George Booth, the New Yorker cartoonist who created a world of oddballs sharing life’s chaos with a pointy-eared bull terrier that once barked a flower to death, and sometimes with a herd of cats that shredded couches and window shades between sweet naps, died on Tuesday at his home in Brooklyn. He was 96.
His daughter and only immediate survivor, Sarah Booth, said the cause was complications of dementia.
In a typical Booth cartoon, a lot happens at once. A stunned dog leaps three feet in the air. A shocked cat bounds for an open window, knocking a newspaper from the hands of a shaken man — all as his frumpy wife stands in a kitchen doorway with blackened eyes, announcing: “Eyeliner is back!”
Or, as a score of cats lounge in a parlor and a man in pajamas scowls into a newspaper in his easy chair, his wife in the kitchen says: “Edgar, please run down to the shopping center right away, and get some milk and cat food. Don’t get canned tuna, or chicken, or liver, or any of those awful combinations. Shop around and get a surprise. The pussies like surprises.”
Or, as a neighbor with a big nose peers over a backyard fence, 10 cats bound out of a back door to freedom and scatter in all directions as a woman at the open screen door shouts after them: “Everyone be home by two o’clock!”
In a half century at The New Yorker, Mr. Booth drew roughly a score of covers and hundreds of zany cartoons for the inside pages. (...)
“His work is about hope in the mdst of what looks like calamity,” Bonnell Robinson, the curator of the 1993 Boston cartoon exhibition “Lines of the Times: 50 Years of Great American Cartoons,” told The Times. “Booth cartoons express the will to continue in the face of disaster.” One cartoon in the show depicted a parlor crammed with junk, pets and sundry relatives. “Attention everyone,” a woman chirps. “Here comes Poppa, and we’re going to drive dull care away!”
Mr. Booth’s pen-and-ink cartoons were collected in a dozen books, reproduced as artworks and sold in galleries. He lectured widely and joined discussion groups at schools, museums and cartoon-art exhibitions until he slowed down in his 90s. (...)
Mr. Booth’s zoological record for one cartoon was 86 cats and 74 dogs, not counting the little clouds of flies he drew buzzing around some characters. “From a business perspective, it doesn’t make sense to draw 86 cats and 74 dogs,” he noted, because as a contract freelancer he was paid flat rates. “But,” he said, “I enjoy it.”
by Robert D. McFadden, NY Times | Read more:
Images: (George Booth; Zephy, markk/Video: New Yorker)
His daughter and only immediate survivor, Sarah Booth, said the cause was complications of dementia.
In a typical Booth cartoon, a lot happens at once. A stunned dog leaps three feet in the air. A shocked cat bounds for an open window, knocking a newspaper from the hands of a shaken man — all as his frumpy wife stands in a kitchen doorway with blackened eyes, announcing: “Eyeliner is back!”
Or, as a score of cats lounge in a parlor and a man in pajamas scowls into a newspaper in his easy chair, his wife in the kitchen says: “Edgar, please run down to the shopping center right away, and get some milk and cat food. Don’t get canned tuna, or chicken, or liver, or any of those awful combinations. Shop around and get a surprise. The pussies like surprises.”
Or, as a neighbor with a big nose peers over a backyard fence, 10 cats bound out of a back door to freedom and scatter in all directions as a woman at the open screen door shouts after them: “Everyone be home by two o’clock!”
In a half century at The New Yorker, Mr. Booth drew roughly a score of covers and hundreds of zany cartoons for the inside pages. (...)
“His work is about hope in the mdst of what looks like calamity,” Bonnell Robinson, the curator of the 1993 Boston cartoon exhibition “Lines of the Times: 50 Years of Great American Cartoons,” told The Times. “Booth cartoons express the will to continue in the face of disaster.” One cartoon in the show depicted a parlor crammed with junk, pets and sundry relatives. “Attention everyone,” a woman chirps. “Here comes Poppa, and we’re going to drive dull care away!”
Mr. Booth’s pen-and-ink cartoons were collected in a dozen books, reproduced as artworks and sold in galleries. He lectured widely and joined discussion groups at schools, museums and cartoon-art exhibitions until he slowed down in his 90s. (...)
Mr. Booth’s zoological record for one cartoon was 86 cats and 74 dogs, not counting the little clouds of flies he drew buzzing around some characters. “From a business perspective, it doesn’t make sense to draw 86 cats and 74 dogs,” he noted, because as a contract freelancer he was paid flat rates. “But,” he said, “I enjoy it.”
by Robert D. McFadden, NY Times | Read more:
Images: (George Booth; Zephy, markk/Video: New Yorker)
