The Art of Rube Goldberg: Inventive Cartoon Genius Author: Jennifer George | Language: English | ISBN:
141970852X | Format: PDF
The Art of Rube Goldberg: Inventive Cartoon Genius Description
About the Author
Jennifer George is the granddaughter of Rube Goldberg. She is a writer and a jewelry and clothing designer. For almost twenty years her label was carried at Bergdorf Goodman, Barney’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdales, and dozens of other specialty stores across the U.S. She lives in New York City.
Adam Gopnik,staff writer for the New Yorker, is a three-time National Magazine Award winner and author of many books, including Paris to the Moon and Through the Children’s Gate.
Andrew Baron of Popyrus Studio, Inc. came to the world of paper engineering following years as a restorer of antique phonographs, clocks, and other mechanical wonders. His books have won international awards, including the Movable Book Society’s Meggendorfer Prize.
Al Jaffee is an award–winning cartoonist and cultural icon best known for his work in MAD magazine as one of the “Usual Gang of Idiots.” He is the creator, artist, and writer of the MAD Fold-In, Tall Tales, and Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.
Carl Linich is a scholar, teacher, and performer of traditional Georgian polyphonic singing, and a member of Trio Kavkasia. He is also a visual artist who specializes in original cartoon art.
Peter Maresca is editor and founder of Sunday Press Books, publisher of full-size reproductions of classic comic strips including Little Nemo in Slumberland, Krazy Kat, and others.
Geoff Spear shot all the photography for Batman Collected, Batman Animated, Bat-Manga!, Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, and Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross. His award-winning photographs have appeared regularly in Vogue, Entertainment Weekly, GQ, Newsweek, and the New York Times, and on numerous book covers.
Paul Tumey is a writer, designer, and comics historian. His recent work can be found in “The Masters of Screwball Comics” blog and in Framed!, his monthly column for the Comics Journal.
Brian Walker has written, edited, and contributed to more than thirty-five books on cartoon art and is the author of the definitive history, The Comics: The Complete Collection.
- Hardcover: 192 pages
- Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (November 12, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 141970852X
- ISBN-13: 978-1419708527
- Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 14.5 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 4.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Rube Goldberg was born in 1883 during the golden age of invention, just eight years after Bell patented his telephone and five years after Edison filed his first light bulb patent. A flood of new machines were developed and commercialized during his youth, and while he produced a wide range of comic art throughout his long career, he's most famous for lampooning our modern fascination with mechanical contraptions.
Goldberg started drawing as a young child, grew up to study and work as an engineer, and then combined his love of art and technology, keeping at it with such a consistently witty flair that his name became a household word. More than a humorist, his political cartoons won him both a Pulitzer Prize and such enmity during World War II that he asked his sons to change their family name to George for their own protection. He also wrote a feature film for the Three Stooges and later became an accomplished sculptor. A frequent visitor to the White House, he continued working nearly nonstop until his death in 1970 at the age of 87.
This big, wide, full-color book (more than twice the size of a thick hardcover) allows Goldberg's granddaughter Jennifer and six other authors, including Al Jaffee of Mad Magazine fame, to present the man's prolific output in all its glorious variety. The cover itself is a cartoon animated by the swipe of a finger, and the Rube Goldberg device that drives this animation is visible through a plastic window on the back of the cover.
This large landscape book is an affectionate and wonderful celebration of Goldburg's art with several dozen examples of his cartoon inventions but there was much more to him than that. As well being a cartoonist he produced comedy shorts, wrote newspaper columns, did some screen writing for Twentieth Century Fox, starred in his own TV show, drew editorial cartoons and when he retired in 1964 took up sculpture. The first comic strip, in 1908, was called 'They all look good when they're far away', the crazy invention cartoons started in 1912 and by 1915 his work appeared in newspapers all over America. During the Forties he did more political editorial cartoons and I thought his style was rather similar to the Washington Post's Herblock especially in the use of a textured tone to show depth. He's quoted on page 169 saying "Political cartoons were easier for me than the inventions because they were almost pure idea, and the draftsmanship relatively simple".
Goldberg's delightful invention cartoons frequently had an inspired extra panel, bottom right, sometimes called Foolish Questions where he allowed his offbeat sense of humour to flow. For example on the invention drawing for May 14, 1929 is Foolish Question, number 47,389,100 showing a couple in bed with the word 'meow' in the window frame, she says "Is that a cat?"- he says "No, it's a mule giving an imitation of a mocking bird". Foolish Questions was, in fact, his first real cartoon hit when it started as a single panel in 1908, five hundred were created between 1908 and 1910 and book reprints soon followed.
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