The Pretty Work of Mary Petty

    

   The New Yorker has been celebrating its centenary year for most of this year and the single issue for Sept. 1&8 comes with two covers. Inside there is a short piece about Mary Petty who "contributed a series of thirty-eight vividly colored, magnificently detailed, and flawlessly composed covers, which, at least in this New Yorker cover artist's opinion, have never been surpassed in their complexity, their richness, and, most of all, their humanity." The author adds, "they're brilliant watercolors of exquisite construction, set pieces with the charm and detail of a doll's house." Petty also published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker.
   The author of the article about Perry and the covers she produced notes in the first sentence that "In the pantheon of New Yorker artists, the name Mary Petty hardly registers." Given that she is relatively unknown and given the beauty of her work (which should not be judged by my poor photo above), I thought it worth calling your attention to her.
   During almost 40 years as a contributor to the magazine, she produced 273 drawings and 38 pen-and-watercolor covers. A collection of her drawings is found in This Pretty Pace which, a reviewer notes, we should all have a look at if we are interested in "sheer perfection." The book also includes an essay by James Thurber, "Mary Petty and Her Drawings" and on the dust jacket, she is compared to Hogarth and Daumier. Harold Ross, The New Yorker publisher gave her cartoons his highest rating of "AAA" one "A" more than the cartoons of Thurber.
   Apart from producing covers and cartoons, she also provided illustrations for books by others. Her last cover for The New Yorker was on Mother's Day, May 19,1966. It is the one on the bottom right above and if the image was better you would see an older woman in an elegant room pulling a cord which breaks. 
   Apparently Petty quit abruptly when two of her cover submissions were rejected. She had lived a rather reclusive life with her husband, Alan Dunn, who also was a New Yorker cartoonist. It ended tragically. 
   "In early December, 1971 she disappeared, and was found by Dunn in a hospital, having been badly beaten in a violent assault. Permanently brain-damaged, she lived the remainder of her life in a nursing home, dying five years after the attack, alone." 

Sources: 
   I can assure you that a search for her art work is worth the effort. The article referred to above is: "The Mysterious Cover Artist Who Captured the Decline of the Rich: Mary Petty was Reclusive, Uncompromising, but She Peered into a Fading World With Unmatched Warmth and Brilliance, Chris Ware, The New Yorker, Aug. 25, 2025.
  The Wikipedia entry is helpful as usual. In it there is mention of the fact that she was assaulted, but I did not find any evidence of it in the New York papers. The American National Biography entry does provide additional information: 
  "Petty's career was tragically cut short when on 1 December 1971 she was assaulted and badly beaten by a mugger. She was found on Ward's Island three days afterward, bruised and incoherent, and never wholly recovered. She died five years later at the Pine Rest Nursing Home in Paramus, New Jersey."
  The book review of This Pretty Pace is here: "The Art of Mary Petty", Russell Maloney, NYT, Nov. 11, 1945. Her obituary: "Mary Petty, Cartoonist, Dead; Chided Wealthy in New Yorker," Barbara Campbell, NYT, Mar. 11, 1976,
   A major source is found at Syracuse University. See: "The Alan Dunn and Mary Petty Papers", which provides additional biographical information. 

CANCON: 
 For New Yorker covers by a Canadian see: "Bruce McCall RIP-1935-2023".
 Another Canadian, Barry Blitt, has done some, and here you will find a couple that depict two recent American presidents: "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words." 

A Tribute to Telnaes

    [Before I move back to the past, where I belong and where we all now wish to be, excuse me again for writing about the present and the THING many of us wish to avoid. But, as newspapers cease publishing and good journalists disappear to subterranean places like Substack, it is worth taking some time to tell you about Telnaes who now resides there.]

Democracy Dies in Darkness and Irony

   The Washington Post just won a couple of Pulitzers. Credit for one of them should go to Ann Telnaes who is no longer with The Post. She also won a Pulitzer in 2001 for editorial cartooning and this one is for "Illustrated Reporting and Commentary." The Pulitzer people say it was "For delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity – and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years."
   While The Post still gets the credit for the Pulitzer which is based on her work, it should be noted that she felt it necessary to leave that paper after another of her editorial cartoons was 'spiked.' It "showed a group of media executives bowing before then President-elect Donald Trump while offering him bags of money, including Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos." She has indicated that it was not published because of what it portrayed. Her editor, David Shipley, said that it was not published because it was somewhat redundant, in that there had already been too many illustrating similar themes. Redundancy in Washington is hard to avoid these days.
   Mr. Shipley himself later resigned after Mr. Bezos indicated that subjects in the "Opinion Section" needed to be restricted in favour of those emphasizing free markets and personal liberties.
   Ruth Marcus left after "she said the newspaper’s management decided not to run her commentary critical of Bezos’ policy." Others left after Mr. Bezos would not allow the Post  to endorse Kamala Harris. Perhaps the Post's slogan, "Democracy Dies in Darkness" needs to be re-evaluated by the marketing folks at that publication. 
   I have kept my subscription because the Washington Post still produces good pieces and writers like Ron Charles need to be supported.
 
