Bruce McCall (1935–2023)

Softcover worth $70.00 in 2024
Bruce McCall's 1982 illustrated humor classic focuses attention on this artist's unique work—half slapstick, half surreal, and totally unique. The self-taught artist and illustrator is known for his meticulously painted gouaches that blend painstaking realism and wild fantasy, sometimes wandering into historical satire that the artist views as parodying nostalgia itself.
book containing a collection of some of illustrator Bruce McCall's best comic paintings to 1982. It was published by Knopf in that year and featured works that originally appeared mainly in National Lampoon.… (mais)

You may (or may not) know Bruce McCall as the creator of 77 New Yorker covers, most combining brilliant drafting and a warped sense of humor (ex: humans, limbs yellow-banded, swimming in a tank while lobster diners await their meals). In his memoir, you'll learn about his miserably cruel childhood as one of six children ignored by an abusive father and an alcoholic mother in Canada. As an extremely socially awkward high school dropout ("Maturity was always a tardy arrival in my life", McCall struggles to find a use for his drawing talent and, through a series of lucky events, his career progression goes from a start-up one-issue Canadian car magazine to ad agencies repping Chrysler, Mercedes Benz, and Ford, moving from Toronto to Detroit to Germany to New York, and then to illustrations in Playboy, the National Lampoon, and finally, the New Yorker. He marries and has a daughter and expends a mere two sentences on them, further displaying his misanthropic bent. McCall, no longer able to draw due to Parkinson's, has obviously inherited some of his father's irritability and detachment, but his brilliant eye, combined with his searingly satirical mind, make him a uniquely memorable figure in cartooning, illustration, and humor writing. Enjoying a collection of writing and his artwork would surely be a lot more fun.

Quote: "Jerry had a Helen Keller eye for visual excellence."… (mais)