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Archive for the ‘caricature’ Category

Wednesday, January 15th, 2025

Magazine Cartoons: Jack Davis (1924-2016)

Jack Davis was a cartoonist from a very early age. His first published work appeared in Tip Top Comics in 1936. He was twelve years old at the time. In 1949, he packed up and moved from Atlanta to New York City, where he was hired by EC Comics to draw for The Vault of Horror and Two-Fisted Tales. At EC, Davis met Harvey Kurtzman, who liked his work and used him in Mad magazine. Kurtzman and Davis also worked together on Little Annie Fanny in Playboy.

Davis went on to become one of the most sought-after illustrators and caricaturists in America. His caricatures of public figures appeared on the covers of Time magazine and TV Guide, as well as record covers, movie posters and bubble gum cards. Davis is currently one of the best-known and recognizable cartoonists in the world.

Here is an early Davis story from Mad magazine that shows his immense talents at their absolute best. Every panel of this comic is drop-dead brilliant!

KANE KEEN
Mad Magazine 1953

Many thanks to the talented cartoonist, Amir Avni for contributing the copy of "Son of Mad" from which this great story was scanned. Also thanks to the stalwart archive supporter Eric Graf for lending us record covers from his extensive collection to digitize.

Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources

This posting is part of the online Encyclopedia of Cartooning under the subject heading, Magazine Cartoons.

Jack Davis: Drawing American Pop Culture: A Career Retrospective is a gigantic career-spanning retrospective, between whose hard covers resides the greatest collection— in terms of both quantity and quality— of Jack Davis’ work ever assembled! It includes work from every stage of his long and varied career. Much of the material has been scanned directly from original art, showing the painterly brush strokes and pen work. Many illustrations are accompanied by preliminary drawings that demonstrate the evolution of Davis’ drawing process. Recommended!

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Posted in caricature, illustration, jack davis, mad, magazine | Comments Off on Magazine Cartoons: Jack Davis (1924-2016)

Sunday, January 21st, 2024

Caricature: George Grosz- The Hanging Judge of Art

My Drawings expressed my despair, hate and disillusionment, I drew drunkards; puking men; men with clenched fists cursing at the moon. . . . I drew a man, face filled with fright, washing blood from his hands. . . I drew lonely little men fleeing madly through empty streets. I drew a cross-section of tenement house: through one window could be seen a man attacking his wife; through another, two people making love; from a third hung a suicide with body covered by swarming flies. I drew soldiers without noses; war cripples with crustacean-like steel arms; two medical soldiers putting a violent infantryman into a strait-jacket made of a horse blanket. . . I drew a skeleton dressed as a recruit being examined for military duty. I also wrote poetry. -Grosz

During the first decades of the 20th Century in Europe, the dividing lines between commercial art and fine art did not exist. Easel painters would doodle caricatures in the street and submit political cartoons to satirical magazines like Le Rire in France and Jugend in Germany. All of these various genres of art fell under the domain of the “artist” and no genre was seen as superior to any other.

One of the most gifted artists to come out of Weimar era Germany was George Grosz. Grosz drew cartoons and caricatures for “Simplicissimus”, as well as earning acclaim for his expressionist paintings. Caricature was part and parcel of his style, no matter what genre he worked in.

In Grosz’s Germany, everything and everybody is for sale. All human transactions, except for the class solidarity of the workers, are poisoned. The world is owned by four breeds of pig: the capitalist, the officer, the priest and the hooker, whose other form is the sociable wife. He was one of the hanging judges of art. -Robert Hughes

The war was a mirror; it reflected man’s every virtue and every vice, and if you looked closely, like an artist at his drawings, it showed up both with unusual clarity. -Grosz

DRAWINGS

The best book on the work of George Grosz currently available is George Grosz: Berlin-New York. You can order it from Amazon. There are many, many fantastic drawings and paintings in this book.

Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources

Posted in caricature, fine art, george grosz, Inbetweens | Comments Off on Caricature: George Grosz- The Hanging Judge of Art

Monday, July 31st, 2023

Editorial Cartoons: Arthur Szyk The New Order

Arthur Szyk was born in Poland and began painting at the age of four. He studied art in Paris until the outbreak of World War I, when he travelled East to study Mohammedan art. In 1914, he joined the Russian army, and later served as an officer in a guerrilla regiment in the Polish army. He married in 1921 and moved back to Paris, where he lived and painted until 1931. Szyk received many important commissions during this time… He illuminated the Covenant of the League of Nations, painted a series of miniatures dealing with the American Revolution that hangs in the White House, and spent three years working on an illumination of the Haggadah, the story of the Jews’ flight from Egypt which was dedicated to the King of England.

In 1940, Szyk relocated to Canada, eventually settling in New York City in 1941. Szyk’s political cartoons, which were published in the newspaper PM, were described by art critic, Thomas Craven as being “as compact as a bomb, extraordinarily lucid in statement, firm and incisive of line, and deadly in their characterizations.” The illustrations we scanned today are from a collection of Szyk’s political cartoons called “The New Order”..

Caricature is the foundation of cartooning. It involves the exaggeration of features to highlight and focus personality traits. Szyk was a master of caricature. His ability to clearly express the arrogance, irony and evil behind the trumped up facade of civilized behavior spoke louder than words. “The New Order” is a rare book. It was ahead of its time when it was published in 1941, before the United States entered the Second World War. Animation Resources was fortunate to locate a clean copy to digitize.