From the new Vanity Fair, David Margolick writing about artist/caricaturist David Levine:
The New Yorker’s handling of another piece of work, in 2005, this one of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon
sitting around a conference table, was more disturbing to him. At the
magazine’s request, Levine says, he placed sinister, hooded figures
brandishing machine guns behind Abbas. To balance things off (at least
in his own mind), he added some gigantic missiles alongside Sharon.
When the drawing appeared, however, he was shocked to see that the
missiles had vanished: never before, he says, had his art been altered
behind his back. After that, he goes on, he got no further assignments
from the magazine. “David Levine is a great political artist and kept
on publishing with us after this, but all I remember about this was
thinking that with Sharon being so ominously huge in the drawing, the
bombs were too much,” says David Remnick, The New Yorker’s
editor. “More important, if the implication is that we made the change
for ominous political reasons, he is, with respect, wrong. This article
didn’t pull punches on Sharon, to say the least.” Before long, though,
the magazine did stop commissioning Levine: his new work required too
much retouching.
sitting around a conference table, was more disturbing to him. At the
magazine’s request, Levine says, he placed sinister, hooded figures
brandishing machine guns behind Abbas. To balance things off (at least
in his own mind), he added some gigantic missiles alongside Sharon.
When the drawing appeared, however, he was shocked to see that the
missiles had vanished: never before, he says, had his art been altered
behind his back. After that, he goes on, he got no further assignments
from the magazine. “David Levine is a great political artist and kept
on publishing with us after this, but all I remember about this was
thinking that with Sharon being so ominously huge in the drawing, the
bombs were too much,” says David Remnick, The New Yorker’s
editor. “More important, if the implication is that we made the change
for ominous political reasons, he is, with respect, wrong. This article
didn’t pull punches on Sharon, to say the least.” Before long, though,
the magazine did stop commissioning Levine: his new work required too
much retouching.
Seems to be a little parallax there on whether Levine ever got commissioned again. Thanks to Jeet Heer for the spot.
