cartoon by Edward Koren, one of two of his from the issue

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1970-07-04/flipbook/034/

Note: My thanks to David from Manhattan for this, his fifty-fourth contribution to Attempted Bloggery. Above, David inquires whether other art by Edward Koren has as many patches as this one. So I ask on his behalf, does anyone else have access to similarly patched Koren art for comparison?

Spot artist R. Davidson is better known as New Yorker cover artist Raymond Davidson. A signed, untrimmed proof of one of his covers has previously appeared on the blog here. Remember that one?

Raymond Davidson

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Sunday, February 6, 2022

Otto Soglow for Penn Maryland Whiskey

After Peter Arno's advertisement for Penn Maryland Whiskey's "Gentlemen Prefer Blends" campaign, cartoonist Otto Soglow had his own variation on the theme. Soglow's six-panel cartoon appeared as a full page ad in The New Yorker issue of April 20, 1935. It also was published in the old Life magazine for June 1935.

Penn Maryland Blended Whiskey
Otto Soglow
The New Yorker, April 20, 1935, page 67

The cartoon is blatantly racist, and sexist to boot. Today we are sensitive to the offensiveness and downright wrongness of such racial caricatures, but clearly this wasn't always the case. The subservient black man depicted here, whether slave or servant, is an example of the the sort of overtly racist cartoon that can be found at least through the 1950s in mainstream American media. Demeaning racial imagery was published apparently without objection from advertisers, editorial staff, and the reading public, but that doesn't excuse it. Rather, it demonstrates just how widespread the acceptance of such images was at the time, at least among white Americans.

Humorous verse by Gustave Lobrano and an advertisement by Otto Soglow

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1935-04-20/flipbook/066/

Note: Other than Peter Arno and Otto Soglow, I know of no other cartoonists contributing to the "Gentlemen Prefer Blends" ad campaign for Penn Maryland Whiskey, but I am eager to learn of any other artists I possibly may have missed. Also, if Soglow's ad was published anywhere in addition to The New Yorker and Life, I'd like to know about it.

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Friday, January 29, 2021

Thoughts of the Sportsman: Charles Addams and Lee Lorenz

An original Charles Addams bowling cartoon from 1962 was sold yesterday at Swann Auction Galleries in New York. The New Yorker drawing gives us an unusual insight into the thoughts of the bowler. Is the cartoon misogynistic? The humorously-depicted thought balloon might suggest that to many of us today. Overall, though, the cartoonist's oeuvre shows Addams to be more or less evenhanded in how he doles out fantasies of implied bodily harm between the sexes.

Just two years later, again in the pages of The New Yorker, another cartoonist, Lee Lorenz, addresses a very similar theme, this time on the golf course. We don't get to see the golfing man's thoughts here, but we do get to hear his wife's suspicion of what they might be. The New Yorker rough was also offered in the sale yesterday at Swann Galleries. It would have made a fine addition to just about any cartoon collection, but it went unsold.