Charles Saxon is one of my favorite illustrators of the human condition. I have used a few over the last months as the season progresses. Wish we had more.
It isn't lilac time yet but the leaves are out here in Woodstock, CT. Saxon's view of buttoned down people trying to add the exuberance of flowers to their world, or getting in touch with their inner gardner, is always so kind.
Charles Saxon, 68, a Cartoonist For 92 Covers of The New Yorker
Charles Saxon, a cartoonist whose elegant drawings deftly deflated the pomposities of the corporate board room and the suburban country club, died of heart failure yesterday at St. Joseph Medical Center in Stamford, Conn. He was 68 years old and lived in New Canaan, Conn.Mr. Saxon's work appeared in most major magazines, in advertisements for dozens of corporate clients, and in three book collections. He did 725 drawings and 92 covers for The New Yorker magazine, where he had worked as a staff cartoonist since 1956.One of his best-known and most representative cartoons, which appeared in The New Yorker in 1984, depicts a roomful of corporate executives harking to the wisdom of their board chairman, who is making the pronouncement: ''Of course, honesty is one of the better policies.''''In his art he always sought to do not just humor but also social commentary,'' said Vance Packard, the author who was his friend and neighbor in New Canaan for 34 years. ''His main interest was in the life styles of the presumably sophisticated, and he saw himself as an interpreter of their world.''A 1982 New Yorker cartoon depicted two quintessential Saxon suburbanites. In the drawing, a man enters his living room to answer a phone call, and finds his wife with her hand over the phone, saying to him: ''It's all right dear. Kidder Peabody. For me.'' 'Social History'To Lee Lorenz, art editor of The New Yorker, ''Chuck's elegantly designed and meticulously rendered covers and drawings were in the classic tradition of social satire that reaches back to Daumier and Gavarni,'' he said. ''Seen as a whole, his work constitutes a unique social history of our time.''''These people out in suburbia are easy targets for humor,'' Mr. Lorenz said, ''but Chuck saw beyond that to the bitter side of it: people too cautious to take advantage of the very opportunities that their privileged position offered them.''An example was a four-page sequence of drawings in The New Yorker that ran in 1968, titled ''The Fountain of Youth.'' It depicted a corporate surburbanite who, when given the chance to sip from the fountain of youth, is tempted, but loses his chance when he hesitates too long. He frets about whether his peers will take the chance, and, ultimately, worries that it might affect his pension plan. When he gets home, his wife asks him, ''What did you do in the woods today?'' His answer: ''I got lost.''Charles David Saxon was born on Nov. 13, 1920, in Brooklyn. ''My father and his whole family were musicians in England,'' he said in a 1982 interview in Connecticut Magazine. ''My great-uncle Barney was court violinist to Queen Victoria.''
Charles Saxon, a cartoonist whose elegant drawings deftly deflated the pomposities of the corporate board room and the suburban country club, died of heart failure yesterday at St. Joseph Medical Center in Stamford, Conn. He was 68 years old and lived in New Canaan, Conn.Mr. Saxon's work appeared in most major magazines, in advertisements for dozens of corporate clients, and in three book collections. He did 725 drawings and 92 covers for The New Yorker magazine, where he had worked as a staff cartoonist since 1956.One of his best-known and most representative cartoons, which appeared in The New Yorker in 1984, depicts a roomful of corporate executives harking to the wisdom of their board chairman, who is making the pronouncement: ''Of course, honesty is one of the better policies.''''In his art he always sought to do not just humor but also social commentary,'' said Vance Packard, the author who was his friend and neighbor in New Canaan for 34 years. ''His main interest was in the life styles of the presumably sophisticated, and he saw himself as an interpreter of their world.''A 1982 New Yorker cartoon depicted two quintessential Saxon suburbanites. In the drawing, a man enters his living room to answer a phone call, and finds his wife with her hand over the phone, saying to him: ''It's all right dear. Kidder Peabody. For me.'' 'Social History'To Lee Lorenz, art editor of The New Yorker, ''Chuck's elegantly designed and meticulously rendered covers and drawings were in the classic tradition of social satire that reaches back to Daumier and Gavarni,'' he said. ''Seen as a whole, his work constitutes a unique social history of our time.''''These people out in suburbia are easy targets for humor,'' Mr. Lorenz said, ''but Chuck saw beyond that to the bitter side of it: people too cautious to take advantage of the very opportunities that their privileged position offered them.''An example was a four-page sequence of drawings in The New Yorker that ran in 1968, titled ''The Fountain of Youth.'' It depicted a corporate surburbanite who, when given the chance to sip from the fountain of youth, is tempted, but loses his chance when he hesitates too long. He frets about whether his peers will take the chance, and, ultimately, worries that it might affect his pension plan. When he gets home, his wife asks him, ''What did you do in the woods today?'' His answer: ''I got lost.''Charles David Saxon was born on Nov. 13, 1920, in Brooklyn. ''My father and his whole family were musicians in England,'' he said in a 1982 interview in Connecticut Magazine. ''My great-uncle Barney was court violinist to Queen Victoria.''
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