Way to Go

by Harry Mayerovitch

So what's so funny about death and dying? At age 93, Harry Mayerovitch penned these whimsical drawings that offer another perspective on the "way to go." Harry Mayerovitch had a remarkable career as an architect, designer, and cartoonist for nearly seven decades. With this new book, D+Q focuses on his cartooning work spanning three very different stages in his life. It begins in 1943 with a comprehensive look at his World War Two cartoons, then moves ahead to 1973 with a major excerpt from his book The Other One , and culminates yet another 30 years later with Mayerovitch's most recent cartoons from 2003, Way to Go . The book presents a fascinating evolution of one artist's work, from drawings of Hitler to the final period in Way to Go , a playful wit, and wry artistic line full of energy and life.

Genres: Comics

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

Reviews

[Gabriella]

Playful. Clever use of light and dark, almost like playing with negative space.

[Drew Canole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part of my Drawn & Quarterly completionist reading. I'm slowly trying to read everything they've ever published!

About half are short humour sketches about death, the rest has some funny strips involving shadows. It's nice stuff. This was the final published work by Mayerovitch when he was 93 years old, but contains strips from different periods in his whole career.

It's a very light volume which is a shame because it's basically the only book by Mayerovitch I've seen or heard of. Some of his illustration work and paintings were shown in Drawn & Quarterly Vol. 5 as an artist retrospective. I believe he's best known for his propaganda posters.

See some of those posters here:
https://blog.nfb.ca/blog/2015/02/25/h...

[Susan Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of whimsical drawings about shadows and death (amongst other things). The artwork is fun and reminded me of the drawings of Spike Milligan and Edward Gorey, (who's work I very much enjoy).

However the collection is very small and has little cohesion. This book can be read in 10 minutes and although I really liked some of the illustrations I've had no urge to re-read.

If your already a fan of Harry Mayerovitch I would think you would really enjoy this book but as someone who knows little about his work I feel like this maybe isn't the best introduction.