Peter Arno: Avoiding Easy Stagnation

Peter Arno was one of the great cartoonists of his generation, probably one of the greatest of all time. A mainstay of The New Yorker, his work helped define the magazine, and he was wealthy enough to party on with the types of people he lampooned in his cartoons. He was only 64 years old when he died in 1968.

In the introduction to his book, Peter Arno’s Ladies & Gentlemen (Simon and Schuster, 1951), Arno answered a few questions that had been constantly hurled at him over the years. One of my favorite responses was to the age-old question all creative people must suffer.

Here’s Arno:

“Question Number Two seems to be: ‘Where do you get all your ideas? Do they just come to you?’

“The last thing they do, madam, is ‘just come.’ My ideas are produced with blood, sweat, brain-racking toil, the help of The New Yorker art staff, and the collaboration of keen-eyed undercover operatives. For the first few years I did think up most of my own situations. I had to. I was developing a style and a new kind of format, and there was no way anyone else could do it for me. But as time went on, and a distinct pattern for my work was set, it became easier for others to make contributions. By “others,” I mean the scant handful of gifted idea-men (there are hordes of the other kind) who have grown up in the field during the past few years.

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