Hand vs. Head: The Cartoon Genius of Ronald Searle

I don’t really have much to add, in words, to the outpouring of tributes to the British cartoonist Ronald Searle, who died last week at ninety-one, except to concur completely. When it comes to a unique graphic style and comic vision such as Searle’s, my impulse is to show before I tell. So here are a few, too few, illustrative examples from the pages of The New Yorker:

A more complete selection of Searle’s New Yorker work is available here. Of course, that more complete selection is still very incomplete because Searle’s cartoon legacy doesn’t rest primarily or even in a minor way with The New Yorker. Of his many thousands of published drawings, in hundreds of publications, here and in countries around the world, just seventy-nine appeared in our pages. So I was a bit surprised that the drawing chosen to be representative of his art in this week’s New York Times obituary was one of our covers.

But maybe it’s not so surprising, because the cover does, in fact, represent a defining essence of much of Searle’s work.

My friend Sam Gross classifies cartoonists as either as “heads” or “hands.” A “head” cartoonist needs a strong idea to have a good cartoon. No idea, no cartoon. It’s not that the drawing doesn’t matter; it does, but it’s a bonus. For a “hand” cartoonist, a category in which I place Searle, it’s mostly the other way around. The drawing is the main show, the raison d’être—the drawing is made better by a good idea, of course, but it’s still well worth taking in regardless.

The individual elements in this cover, from the slyly contented cat to the splendidly rococo desserts, are all graphic comic charmers in and of themselves. It all works even before we “get” the idea, which, in this case, I don’t completely. For myself, as a “head” cartoonist, the idea on this cover is actually somewhat confusing. Thought balloons in cartoons like this usually represent desire. Fair enough, the cat wants a fish. But does he desire a fish instead of these lovingly drawn desserts? Hmm. Then why does the cat have that slight smile running across his face? If this were just a simply drawn “head” cartoon, by someone like me, it wouldn’t merit much attention, but because it came from the outrageously talented hand of Ronald Searle, we remain transfixed and as contented as that cat.