A rejected New Yorker cover sketch from 1993 by Art Spiegelman (Image courtesy of http://www.printmag.com)
Color Wheel is a series in which we identify a trending color in art, and post a daily image that illustrates its popularity. This week’s color is red.
Here’s possibly the only art show open on Christmas. The Jewish Museum will be staying open for the holiday, and you can go celebrate that with its fantastic Art Spiegelman retrospective.
Here’s a preview! The drawing is his contribution to Blown Covers: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant to See, a book of rejected New Yorker covers compiled by his wife, and longtime New Yorker arts editor, Françoise Mouly. In an interview with Michael Silverberg of Print Magazine, Mouly explained the rationale behind cutting the image:
…Christmas is a difficult period for a magazine editor to do something provocative because somewhere in the back of people’s minds is ‘It’s a time to be jolly!’
She continued:
We’re talking about the early nineties, when there are people homeless in the street—the inequality is contradicted by the over-merchandising Christmas. And then a suggestion was made to him: “Maybe it’s OK if it doesn’t mention the homeless.” And to him, that was really provocation for the sake of it. Later on we ended up publishing a crucified bunny rabbit, but that was Easter, not Christmas.
The 1993 sketch never made it onto the cover of the New Yorker, but apparently they used it as their Christmas card instead.
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