Honoring Our September 9, 2022 Dan's Cover Artist Jules Feiffer

By David Taylor

3 minute 09/08/2022

Jules Feiffer with one of his artworks, which shares his iconic art style with his 2015 and 2022 Dan's papers covers — Jules Feiffer with one of his artworks, which shares his iconic art style with his 2015 and 2022 Dan’s papers covers.

This week’s cover art was created for Dan’s Papers by the illustrious cartoonist and writer Jules Feiffer, whose last cover for the paper was way back in 2015.

In his 93 years, Feiffer has earned a Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartoons, an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film (Munro), a place in the Comic Book Hall of Fame, acknowledgement from the Library of Congress; and acclaim for books such as The Phantom Tollbooth and Sick, Sick, Sick: A Guide to Non-Confident Living.

His other published works include the novels Harry, the Rat with Women and Ackroyd; children’s books A room with a Zoo and The Daddy Mountain; graphic novels Tantrum and Kill My Mother; and plays Little Murders and Knock Knock. And, of course, one can’t forget his weekly comic strip in The Village Voice, which unabashedly satirized everything from race relations to marriage and sex for 42 years, from 1956 to 1997.

The Shelter Island resident is well-known throughout the Hamptons and is considered a great friend to several local institutions, such as Stony Brook Southampton, Bay Street Theater and The American Hotel. In fact, this week’s watercolor cover, “Bravo to the American Hotel,” was done in tribute to the restaurant, honoring its 50th year in business.

“I dare say no one is more talented, interesting and keenly directed at making his point — as an artist, as well as in the rest of his life,” says Julie Keyes, owner of Keyes Art and facilitator of this week’s cover. “This American icon has taken aim at commemorating this other American icon — the American Hotel in Sag Harbor.”

Described in Martha Fay’s 2015 book Out of Line: The Art of Jules Feiffer as “the ultimate anti-organization man,” Feiffer told Dan’s Papers at the time, “I don’t like labels, but it was clear to me from the beginning, and it’s no less clear now as I near the end, that ‘the system’ as we know it and as it over-organizes itself is not the way I can function.”

Perhaps it’s his insightful, out-of-the-box thinking that has been the key to Feiffer’s continued success. “The organizations may change but the rule makers don’t,” he continues. “They are the same people in the same positions who say, ‘It’s my way or the highway.’ So I took the highway.”