The Rural We: Barry Blitt
For 30 years, the wobbly lines and abstract proportions of Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker cartoonist Barry Blitt's illustrations have excoriated the manic buffoonery of modern politics and culture in a way words just can't. A collection of his more recent pieces, along with never-before-seen drafts and unpublished work, will soon be on display at the Minor Memorial Library in Roxbury, Connecticut. Beginning with an opening reception June 24, and continuing through August 5, the show is called, “Pen & Angst & Watercolor.”
A resident of Roxbury, Blitt’s mind has wrought some of the New Yorker’s most recognizable covers, but the man himself usually shies away from any and all public attention. The exhibition is the third Blitt has done at the library and though he admits he gets agoraphobic at events, he’s grateful for the support and encouragement.
“I’m treating it as an obligation,” Blitt says, half joking. “My hermitage is really advanced. For one beautiful second I thought I was going to get out of it for hernia surgery, but it was scheduled for after.”
A kind-hearted, self deprecating curmudgeon, living an isolated life in Roxbury, complaining about the things he hates and the things he likes in equal measure, Blitt is a kind of a caricature himself, of what one might expect from a storied old political cartoonist in the modern age.
“I didn’t grow up with The New Yorker,” says Blitt, who was born and raised in Quebec. “My household was culture free.”
In spite of that, Blitt was an artist from an early age, going to hockey and baseball games with his father, He’d draw the players and then go to their hotels to show them. “I did a lot of fan art. It was positive. As I got older I found it was more fun to be negative.”
He attended Ontario College of Art and Design, and then went to London to work in advertising for a few years in the 80s. He “came home defeated,” deciding to move to New York in 1989. He spent his days dragging his portfolio around and knocking on every door he could. Luckily one of those doors was the New Yorker. “You need luck, but you have to make your luck,” he says.
In 1993, tired of the noise, he moved to Connecticut – first Riverside, then Washington Depot, and finally Roxbury, where he has found a nearly tolerable level of seclusion.
“I’m very neurotic and I hate noise. During my life in cities a lot of my energy was spent struggling with neighbors,” says Blitt. “I appreciated being locked down during the pandemic. It fed my nature. It gave me license to ponder and not be interrupted.”
Though his lumpy portraits of presidents and political creatures are his most recognizable works, Blitt says he’s getting tired of drawing the same old disgusting politicians every week for the New Yorker's pages, online his weekly Blitt’s Kvetchbook and for Airmail magazine. He's glad to be showing a collection of his own selection at the library.
“I’m getting so sick of politicians,” he says. “I should be foaming at the mouth over Trump’s indictment but I just feel lousy. It’s too easy, too obvious – but it’s my wheelhouse.”
Blitt says he did get a kick out of drawing King Charles around the time of the coronation. Blitt depicted the king as tiny, outsized by his finery. He wanted to capture the absurdity of the archaic pomp.
“It was fun to draw; it was new to me,” he says. “I hate that pretensions nonsense. When the New Yorker put the cover on Instagram I was surprised by how many British people were mad about it.”
Blitt’s no stranger to blowback. In 2008, his magazine cover depicting President Barack and Michelle Obama as Middle Eastern terrorists holding weapons in the Oval Office sparked outrage from a large number of people unable to recognize satire.
“I was still quite Canadian at that point and I was hearing Fox News say all these insane things, like that the Obama’s fist bump was a ‘terrorist fist jab,’” he recalls. “I did this crazy drawing of all this vile imagery in one picture and amazingly they put it on the cover. The reaction was bad.”
The reaction to Blitt’s work at the library will surely not be so. There is much to appreciate in the output of the artist’s angst and neurosis. His modern work is as sharp as ever and feels like sardonic artifacts of a living public record.
“The two (exhibitions) we did pre-pandemic have actually been fun,” Blitt admits. “Now the check has come due for this one, but everyone there is very nice and they treat me with kid gloves.”
It’s hard to tell if Blitt has internalized the scale of his cultural legacy. Historically, political cartoons have been some of the most lasting representations of American cultural discourse and Blitt’s work is an exemplar of that tradition in the modern age, whether he wants credit or not.
“The amount of work I do is killing me, but that will end soon. Either I will retire or I will die,” he says in a lighthearted tone (believe it or not). “I can’t stop, and there are true moments of fun. God knows I’m not complaining about much… except the three hernias… and the town put up this stop sign outside my house… people just blow through it… I run out with my phone…Like I’m going to do something…anyway…”
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