Last night, as part of the New Yorker's monthly discussion series, "The Big Story," editor-in-chief David Remnick hosted a panel at Joe's pub on Blown Covers, art director Françoise Mouly's recently-published collection of old and rejected New Yorker covers. Remnick moderated the panel, which featured Mouly as well as cartoonists and frequent (and often controversial) cover artists Barry Blitt and Bob Staake.
Remnick and Mouly opened with a Maurice Sendak cover and comic strip as a memorial to the artist, who died Tuesday morning. They followed that homage with a number of rejected covers by the panelists, including Blown Covers' Blitt-illustrated book cover, which features the Pope wearing Marilyn Monroe's iconic Seven-Year-Itch dress, and a Staake submission featuring a women's derriere topped with a "tramp stamp" tattoo reading "Your Ad Here."
Remnick and Mouly also went through some of the magazine's more popular covers, like an image from an October 2000 issue showing then-NY Senatorial hopeful Hillary Clinton trying to decide between a Mets cap and a Yankees cap (also by Blitt) and the Bob Staake cover featuring the Lincoln Memorial lit up for the Obama inauguration, with an illuminated "O" in "New Yorker".
Mouly discussed the process of cover selection and rejection, noting that she encourages artists to draw freely when working on their submissions. "It's useful as the artist to not over edit," she said. "I ask them to send me whatever comes out of their pen." Remnick agreed that the magazine looked to run covers that were unique, cutting edge, and even incendiary. "This is another thing we encourage: go too far enough," he said. "Without license to do that, you never go far at all." He brought up one of the New Yorker's most controversial recent covers, a July 2008 caricature of pre-President Obama dressed in terrorist garb giving military-fatigued wife Michelle a fist bump. The cover, drawn by Blitt, incensed the Obama camp as well as the media ("You haven't lived until you've been on CNN and been called a Nazi by Wolf Blitzer," Remnick joked.)
Another highly criticized cover was a 1996 image featuring two male sailors kissing in parody of the iconic WWII era Alfred Eisenstaedt photo, "V-J Day in Times Square." The cover, which was done in response to the passage of Don't Ask Don't Tell, was denounced by some conservatives.
On the topic of the artists' personal processes of illustration: "New Yorker covers are about thinking more than anything else," Staake said. "An artist should look at a topic and come out with ten different images."
