Abner Dean

About eight years ago I came across Abner Dean’s Naked People (published in 1963) in a used bookstore. I had never seen Dean’s work before, and I certainly had never seen cartoons that looked like this:



During the last few years I have been assembling a bibliography of Dean’s work and collecting as much information as I could about his life. There wasn’t much biographical material available, only a few single-paragraph entries in encyclopedias of cartoonists. But after doing interviews with relatives, searching through various library and newspaper archives, reading Dean’s notebooks and papers, tracking down his correspondence, and buying a lot of his work, I felt I had enough information to write an essay on his career. The current issue (#9) of Comic Art includes the essay, a visual biography with around 45 color images. Even before I planned to write on the cartoonist, I had been reading what little there is about him, mostly short reviews and features in magazines from the 40s-60s, and things like this Wikipedia entry. The entry characterizes Dean’s work as “reflecting the themes of disillusionment, self-delusion, yearning and the meaninglessness of modern life,” claims repeatedly made for Dean’s cartoons; while partially true, they seem to me to misrepresent Dean’s philosophy. I titled the essay “Sometimes we’re lovable in our error” (a quotation from Dean’s notebook) in part because I see many of the cartoons as more optimistic and sympathetic towards their subjects than had other readers -- and the notebooks, in which Dean talks about specific cartoons, seem to support this interpretation.

Here’s a Dean cartoon titled “It’s good to own a piece of land” (from What Am I Doing Here? 1947).


“Don’t search for hidden meanings in this drawing,” Dean cautioned. “They’re all apparent here – nothing hidden.” Like many of Dean’s titles, this one is to be taken literally: it’s good to own land. Yet Dean criticized the smugness of people who fail to extend sympathy to those in need: “What about those other people – do they own any land?” Dean’s cartoons may focus on a central protagonist, but he always wants us to think about the conditions under which others live. Dean also worried that readers might bring their own philosophical biases to this cartoon, warning that “There is no implication here that the state should own the land.” Such a polemical interpretation might take us away from the real-life implications of the cartoon and the ways that people suffer. Dean is not criticizing the main character for the joy he takes in ownership, but for his ignorance of those around him (his eyes are closed). While many of Dean’s cartoons are cryptic, others (like this one) communicate a premise in a clear way, and Dean’s comments are a helpful reminder about over-reading and misinterpretation. If readers assume (as many have) that Dean is not sympathetic towards many of the characters he creates, then they might be bringing their own cynicism, and not Dean’s, to the drawing.

Here’s another Dean cartoon, “I made this.”


“Our hero is part fool-part wise man,” Dean said, “but for one moment he partakes of greatness -- ridiculous as his creation may be it is better than the plodding absence of consciousness. Within its hectic form is a plan -- is self recognition -- in its fumblings is the hope --.” It might be easy to see this cartoon as ironic, mocking the foolishness of the immature artist. But Dean frequently displayed his sympathy for those who have a “plan” and attempt to create works of art or ways of thinking that will, if only in some small way, make conditions better for themselves and others.

[The Wikipedia entry refers to an essay on Dean by Chris Lanier that’s well worth reading.]