The New Yorker & Me: Where Have All the Great "New Yorker" Illustrators Gone?

Introduction

What is The New Yorker? I know it’s a great magazine and that it’s a tremendous source of pleasure in my life. But what exactly is it? This blog’s premise is that The New Yorker is a work of art, as worthy of comment and analysis as, say, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Each week I review one or more aspects of the magazine’s latest issue. I suppose it’s possible to describe and analyze an entire issue, but I prefer to keep my reviews brief, and so I usually focus on just one or two pieces, to explore in each the signature style of its author. A piece by Nick Paumgarten is not like a piece by Jill Lepore, and neither is like a piece by Ian Frazier. One could not mistake Collins for Seabrook, or Bilger for Goldfield, or Mogelson for Kolbert. Each has found a style, and it is that style that I respond to as I read, and want to understand and describe.

Monday, May 20, 2019

Where Have All the Great "New Yorker" Illustrators Gone?

Riccardo Vecchio, "Bill Knott" (2017)

It pains me to say this, but New Yorker illustration isn’t as consistently interesting as it used to be. I miss the brilliant work of Luis Grañena, Robert Risko, André Carrilho, Edward Sorel, Ralph Steadman, Jorge Arevalo, Riccardo Vecchio, Marcellus Hall, David Hughes, Gerald Scarfe, Laurie Rosenwald, Edwin Fotheringham, Conor Langton, Marc Aspinall, Kirsten Ulve, among others.

Remember this great Ralph Steadman?

It’s from James Wood’s “A Fine Rage” (The New Yorker, April 6, 2009), a critical essay on George Orwell.

Remember Edward Sorel’s wonderful flying, letter-shedding, double portrait of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop for Dan Chiasson’s “Works on Paper” (The New Yorker, October 27, 2008)?

Here’s a beauty by Luis Grañena, from Anthony Lane’s “Command Performances” (The New Yorker, November 21, 2010), a review of Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech.

Remember the superb David Hughes portrait of Les Murray in Dan Chiasson’s “Fire Down Below” (The New Yorker, June 4, 2007)?

And who could forget the marvelous André Carrilho portrait of Lady Gaga and Beyoncé that appeared in “Goings On About Town,” June 27, 2011)?

And how about Conor Langton’s eye-catching, fractured-faced, multi-hued seance for David Denby’s “Under the Spell” (The New Yorker, July 20, 2014), a review of Woody Allen’s Magic in the Moonlight)?

I could go on and on – so many inspired images to pick from. But in the last few years the overall quality has slipped. There are still pearls to be found [e.g., Riccardo Vecchio’s “Bill Knott” (2017); Andrea Ventura’s “Jenny Erpenbeck” (2017); this year’s Bendik Kaltenborn portrait of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen], but not as abundantly as before.