By Anatol Kovarsky

Note: Click on each image to get an enlarged view, begin navigating through the entire image gallery, and find out whether the original piece of artwork is available for sale. Learn more about buying original New Yorker art at www.newyorkerstore.com.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, I thought I’d share with our readers a real-life love story between a New Yorker artist and his wife, one that demonstrates that fairy-tale romances do still happen.

I had the recent pleasure of enjoying a three and a half hour lunch with my favorite nonagenarian, New Yorker cover artist Anatol Kovarsky, and his beautiful wife, the talented actress Lucille Patton. We dined with a nice couple who is adding an original 1966 Kovarsky New Yorker cover to their collection.

I brought color printouts of Anatol’s past New Yorker covers (39 total), and we discussed several in detail. He was quite talkative, and loved telling stories about his former art editors and the inspiration for many of his covers.

By Anatol Kovarsky

By Anatol Kovarsky

Born in Russia in the early half of the last century, Anatol discussed what it was like growing up in the former Soviet Union. Even today, in his 90s, he is intrigued by current affairs, linguistics, history, and cultural science – and how he can incorporate these subjects into his projects.

My favorite part of the lunch was when Lucille told me how she and Anatol met, at a fabulous party thrown by two young actresses in Gramercy Park in the early 1950s. She attended with her roommate at the time, a former lounge singer. “The girls who threw the party went all out,” Lucille said. “There were waiters with white gloves, trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres. The place was packed to the gills!”
She was immediately drawn to Anatol, the gentleman with an interesting accent, so she did not hesitate to introduce herself and inform him of her latest play.

Unbeknownst to Lucille, Anatol attended the performance and waited for her in the pouring rain in the alleyway behind the theater. She almost missed him, but saw him out of the corner of her eye as she lifted the brim of her hat. From there, according to Lucille, they “closed down two nearby bars and kissed in the cab all the way home.” Fifty-six years later, they are still happily married and living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Here’s to finding your own valentine in a dark alleyway, or wherever the search for romance takes you!

While not created as a response to the destruction of the recent earthquake in Haiti, the 2007 painting “The Resurrection of the Dead,” particularly in the ghostly guards occupying the doorway (called guede, in Haitian myth) and the surrounding wall inlaid with pairs of gazing eyes, transmits to the viewer an appropriate sense of somber regard for the passing of souls.

“The Resurrection of the Dead”, by Haitian painter Frantz Zephirin, was featured on the January 25, 2010 cover of The New Yorker. The magazine will donate all profits from print sales of this cover to Partners in Health, which provides health care and other services in Haiti and has taken a leading role in earthquake relief efforts.

Buy “The Resurrection of the Dead” at the New Yorker Store

The New Yorker on Frantz Zephirin and his work

Gahan Wilson, a long-cherished name on The New Yorker’s cartoonist roster, will be making an appearance at the Strand Bookstore in New York City (828 Broadway at 12^th Street) Tuesday, January 19 at 7:00 p.m. Wilson will be signing and discussing his recently released book set, Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons.

The collection, a set of three volumes in a slipcase, assembles every cartoon Wilson has contributed to Playboy, along with all his text/art features and writing for the magazine, dating back to his first fiction piece in 1962.

50 Years of Playboy Cartoons on sale through Fantagraphics Books

Events at the Strand Bookstore

(Boy standing at greeting card rack called "Starter Sympathy Cards," reading "No Way!", "Trag-o-rama," etc.)

Americans purchase about 7 billion greeting cards every year, and we have an ever-expanding variety of messages to choose from. Gone are the days when “Happy Birthday” and “Get Well Soon” were our only options (setting aside the life-saving “blank inside” cards). Today, your average card buyer can congratulate someone on their first house, send a coworker off to a new job, or express sympathy on the loss of a pet.

And yet, all this bounty hasn’t really changed our love/hate relationship with the peculiar social nicety that is the greeting card. Sure, most of us like receiving cards, and maybe a few of us actually enjoy writing them out and sending them. But the vast majority of us see greeting cards purely as a necessary evil – a gesture which is now so common as to be expected, and which at times becomes more exasperating to the sender than it is pleasing to the recipient. As such, the greeting card conundrum is perfect fodder for jokes, and, of course, for New Yorker cartoons.

(Man in greeting card section labeled "Stop Sending Me Cards.")

For every person who delights in receiving these well wishes, there’s another as disgruntled as the subject of Gahan Wilson’s cartoon, who’s in the market for a “Stop Sending Me Cards” card. Roz Chast has published nearly two dozen cartoons featuring greeting cards, typically depicting her own original card designs appropriate for a variety of eccentric occasions, themes, and recipients. From “Valentines for Republicans” to “Cards for Oneself,” Roz has all your card needs covered. Fellow New Yorker cartoonists Chris Weyant and Mick Stevens have also used their drawings to poke fun at greeting cards and the hyperactive greeting card industry itself.

