Monday, July 23, 2018

Charles Addams: Wide-eyed and surprised

Cartoonists like to pull a switch, present a situation where the reader's expectations are met with something off-the-wall or different enough to evoke a laugh. Charles Addams was a master of the switch, or what can be called wide-eyed and surprised, when the onlookers in the cartoon see something startling.

These 19 drawings are taken from the online New Yorker archive, and were originally published in the early 1950s. All are shown here as examples.

Go back to the previous posting to see more Addams.


















Friday, July 06, 2018

Chas Addams: Variation on a theme

Sheer pleasure for me is going through old issues of The New Yorker, looking at the cartoons. (The New Yorker editors prefer the word “drawings” over cartoons.) Their archive makes it possible. These I am showing you are from their archive, and I do not own any copyrights. I am showing you for the sole purpose of educating anyone who will listen of the greatness of The New Yorker, especially when it came to talent like Charles Addams.

What I have noticed in going through his career is that Addams used variations on themes. I am showing today drawings made with little people. And when I say little I mean really little.

Addams was a tall man; some have estimated about 6’4”. He could have looked down on his fellow mortals and seen some of them as minuscule. But I am just guessing. Whatever his reason, tiny people figured into a theme he went back to many times.