Early Innovators

Funny and insightful artists

I love this photograph. In this group of women, you find New Yorker cartoonists Alice Harvey (far left) and Helen Hokinson (second from right), both of whom began in the magazine as contributors in 1925. Unfortunately, I can’t identify the other women. This photo is in my book, Very Funny Ladies; I brought it back out for two reasons: my team and I are working on my documentary on this subject, and I am giving a talk in August about these early innovative artists.

Here is another artist who I will also focus on, Barbara Shermund.

I like to call them innovators because they were among the artists in the 1920’s who were creating the new New Yorker cartoon, drawing and writing about their lives. It was a new type of humor—sophisticated, snarky, sometimes wordy and sometimes subtle. Previous graphic humor tended to be more illustrated jokes; these artists combined words and drawing in a new, symbiotic way.

There were comic artists who were women in newspapers at the time, mostly drawing strips for newspapers about traditional (at the time) “women’s subjects,” targeted at women. But with the encouragement and support of The New Yorker editors, these women moved outside of that box and in their work we hear new voices about what it was like to be a woman. These drawings were for both men and women and they tell us about the time.

Here are samples of their work:

If you’ve been following me for a bit, you know I write about this from time to time, I love the subject so much. If it’s repeat information for you, I apologize!

Happy Saturday!