“I went on a whale watching trip with my wife and daughter,” Bruce McCall, the artist of this week’s cover, says. “We were half an hour out of Montauk, in the middle of the ocean, between Block Island and the North Shore, and suddenly these huge things came rolling up. It was just amazing—they’re so gigantic and so beautiful. I’m not often impressed by nature, but I remember that feeling when we saw the whales suddenly appear besides us, and it was very magical.”
“So it stayed with me, but then I thought of the captive audience on the boat. If the whale jumps up with a sign, there’ll be no other sign to compete with it—that was my basic idea. I desecrate everything I touch, don’t I?”
See below for a selection of other New Yorker covers that depict aquatic creatures:
“June 28, 1930,” by Rea Irvin.
“April 23, 1932,” by E. B. White.
“May 14, 1932,” by Béla Dankovszky.
“December 4, 1943,” by Rea Irvin.
“June 23, 1962,” by Peter Arno.
“January 20, 1968,” by Charles Addams.
“January 18, 1969,” by Charles Saxon.