P C Vey: Unexamined Life, Doomsday Clock Not Plugged In and The Bison Are on the Move....

 Great P C Vey has died on September 17 2026 at the age of 70.

Peter was a gag cartoonist’s cartoonist. His overriding aim was to be funny, and he rarely missed. If a deeper meaning emerged, so much the better, but funny was his lodestar. 

I have many of his cartoons stored on my PC hard disk.  He was for me as good as Leo Cullum. 

They share that wonderful New Yorker ability to make a cartoon look almost casually drawn while concealing quite a lot of intellectual machinery underneath it. Cullum often begins with an absurd social observation and pushes it into an unexpected direction. Vey seems more often to begin with an idea and then find the absurd situation that will expose it.

I wish to share a couple of cartoons of Vey.

John Gray, "Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals", 2002;

"....Socrates was able to believe that the examined life is best because he thought the true and the good were one and the same: there is a changeless reality beyond the visible world, and it is perfect. When humans live the unexamined life they run after illusions. They spend their lives searching for pleasure or fleeing pain, both of which are bound to pass away. True fulfilment lies in changeless things. An examined life is best because it leads us into eternity.

We need not doubt the reality of truth to reject this Socratic faith. Human knowledge is one thing, human well-being another. There is no predetermined harmony between the two. The examined life may not be worth living...."

 

 

 

पीटर अर्नो ह्यांचे स्केच अंतिम चित्रापेक्षा जास्त आवडले ...Peter Arno Sketch Vs. Final...It Tells a Lot

Sketch 

इथे रेषा अधिक जिवंत आणि ऊर्जावान आहेत. ब्रशचे स्ट्रोक्स दिसतात, कागदावरचा थोडा असमान रंग दिसतो. प्रकाश–छाया हाताळण्यात जास्त स्वाभाविकता आहे; पार्श्वभूमीचा तपशील, कागदाचा पोत, आणि अपूर्णतेतून येणारी गती जाणवते. चित्रात “spontaneity” आहे — जणू कलाकार त्या क्षणी विचार करत आहे, निर्णय घेत आहे, रेषा शोधत आहे. मानवी भाव–भंगिमा थोडी मवाळ, अधिक मानवी भासते. कलाकाराची वैयक्तिक हस्ताक्षर / सही ताजं आणि प्रत्यक्ष जाणवतं. 

 

Final 

पूर्णतः रेखाटलेले, छपाईसाठी तयार काम. रंग एकसंध, सपाट आणि मुद्रणसुलभ (flat printing colors). काही घटकांमध्ये (उदा. पार्श्वभूमी, कपड्यांचे रंग, सावल्या) साधेपणा आणलेला आहे, जेणेकरून मासिकाच्या लेआउटशी जुळेल. थोडं “finished” वाटतं — म्हणजेच कल्पनाशक्तीची जागा थोडी कमी.  

मला स्केच जास्त आवडले कारण —sketch मध्ये जिवंतपणा, हलचाल, आणि रंगांतील असमानता हीच ऊर्जा निर्माण करते. छपाईत ती हरवते. आपण कलाकाराच्या मनाच्या अगदी जवळ जातो — जणू तो कागदावर विचार मांडतो आहे. त्यामुळे “authenticity” जाणवते. “finished” कामापेक्षा “in-progress” अवस्थेतील अपूर्णता काहींना अधिक खरी वाटते, कारण ती सर्जनशीलतेचा क्षण दाखवते.  

आणि सगळ्यात महत्वाचे, अंतिम चित्रातील  कृष्णवर्णीय caddy दाखवलेले सुद्धा मला आवडले नाही. 

१९३०च्या दशकातील The New Yorker आणि इतर अमेरिकन मासिकांतील अशा चित्रांत काही गोष्टी नेहमी दिसतात —

• श्रीमंत, पांढरवर्णीय, थोडे स्थूल “urban” पुरुष;

• त्यांच्या सेवेसाठी काळ्या किंवा स्थलांतरित वर्णाचा नोकर, अनेकदा नि:शब्द, पार्श्वभूमीत;

• आणि दृश्यात व्यंगचित्रात्मक विनोद, पण सामाजिक वर्गभेद स्पष्टपणे टिकून.

 मी ज्या “sketch” कडे ओढला जातो,  ते फक्त रेषेच्या जिवंतपणासाठी नाही, तर त्या चित्रातील मानवी सुस्पष्टतेसाठी आहे, आणि “black caddy” असलेल्या अंतिम आवृत्तीत ती सुस्पष्टता हरवते — कारण तिथे समाजाच्या श्रेणींचा सावट येतं. 

त्या black caddy च्या चेहऱ्यात किंवा शरीरभाषेत काहीही भाव नाहीत. ना थकवा, ना उपहास, ना जीवन.
तो फक्त a function आहे — एक चालती वस्तू. आणि हेच Peter Arno ने खूप जाणिवपूर्वक केलं आहे — विनोदाचा केंद्रबिंदू white subject आहे, बाकी सगळं जग त्याचं background décor. हीच bourgeois satire ची मर्यादा होती — ती स्वतःच्या वर्गावर हसते, पण आपल्याच विशेषाधिकारावर नाही. 

पिपात मेला एकच (पण सुंदर) उंदीर...But where, oh where is the compassion?

 Two books on rats were published and reviewed in 2024. I read only reviews and found them very intriguing.

Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker:

"...Two new books take up the subject of Calhoun and his rats. The authors of the first, “Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B. Calhoun” (Melville House), are a pair of British researchers, Edmund Ramsden and Jon Adams, who for a time both taught at the London School of Economics. The second, “Dr. Calhoun’s Mousery: The Strange Tale of a Celebrated Scientist, a Rodent Dystopia, and the Future of Humanity” (University of Chicago), is by Lee Alan Dugatkin, a historian of science at the University of Louisville. Both books cast Calhoun as a visionary. Both also portray him as eccentric to the point of crankdom...."

Simon Ings write in The Spectator, UK: 

"...Among rodents, a rising population induces stress, and stress reduces the birth rate. But push the overcrowding too far (further than would be likely to happen in nature) and stress starts to trigger all manner of weird and frightening effects. The rodents start to pack together, abandoning all sense of personal space. Violence and homosexuality skyrocket; females cease to nurture and suckle their young; abandoned, these offspring become food for any passing male. The only way out of this hell is complete voluntary isolation. A generation of ‘beautiful ones’ arises, that knows only to groom itself and avoid social contact. Without sex, the population collapses. The few Methuselahs who remain have no social skills to speak of. They’re not aggressive. They’re not anything. They barely exist...

...But whether we behave exactly like rats in conditions of overcrowding and/or social isolation is not the point. The point is that, given the sheer commonality between mammal species, something might happen to humans in like conditions; and it behoves us to find out what that something might be before we foist any more hopeful urban planning on the proletariat. Calhoun, who got us to think seriously about how we design our cities, is Rat City’s visionary hero, to the point where I started to hear him. Observing some gormless waifs staring into their smartphones at the bottom of the escalator, I recalled his prediction that ‘we might one day see the human equivalent’ of his mice, pathologically crammed together in ‘a sort of withdrawal – in which they would behave as if they were not aware of each other’..."

 

Artist: Tomi Um, The New Yorker