Tag: cartoons

My History Of The New Yorker Cartoon Class

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I am passionate for learning about history through looking at drawings, specifically the drawings from The New Yorker magazine.

Drawing by Barbara Shermund

I am teaching a virtual course on the history of The New Yorker Cartoon through the NY organization, 92NY. Here is a link to the course if you want to sign up! It starts March 16th and goes four consecutive Thursday evenings. Would love to see you there, and please spread the word.

Since it’s Women’s History Month, I thought I would share a few from women artists of the past. Through these drawings, sometimes one can see that things have changed; in many ways they have not. These artists chronicled their worlds with humor and drawing. Humor can reflect the zeitgeist of a time, and while sometimes we don’t “get” the reference, there are many that resonate 70 years later. It’s fascinating.

In my class, I will share New Yorker cartoons and talk about many different artists, both the men and women, as well as the few Black creators from the past (there was one that we know of before recent times, in the 1930’s, E. Simms Campbell). I talk about their work, their lives, the editors, and everything in between that I have learned. I taught this course last year in two sessions, and this year the 92NY agreed to extend it to four sessions, so I can take my time showing you things, and we can have questions after each class. We will discuss works up to present-day artists.

Enjoy!

 

 
Drawing by Helen Hokinson

 

 
Drawing by Helen Hokinson

 

 
Drawing by Alice Harvey
 
 
Drawing by Roberta MacDonald
 
Drawing by Mary Petty
 

Solo Exhibition!

It is a thrill to have my first retrospective at the Norman Rockwell Museum. The opening was July 10th and the show ran until September 27, 2020. You can see much of the exhibit on the Norman Rockwell site, as well as videos of me talking about my work. It is a wonderful museum dedicated to illustration and art for social justice. Rockwell was passionate that his paintings speak about important cultural and political issues, and I am honored to have my drawings beside his.

As part of the exhibit, I was invited to draw in Rockwell’s studio; I was the first artist to do so since his death in 1978. My reflections on Rockwell and the experience of working in his studio were published in The Washington Post: “In a sacred space: How New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly came to work in Norman Rockwell’s studio”

Below are three videos the museum made: one about my work in general, one is a capture of me painting a mural at the museum, and the other about my passion for live drawing on my iPad.

 

 

“Donnelly, a cartoonist and children’s book author, has been making wry, powerful cartoons for The New Yorker for more than 30 years. Don’t let the show’s name fool you: Charged with political awareness from feminism to Black Lives Matter, Donnelly’s career is a master class in using humor to heighten and amplify a dead-serious point of view.” -Murray Whyte, The Boston Globe.

Photo credit: Eric Korenman

BBC Profile

Recently, I had the pleasure to be profiled and interviewed by the BBC. Journalist and filmaker, Harriet Constable, came to my studio in the country and spent the day with me. She also was with me when I conducted a panel discussion about women cartoonists at the Society of Illustrators in New York, which was held on the night of the opening of the exhibit that I curated there about women who draw and have drawn cartoons for The New Yorker. The exhibit is called “Funny Ladies At The New Yorker, Then and Now” and runs until Oct 13th. The show is based on my history, “Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons” 
Here is the BBC profile:
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180817-the-female-cartoonists-who-draw-for-change

Packed House For Cartoonists Who Are Women in NYC!

Photo by Michael Maslin
Who knew that an exhibition about women cartoonists from The New Yorker would draw a huge, standing-room only, out-the-door-and-around-the-block crowd ?  When the room downstairs was full, they sent people to the second and third floors (where the bar was) and to the lower level (where the food was).  The evening was the opening event, and included a lively–at times hysterical– panel discussion with cartoonists Roz Chast, Liana Finck, Carolita Johnson, and New Yorker cartoon editor Emma Allen.  It was so much fun!  I selected and moderated the panel, and each participant was so funny and told stories and shared what the life of a cartoonist was like. Then we showed cartoons that are particularly feminist in tone, and talked about those. 
I curated the Funny Ladies At The New Yorker, Then and Now exhibition to include original art from 1925 through 2018. It is based in part on my book, Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons,a history of the women who drew for The New Yorker from the very first issue of the magazine in 1925. But the motivation for the show was also to celebrate that on Dec 4, 2017,  for the first time in its history,  the magazine published the first issue ever that included more women drawing cartoons than men. 
The show runs until Oct 13. There will be another panel event on Oct 11th!  It’s at the Society of Illustrators, 128 East 63rd, NYC. It’s a wonderful three story townhouse museum dedicated to art and illustration!  They have a restaurant bar on the third floor, check it out.
The Society of Illustrators, photo credit Steffen Kaplin, @Spinitsocial
Outside the Society of Illustrators. Photo credit Steffen Kaplin, @Spinitsocial

 

The panelists. Standing: Carolita Johnson, Emma Allen, Roz Chast; seated, Liana Finck, Liza Donnelly. Photo by Stephen Nadler.
Some of the cartoonists whose work is in the exhbition. Sharon Levy, Roz Chast, Liza Donnelly, Carolita Johnson, Liana Finck, Emily Sanders Hopkins (nee Richards), Sophia Warren, Mary Lawton, and Maggie Larson. Photo by Michael Maslin

 

    (Above photos credit Steffen Kaplan,  @SpinItSocial)

And here are photos of the exhibition:

 

 

Photo credits: @SpinItSocial, @lizadonnelly

 

 

 

Solo Exhibit Of My Political Cartoons In India

I was honored to have an exhibition of my political cartoons in Bangalore, India at the India Institute of Cartoonists.
It makes me very happy that my work was able to travel, it can speak as well  (if not better) as I can in person. Seeing my cartoons about women’s rights  be shown in different countries, as well as my cartoons about politics and life in the United States means a great deal to me. 
India has a long, fascinating history of political cartoonists, and I have read some about it in Caricaturing Culture in India, by Ritu Gairola. It is fascinating to me to see how different cultures approach cartooning, and how different countries find humor in their lives. A vital art form that often is a risky profession, in many countries cartoonists are jailed for creating satire about their governments.  
Cartoons can cross borders–in important ways, and in difficult ways– when words cannot. We have seen with the Danish Cartoon Controversy in 2006, and then the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris in 2015 that cartoons can be misunderstood and the result can be deadly.  A firm believer in total freedom of speech, nevertheless I am finding it a complicated line to walk. It is a line that requires trying to understand how one’s work might affect others, while drawing about issues that are important to you and you feel need to be expressed. I wrote about this in The New York Times following the death of cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo publication in 2015,  here.
Many thanks to the organizer, V.G. Narendria, and his colleagues at the India Institute of Cartoonists for giving me the honor of having my work cross the border into India, a country I find fascinating. 
Interview with the New Indian Express
Interview in The Times Of India
Cartoonists and Amarnath Kamath
Mr. Girish Karnad, actor and writer