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“His spatter is masterful, but his dribbles lack conviction.”
In an era of military brinkmanship abroad and economic growth at home,_ _New Yorker cartoonists skipped between joking about the anxiety of the Cold War and lampooning all the shiny new consumer comforts. We also see the magazine’s artists poking fun at the growing Abstract Expressionist movement in New York. Peter Arno takes aim at gallery visitors commenting on the “dribbles” of a Jackson Pollock look-alike, and Whitney Darrow, Jr., shows a painter working on a piece, one that looks suspiciously like one of Mondrian’s famous grid paintings, and declaring that his art is “a message of good will for all mankind.” Brinksmanship notwithstanding, mankind made it through the decade, a trend that happily has continued since.
