May 15, 2023 Issue

Reading this week’s issue, I was struck by something that Adam Gopnik says in his wonderful tribute to the great New Yorker illustrator Bruce McCall, who died May 5, 2023. Gopnik writes, “Many creative people of original gifts live at right angles to their talent, the difference between who they are and what they make being astounding, but no one was ever more right-angled—transcendent talent to human type—than Bruce.” I find this concept of the “right-angled” artist intriguing. It contradicts Buffon’s famous saying that the style is the man. Gopnik contrasts McCall’s outward “perfect Canadian” demeanour (“self-deprecating to almost hilarious degree,” “polite to an almost ferocious fault”) with his anarchic, elegant art, blending “a wild surrealist sensibility—founded on an impeccable illustrator’s technique, always manifesting visions, dreams, impossibilities in scrupulous hyper-realism—with a sharp, sometimes caustic tone, beautifully underlit by melancholia.” Note that “wild surrealist sensibility.” Right there, I think, is where McCall and his extraordinary art converge. The angle vanishes.