Weekend Spill: A Great Cartoonist…Arnie Levin; The Tilley Watch Online, August 4-8, 2025

A Great Cartoonist…Arnie Levin

Arnie Levin, in my humble opinion, is one of the great post-James Geraghty era New Yorker cartoonists. Levin arrived at the magazine in 1974, not long after Lee Lorenz was appointed The New Yorker‘s art editor (back then the art editor’s duties included editing cartoons, covers, spot drawings, and illustrations — in other words: all art). I recall Arnie telling me that during his earliest visit to The New Yorker‘s offices to show his portfolio, it was geared towards covers, not cartoons. Lorenz, with his excellent eye for spotting new talent (think Jack Ziegler, Roz Chast, Liza Donnelly, Victoria Roberts, Bob Mankoff, etc.), saw cartoon gold as well. Arnie went on to contribute both covers (over 20) and cartoons (approximately 750) in his run at the magazine. All of them are a delight.

There’s a Thurberesque quality to Arnie’s line — a sort of loose free-for-all that immediately and completely charms. The late great New Yorker cartoonist, Henry Martin, once told me he believed there’s a school of cartoonists who “draw funny” — George Booth being a prime example. The sight of the drawing itself — the style — brings a smile, well before you get to reading the caption. Arnie’s work is solidly in that school.

More Levin:

Googling “Arnie Levin” will of course turn up a cornucopia of his cover work, and cartoons.

But the best place to start with seeing Arnie’s work is his one and only collection, I’ll Skip The Appetizer — I Ate The Flowers (Plume, 1980).

There’s a good profile of Arnie in Richard Gehr’s I Only Read It For The Cartoons (New Harvest, 2014).

and…Gil Roth interviewed Arnie back in 2017. Listen here.

— The drawing at the top of this post, “First, they do an on-line search” appeared in The New Yorker, October 5, 1998.

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The Tilley Watch Online, August 4-8, 2025

An end of the week listing of New Yorker artists whose work has appeared on newyorker.com features

Daily Cartoon: Christopher Weyant, Brendan Loper, Adam Douglas Thompson, Niall Maher, Daniela Gilsanz (an online only cartoonist).

Shouts & Murmurs:

Ali Fitzgerald…“America!: Gardening With Stephen Miller”

Navied Mahdavian...“Skateboarding Into Middle Age”