   So do the people who have left. The work of Ann Telnaes, along with an archive of her cartoons is found at "Open Windows"(https://anntelnaes.com/") which offers  "A view into an uncertain time of isolation and frustrations, but also one of the resiliency of the human spirit."
   Among the writings on her Substack one finds an article which illustrates that cartoons are important and that one can be even more severely punished for publishing them. Remember Charlie Hebdo? She published a story about that atrocity in the Washington Post and she deserves the credit for it, not the Post. Here is a portion from, "Charlie Hebdo, One Year Later," Jan. 7, 2016:

  "One year ago today two masked gunman entered the Paris offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and gunned down twelve people, including five cartoonists. The murderers claimed they were avenging the prophet Muhammed and by the end of two days of terror, five more people were dead.
   In the days immediately after the attack I did hold on to one hope. Surely now that people had been brutally murdered the world would finally and unequivocally support the universal right to freedom of expression, including cartoonists. But it didn’t happen. Support and solidarity quickly turned to questioning the motives of the attacked cartoonists....
   So attacks continued on cartoonists and bloggers who dare to criticize governments, challenge institutions and traditional thinking. It seems like the quantified support for Charlie Hebdo has only allowed for repressive governments and humorless dictators to establish their own list of offensive images, mainly any criticism which ridicules them and threatens their power....
   The only protection these brave cartoonists have is for the world to speak loudly for their right to freely express themselves....
   Banning offensive images either officially or through intimidation will only end up allowing intolerant individuals and institutions to change drawing a red line for cartoonists into drawing an enclosure for them."

   That the cartoonists were criticized more than the killers was surprising as I noted in this post: The Delicate Subject of Cartoons.

Sources: 
  The Post can be given a little credit for reporting this story about a journalist who chose to leave the paper after being censored. See: 
" Ann Telnaes, Who Quit Washington Post in Protest, Wins Pulitzer for 'fearlessness' in Commentary: A longtime editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post who quit in protest after editors killed her sketch of the newspaper’s owner and other media executives bowing before President Donald Trump, has won the Pulitzer Prize for illustrated reporting and commentary," Lisa Baumann, May 5, 2025. 
  "A longtime editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post who quit in protest early this year after editors killed her sketch criticizing the Post owner and other media chief executives working to curry favor with Trump has won the Pulitzer Prize for illustrated reporting and commentary."

Welcome to 2023

1907 - Some Things Don't Change

Patient: "I can't afford it Doc. I'll simply have to wait until prices come down."

Clearly there were also health care and inflationary concerns back near the beginning of the last century. (London Free Press, Oct. 31, 1907.)

1923 - Some Things Do Change

This advertisement is from the LFP 100 years ago. Clothes are not much of a concern these days. The pandemic didn't help and a large segment of the population now shows up in public in pajamas. Fifty years after this ad., fellows were still wearing suits and fedoras to a ball game.

Now people in airports look like they just came from a garage sale and I gather that even in churches, parishioners arrive in sweat pants and tee shirts. 

   We can do better than this. Perhaps in 2023 we can at least tuck in our shirts and strive to conceal that thong. 

The Bonus:

   Apparently these sartorial issues are not just of concern for those of us in the colonies.

"Very recently a kind friend from New York asked us to dinner at Claridge’s. It has been magnificently enlarged and redecorated, but not, thank God, ‘re-imagined’. The dining room, however, came as a shock. Who were these people, sulky of visage, lounging at tables in tracksuits and T-shirts? The service was impeccable, but my fellow diners looked like they were on their way back from the gym. Later, ruthlessly going through my wardrobe, I came upon a grubby T-shirt and a pair of torn denim shorts. As I flung them into the rubbish box, I had second thoughts. ‘Hang on Barry!’ a voice said. ‘Don’t chuck those away. Someone might invite you to Claridge’s.’"

Source: 
"Why Does No One Dress For Dinner at Claridge's Any More?" Barry Humphries, The Spectator, Dec. 17, 2022. 

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

    

   Enough words have been expended on this subject. The image is on the cover of The New Yorker, Jan. 25, 2021. It was done by Barry Blitt. who was born in Côte Saint-Luc, Quebec  and went to the Ontario College of Art. 

   The title is, appropriately enough, A Weight Lifted. 

