Walking through the doors of The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts last Sunday into the halls of the MAD Magazine Exhibit was like finally standing in front of the Wailing Wall as an Orthodox Jew.
I did everything short of Daven.
For some artist it’s all about Picasso, Matisse, and Monet.
But for me, my Mount Rushmore of great artists has always veered more to Jack Davis, Wallace Wood, Al Jaffee, and Jack Richards. And the Michelangelo of Mad- the prolific Mort Drucker. Room after crowded room filled with these giants- Dave Berg, Don Martin, Sergio Aragones, George Woodbridge, Antonio Prohias’ Spy v Spy, was nothing short of head spinning.
“A Day in the Life of JFK” Original art by Mort Drucker 1961
How many times had I pored over Mort Drucker’s 1961 spoof ,”A Day With JFK”?
Hundreds? Thousands? And not just in 1963 but only weeks ago. To this day my brother and I quote chapter and verse from this“ And there it was elegantly framed on the wall. In this post-election drawing, President Kennedy sings to the tune of “When I Was a Lad ( Ruler of the Queens Navy)” from Gilbert & Sullivan’s popular opera HMS Pinafore.
MAD Exhibit, Norman Rockwell Museum Oct 2024 Photo: John Martin
For me, the layers of feelings surrounded by decades of deeply familiar art were as layered as the multiple messages contained in one MAD pen-and-ink drawing. It’s where I learned about layers of meaning, of several stories happening simultaneously, and it has been my sensibility ever since. Because of MAD, I was inoculated with a heavy dose of skepticism, offering a lifetime of immunity from accepting institutional hypocrisy and dishonesty.
A drawing by 13-year-old Sally Edelstein, 1968. In this I see the MAD influence and the Mort Drucker copied caricatures
It is not surprising my own creative journey began with MAD as a 6 year old. Just as I would read, re-read, and scrutinize each and every article with the devotion of a Talmudic scholar learning to read between the lines, I would sit hunched over on my bed for hours copying line for line the brilliant illustrations of Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, and Wallace Wood , until my pink chenille bedspread was covered with dozens of magazines and sheaves of paper filled with the pen and ink drawings of an aspiring artist.
MAD Magazine Exhibit, Norman Rockwell Museum Oct 2024 Photo: John Martin
“The Lighter Side” by Dave Berg, was always one of my go to first reads before I dug into the heavier stuff.
A drawing by Mort Drucker using Rubylith. Nostalgically this red acetate layered over parts of a drawing so that select areas will appear to be in shadow when photographed for printing brought me back to my years of illustrating, on the cusp of digital.. The Art & Humor of MAD Magazine exhibit
Seeing the drawings up close, the Gods of my youth working as I once did on deadline. I could see the dried non-archival rubber cement that had seeped through and yellowed with age, the bits of rubber cement not rubbed away, the white-out, the blue editing pencil lines, the red acetate rubylith. Seeing the irregular lines cut with an exacto knife for the cut-and-paste text in a Dave Berg Lighter Side was a thrill.
TRADITION! TRADITION!
I am certain when I purchased this MAD magazine as a 17-year-old HS Senior in January 1973 I could not have imagined there would come a time when I could be face to face with this original cover painting by Norman Mingo who did countless cover illustrations.
At 69, I am now almost the same age as MAD magazine. I have been reading and collecting them for nearly as long. Battered cardboard boxes filled with decades of well-read, dog-eared MAD magazines, have followed me in the trajectory of my life. From my childhood suburban bedroom in West Hempstead, Long Island, to my Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan, they are now resting comfortably back on Long Island in the cool basement of my Huntington Village home.
Mad Magazine Covers over the years. The Art & Humor of MAD Magazine exhibit
Every month from the time I was seven, a quarter clutched tightly in my hand, I would head down to the neighborhood candy store to buy the current issue. Hand-me-down issues of the magazine from my older brother Andy were treasured, but buying my very own copy felt like a rite of passage.
Our neighborhood candy store Katz’s, with its overhead tin sign from Bryer’s ice cream and creaking wooden telephone booths in the back of the store, was the type of establishment once found in every neighborhood in Brooklyn and Queens. A throwback to a previous era it now seemed woefully out-of-place amongst the new developments of split-level and ranch homes of my Long Island suburban neighborhood, a culture that was regular fodder for MAD.
MAD did more than mock the adult world. It was also cunningly educational.
Walking into the store, I would give a quick glance at the newsstand outside that displayed an assortment of newspapers secured under heavy sash weights. Bold black headlines shrieked with news of Vietnam, race riots, and Watergate but I preferred my news straight from Alfred E. Neuman.
MAD did more than mock the adult world. It was also cunningly educational. Lessons learned from my Weekly Reader often eluded me; but tutored by the skilled pens of Larry Siegel, Wally Wood, and Frank Jacobs, lessons about politics and current events were indelibly etched in my mind igniting a life-long passion.
Spy Vs Spy Drawing. Antonio Prohias Cuban expatriate cartoonist who kept a humorous eye on the Cold War and global politics.
Jack Davis “The MAD Primer of Bigots Extremists and Other Loose Ends” 1969. Donald Trump would fit in perfectly
MAD was like a course on international politics. Where else would an eight-year-old easily learn and recite the names of world leaders like Castro, Nasser, Mao, Tito, and Khrushchev through the clever use of Broadway songs? I still find myself humming “Nikita! We’ve Just Met a Red Named Nikita!” sung by Kennedy advisors in the classic 1963 East Side Story, a parody of West Side Story casting the Eastern bloc and Western Bloc as opposing street gangs.
Straddling two obsessions for me as a teen. One room filled with MAD art another Norman Rockwell’s paintings. MAD Exhibit, Norman Rockwell Museum Oct 2024 Photo: John Martin
When Alfred E. channeled Norman Rockwell recreating the iconic self-portrait that Norman Rockwelll painted. Both original paintings hand side by side. Photo: John Martin
This was straddling two obsessions for me as a teen. One room filled with MAD art another Norman Rockwell’s paintings. As hooked as I was on MAD, I was fascinated with Norman Rockwell and began a correspondence with him as a 17-year-old fan girl.
I’m hoping “What, Me Worry? The Art & Humor of MAD Magazine” travels and finds another home.
Because it felt like coming home to me. As it will for so many.