(Politician browsing the "Diplomatic Apology" greeting card section.)

(Cards a person would give to themselves.)

(Man contemplates the "Good luck with the American health-care system" section of the card aisle.)

Habitats at nytimes.com: “Where Punchlines Pay the Rent”

Illustration appearing on the October 3, 1988 New Yorker cover, by Barbara Westman

Illustrator Barbara Westman created nearly 20 covers for The New Yorker in the 1980s and 1990s. These images are best known for their vivid colors and the familiar, everyday nature of their subject matter. Westman’s illustrations are always engaging, whether they depict a day at the beach, a rainy walk home, or a single tree changing color.

The image above, featured on the October 3, 1988 cover of The New Yorker, catches the eye with its symmetry and bright palette, but it is the subject matter that commands a second look. At the time of publication, the small, single-station movie theater concession stand was nearly extinct. Everything about the scene evokes nostalgia, from the carpet to the concessionaire’s uniform. This artwork transports the viewer to a simpler place and time.

Barbara Westman illustrations at the New Yorker Store

Part comedienne, part fitting model (a seamstress’s dream), Carolita Johnson is one of The New Yorker’s youngest and most outspoken female cartoonists. Never one to mince her words, Carolita recently told me the inspiration behind two of her popular cartoons:

"I paid three grand for this dress, I'll wear it wherever I want!"

Okay, so! For the wedding dress cartoon, the story is that in a ploy to try to make me feel guilty enough to hurry up and find a man to get married to, my mom once said to me that she’d like to see me in a wedding dress before she dies. I thought, well, the only way she’ll ever see me in a wedding dress is if I wear one on a regular basis as if it were just an ordinary dress. And then I thought, hey, if I were gonna spend 3,000 bucks on a dress, I’d damn well wear it anywhere and everywhere till I got my money’s worth! And that’s where that cartoon comes from.

(Side note: This cartoon appeared in the credits of the 2008 movie 27 Dresses with Katherine Heigl.)

"What's the matter? Not puffy enough for you?"

For the “puffy enough” cartoon, I’ve always found pigeons to be the most annoying birds ever, in particular when they’re in that mating mode, where the male puffs himself up and aggressively pursues the harried females. The females always look like they’d love to file a harassment suit against those puffy males. And the males always look so macho and frustrated, as if they were thinking, “What’s wrong with these stuck-up broads? You’d think I wasn’t puffy enough for them!” And voila! That’s where that one came from.

For more of Carolita’s original humor, visit her blog at http://newyorkette.com. Carolita is also a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.

The New Yorker, November 25, 1939, by Richard Decker

This Richard Decker cartoon, from the November 25, 1939 New Yorker, refers to the political kerfuffle that resulted in not one but two Thanksgiving Days observed in 1939.

Thanksgiving had been celebrated on the last Thursday in November since 1863. In 1933, November had five Thursdays, and the holiday fell on November 30. Then as today, businesses relied on the holiday season to remain in the black, and the late Thanksgiving would leave only 24 days of sales before Christmas. Merchants, hit hard by the Depression, clamored to President Roosevelt to make Thanksgiving a week earlier. Roosevelt refused that year; but when Thanksgiving again fell on November 30, in 1939, he capitulated and moved it to November 23.

Some merchants were pleased, of course, but it disrupted the school calendar, annual football games, and many other companies and organizations. Roosevelt received thousands of letters expressing anger at his attempt to change the tradition to favor businesses. Some states defied the presidential order, and some governors declared November 30 to be Thanksgiving instead of the 23rd.

Roosevelt kept Thanksgiving on the second-to-last Thursday in November for two more years. In 1941, Congress passed a law officially making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November.

But behind every cartoon is an original piece of artwork created by a different artist, and, naturally, each artist creates his or her art differently. It may be obvious to casual viewers that artists all have different styles, but they also use different mediums, tools, paper types, and paper sizes.

Below are six cartoons, displayed in approximately the size in which they appeared in The New Yorker. In their original form, however, they range in size from 5.5 x 7.5 inches, to over two feet wide and nearly as tall.

Scroll to the bottom of the post to see a list of the images, arranged from smallest to largest.

The New Yorker, November 26, 2007, by Frank Cotham

The New Yorker, August 25, 2008, by Paul Noth

The New Yorker, January 28, 2008, by Jason Patterson

The New Yorker, January 24, 2005, by Charles Barsotti

The New Yorker, April 20, 2009, by Edward Koren

The New Yorker, November 3, 2008, by Ariel Molvig

The original art for these cartoons measures:

Barsotti (#4): 5.5 x 7.5 inches
Cotham (#1): 9 x 12 inches
Noth (#2): 11 x 14 inches
Molvig (#6): 14 x 17 inches
Patterson (#3): 18 x 24 inches
Koren (#5): 21 x 25 inches