The Bonus:

   Blitt has done many covers for The New Yorker, but none as controversial as this one which resulted in many harsh emails, such as: "I hope your wife gets ovarian cancer."

Source:
  The email to Blitt is found in this article: "Deconstructing Barry: Inside the Mind of Illustrator Barry Blitt: How He Created That Controversial New Yorker Cover, The Reaction It Provoked and What He Thinks About His Obama Fist-bump Now," Ashley Walters, Ryerson Review of Journalism, Summer, 2009. 

For an earlier post about Blitt see: Canadian Cartoonists.

The Delicate Subject of Cartoons

  

   A distinction should be made between the act of drawing a cartoon and the beheading of a person. Many seem to think that the decapitators are better citizens than the cartoonists. I tend to side with the cartoonists and the silent minority on this issue. I can’t imagine a cartoon as bad as a beheading. Although I strive to avoid current events, at least this post does not again mention still-President Trump. It does involve our Prime Minister.

   The issue concerns the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. Five years ago, twelve staff members at the publication were killed because they published cartoons of Muhammad. The killers are now going on trial, so the magazine decided to re-publish the images. A teacher chose to show the cartoons and discuss the issue of ‘freedom of the press” with his class. He was beheaded for doing so. I suppose the majority wonder how stupid the cartoonists and the teacher could be, while I think the beheaders deserve more criticism.

   President Macron apparently felt the same way and when he sought support, none was forthcoming from our Prime Minister. Trudeau had second thoughts, and just a few days ago the Leader of the Opposition had a few of his own, here are some of them:

“Regrettably, in the wake of the recent Islamist attacks in France, killings committed as acts of revenge for our freedoms, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted he did not believe in free speech if it could be used to offend someone. To be frank, these words are unworthy of a Canadian prime minister. They once again show Trudeau bowing to ideological Twitter mobs rather than standing up for a founding principle of our country.

Let’s be clear: no dogma, whether political or religious, is immune from criticism. As my colleague Gerard Deltell put it so well in the House of Commons, “Freedom of expression does not exist only when it suits us … It must exist especially when it does not suit our business.” And I will go further: tolerance, which truly defines our country, should not be a one-way street.”

   It does definitely seem like we are on a one-way street. If you are heading the wrong way, you are labelled  an 'Islamophobe' and criticism of Islamists can be classified as a hate crime or deemed 'blasphemous'. If you are among the politically correct and heading in the right direction you perhaps secretly admire those who are really good at cancelling culture, or at least the Western version of it.

   A few brave people spoke up about the issue of freedom of speech, but fewer still were willing to go much beyond that. I fear a fatwa myself for this rather mild critique, but will take the slight risk and go a step further and present a few jokes - but, certainly no images. The jokes are not mine, but I will give no source since the author of them may wish to avoid the fate of Salman Rushdie.

   These jokes were offered after the writer of them noticed that a major American newspaper was providing advice for the increasingly Muslim audience of readers, Here they are, but there are no pictures:

“Which way is Mecca? Ten Timely Tips for Budget Hajj Travel”

“Modern Romance: How Many Wives is Too Many?”

“Healthy New York: Maintaining Vitamin D Sufficiency Under the Burka”

“Food: Top 100 Kebob Houses in Lower Manhattan”

“Sunday Styles: Goat Tending for City Dwellers”

“Five Times A Day: Suing Employers Who Don’t Provide Prayer Rugs”

“Best of New York: Local’s Guide to Men-Only Tea Houses”

“Know Your Tenant’s Rights: Halal Animal Slaughter on the Balcony”

“Summer in the City: Cool Lightweight Burkas that Beat the Heat”

“Taxing Matters: Time for a Municipally Collected Jizya?”

“Healthy New York: Female Genital Mutilation Without Tears”

“CityScape: The 100 Most Beautiful Mosques on the Upper East Side”

“Modern Romance: How Young Is Too Young for Child Marriage? 14? 12?”

“Mosque and State: Time to Rethink the Founding Fathers?”

“The Feminist Muslim’s Guide to Politically Correct Wife Discipline”

   Some of the advice offered involves women and I was reminded of a curious incident that took place in Massachusetts. It concerned signs that were posted around the town of Winchester. The signs were plain and rather innocuous, but still perplexing as this headline indicates: "'Islam Is Right About Women': Odd Signs Spark Confusion in Local Town," Boston 25 News, Sept. 18, 2019. Was the sign poster being sarcastic? Is Islam right about women? Or Wrong? Here is the clever sign that is likely just a bit of troll bait.

Sources:

"Freedom of Expression a Founding Principle of Canada,"Erin O'Toole, Toronto Sun, Nov. 13, 2020.

