The editor continues (from last week) in the introduction to this book:
The timely cartoonist, however, does not deal with [Eternal Truth]. After an eight o'clock orange juice, he crouches in his favorite chair with the morning paper and an enormous pair of shears, and notes happily that the new cars are falling apart, that the prices of food, clothing, and entertainment have gone up, that women are having terrible problems with their hair, with their hair sprays, and their hair thicknesses. He observes that mod styles are alreadt outdated, and is delighted that women are beginning to wear awful-looking clog heels. All grist for his mill.
The cartoonist makes the truth recognizable, the invisible visible. This is what Daumier did in his caricatures. And in Rembrandt's paintings, one even sees people one recognizes. This is not so with the work of more stylized painters, such as Vermeer, or Raphael, whose paintings are beautiful and to be admired, but not because their people are alive and breathing. Yet the light in Vermeer's paintings is somehow timeless, and easily recognizable as true. The essential truth of the gesture can be seen in the work of other artists, for example Rowlandson, whose work was timely, yet also timeless, because his whole effort was bent toward showing the expressions, attitudes and gestures of greed, lust, and sloth.
As usual, I have no idea what the fuck he's talking about.
First is a cartoon is by Michael Ffolkes
Dedini's cartoon is a masterpiece that perfectly catches the idiocy of those young people who have no background, no sense of history, but who think everything is original with them.
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