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Richard Lippincott Denison Taylor

Smile, 1939

Description

Maker

Title

Smile

Year

1939

Medium

Pen and ink, brush and wash, and white gouache on board

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Supports

Dimensions

45.9 x 35.7 cm (18 1/8 x 14 1/8 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Signed, UL:R. Taylor

Type

Credit

Jesse Metcalf Fund

Object Number

40.095

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Changing Poses

November 12, 2010 - June 6, 2011

With their distinctive pointed noses, Richard Taylor’s cartoon figures satirized numerous aspects of American society in the pages of the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Playboy, and most often, The New Yorker. This image presents a humorous collision between stereotypes of the slow and labor-intensive practice of stone-carving and the speed and accessibility of photography as a rival form of image-making. Before achieving fame as a cartoonist, Taylor studied at the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, where his training included life-drawing classes.

Draw Me a Story

April 14 - July 23, 2006

Richard Taylor began contributing to The New Yorker in 1935. His body of work frequently addressed the art world, its idiosyncrasies, its influence on pop culture, and the social and sexual innuendos that art and its viewing could embody. In this cartoon, which appeared with the caption, “Smile,” Taylor compares the dissonant art forms of sculpture, with its time-consuming manual labor, and photography, with its instant exposure, to poke fun at the ironic, modern relationship between artist and model.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Smile with the accession number of 40.095. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.