See also: "Trudeau Shamed Into Supporting France, Freedom of Expression," Brian Lilley, Toronto Sun, Nov. 6, 2020.  These quotations are from this article:

"It’s a sad statement when leaders from around the world stand with France but Canada doesn’t.

The central question is whether it is ever acceptable to insult religious figures, specifically by showing images of Mohammed.

Islam forbids showing images of Mohammed, but I’m not a Muslim and shouldn’t have to live by that rule any more than their rule against eating bacon.

What he should have said is that while he may find the cartoons of Mohammed offensive and understands why Muslims do, it is a fundamental freedom to show them, publish them or discuss them."

Post Script:

I am too cowardly to use the image of you-know-who and hope the cartoon of Erdogan is not overly offensive. I am not the only coward. In 2009, Yale University Press published THE CARTOONS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, by Jytte Klausen. Oddly enough, there is not one cartoon in it.

If you are interested in the debate over this issue, go back to the spring of 2005. At that time PEN awarded Charlie Hebdo a freedom of speech award. You will think that PEN members would be automatically in favour of presenting such an honour, but the event was boycotted by some. Of course Salman Rushdie, a former PEN president agreed since he had to go into hiding for several years, after the publication of Satanic Verses. Canadian author Michael Ondaatje, among others, protested.

PERIODICAL RAMBLINGS (3)

The VILLAGE VOICE

    I am not sure if I would have included this publication among my ramblings, but I will take time on this fine late summer morning to let you know that the print version of The Village Voice will soon cease to exist. Those of you who lean to the right and those with relatively ‘normal’ sexual proclivities are likely not to care much. It did certainly tend to tilt left and the back pages were filled with advertisements for various sexual services and devices that most found to be rather mysterious.

    Still, it was a major publication that published established and well-known authors. One of the founders was Norman Mailer. It was hardly parochial and covered subjects of interest to those who lived outside of Greenwich. One of its owners was Rupert Murdoch. It received some Pulitzers. If you don’t believe me, consider this:

    “The Village Voice was founded in 1955. It is one of the most successful enterprises in the history of American journalism. It began as a neighborhood paper serving an area about a tenth the size of the Left Bank, in Paris, and it became, within ten years, a nationally known brand and the inspiration for a dozen other local papers across the country. By 1967, it was the best-selling weekly newspaper in the United States, with a single-day circulation higher than the circulations of ninety-five per cent of American big-city dailies. It survived the deaths of four other New York City newspapers and most of its imitators, and it has had a longer life than the weekly Life. But, in books about the modern press, it is given a smaller role than it deserves.”   “It Took a Village: How the Voice Changed Journalism,” Louis Menand, The New Yorker, Jan. 5, 2009.

     Although the website remains it is unfortunate that the print version will disappear. I think the passing of such publications deserves at least a passing mention.  I am heading to Vancouver soon and I will let you know if the Georgia Straight is still around. It was last year and, like The Village Voice, it still had ‘those’ ads.

Post Script

    The “death” of the print version of The Village Voice was announced in August 2017. See, for example:

“After 62 Years and Many Battles, Village Voice Will End Print Publication, John Leland and Sara Maslin Nir, The New York Times, Aug. 22, 2017

“GENERATIONS OF VILLAGE VOICE WRITERS REFLECT ON THE PAPER LEAVING THE HONOR BOXES:THE END OF AN ERA. Luke O’Neil, Esquire, Aug. 23, 2017.

“10 EX–VILLAGE VOICE STAFFERS SHARE WHAT THEY LEARNED—AND WHY THE PAPER MATTERED,” Zach Schonfeld, et al, Newsweek, Aug. 25, 2017.

    Here is the website for The Village Voice. I could not determine how far back the archive goes, but I did some searches and found articles from over a decade ago.

   The London Public Library did not get it, but Western University did, although the subscription was cancelled. It is available in the Weldon Library on microform for the years 1996-2015. Those associated with Western can access some years via various electronic vendors.

All is not lost. One can read a couple of compilations:

The Village Voice Anthology (1956-1980) : Twenty-five years of Writing From the Village Voice, edited by Geoffrey Stokes.

The Village Voice Reader : a Mixed Bag From the Greenwich Village Newspaper, Daniel Wolf.

Music Downtown : Writings From The Village Voice, Kyle Gann.

For two books about The Village Voice see:

The Great American Newspaper : The Rise And Fall Of The Village Voice,  Kevin Michael McAuliffe.

Writing The Record : The Village Voice And The Birth Of Rock Criticism, Devon Powers.

For over forty years The Village Voice was also the place one could find the cartoons of Jules Feiffer who won a Pulitzer in 1986.