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CHAPTER 1

THE ARTIST AND HIS PHILOSOPHY

Exerpt from convocation speech to graduates at Jim Morin's alma mater, Syracuse University School of Visual and Performing Arts.

In my junior year, I had an instructor teaching me the finer points of how to illustrate washing machines, refrigerators, and microwave ovens. He had begun his career at General Electric, painting these appliances for the company's advertisements. The class was told that he had accomplished what we all aspired to — making the jump from "commercial" to "fine" art, that his harbor scenes won awards around the country.

We didn't have the heart to tell him that his boats looked like refrigerators, his boathouses like washing machines, and his sea gulls like microwave ovens.

Toward the end of the semester, he took the class on a field trip to General Electric. We walked into this enormous room divided into little cubicles, each with an artist painting refrigerators, washing machines, and microwave ovens.

A friend and I lagged and met one of these draftsmen, who offered a few words of advice: "Whatever you do, don't get married and have children until you have found some measure of fulfillment in your work." He described his own situation as: "Stuck."

Even today I think about that man. He has had a profound influence on my life, and I fervently hope that he escaped. A few months after the field trip, I attended a seminar on the music industry featuring Frank Zappa. During the question-and-answer session, a student told Zappa that he hadn't made a decent album since 1967's "We're Only in It for the Money". Zappa leaned toward the microphone and, his voice dripping with sarcasm, responded: "There's nothing that pleases me more than making you happy with my music!" We roared in laughter. Here was a man who refused to compromise and was prepared to defend his work.

Those experiences steered me toward doing just what I wanted and instilled a burning desire to do it with honesty and caring.

My real education has come at odd moments when least expected. It continues to do so. As art students, we lived inside a bubble being taught the fundamentals of our craft, but with little contact with the "outside world." The most highly regarded students were those who could render a picture with realistic accuracy. But that work lacked meaning and passion and purpose.

It may be impossible for art schools to teach meaning, passion, and purpose. But requiring all art students to read a newspaper, or perform some sort of community service, or in some other way open up to life outside the classroom may help point us in the direction that sets off that spark, that inspiration that becomes our bedrock.

That is when — from each and every one of you — the special interpretation of our existence that is particular to you and to you only will emerge in your art.

It's not easy. Asserting one's individuality through work is harder than ever. The tendency to copy already-established successful artists as a means toward quick and easy success is everywhere.

My own field is overflowing with inferior copies of the most prominent artists. Even more disturbing to me is the fact that some of these imitators are extremely successful, while at the same time the work of truly courageous and original editorial cartoonists goes unheralded.

Look to one of my personal artistic heroes, Lucian Freud, a painter who, no matter what fashion was taking over the art world, painted the figure. He had a vision formed by his love of the work of others who had come before him, as well as by his own life experiences, by his feelings toward humanity, by his feeling of inadequacy, by his longing that his painting not resemble the subject but be the subject.

He was aware of the Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, and other prevailing styles of the times, but he continued to follow his vision. And eventually, instead of following the public taste, the public came to him.

Each and every one of you here, whether you are a musician, actor or actress, dancer, painter or illustrator, has that individual spark inside of you. Each and every one of you has a point of view unlike any other. When you take that point of view and perfect its expression within your art, you give the rest of us a very rare gift.

Ignore the marketplace, forget what you think we want to see or hear. Go after your innermost feelings. Our society has an unquenchable thirst for honesty and integrity. We want to hear what you have to say.

Say it.

May 18, 1998 Jim Morin

MAKING LIGHT OF THE DEADLY SERIOUS

Jim Morin's office at The Herald is a windowless cubbyhole decorated in perpetual disarray. At least it always looks mildly chaotic when you walk in and find him hunched over the drawing board, CNN blasting away on a small TV screen to his left and a neglected computer on his right. The office's cork-covered walls bear other people's art work - offering the eye everything from the sublime (turn-of-the-century artist T.S. Sullivant's animal caricatures - a Morin favorite) to the ridiculous (a reader's letter that begins, "Morin, this is sick stuff ...").

There is also a poster from the Panthers' 1996-'97 championship season (he's a Panthers fan, a weekend hockey warrior and has a career-shortening knee injury to prove it); numerous photos of Morin's two children, Elizabeth, who is "almost 12," and Spencer, 11; a classic 1960s photo of the Beatles (he's a diehard fan); various caricatures of the famous and infamous by himself and other artists; a brochure for handmade acoustic guitars (he's an avid guitar player), and other bits and pieces of this funny, kind of shy, dynamic man's working days and personal passions.

Fairly prominent among the flotsam on the cork wall are two letters with New York Post on the letterhead signed by Pete Hamill, both in praise of particular Morin cartoons that struck the veteran newspaper columnist's funny bone.

Morin scores many direct hits on readers' funny bones - and he ticks off a lot of readers, too. It's supposed to work that way in the editorial-cartoon business.

"When you put your opinion out there 250 times a year, you're going to make people mad at some point," is Morin's reaction to the calls and letters and e-mails that take him to task. And when it comes to his critics as well as his fans, "There are two kinds of liars," Morin tells me, "those who say they love everything you do, and those who say they hate everything you do."

In between are, "The ones who give the honest answer by saying, 'I don't always - or even very often - agree with you, but I respect your work.' "Or in other words, "That cartoon today sucked, but others you've done don't."

Don't call Morin today, though, to give him your opinion because he's not in. The Herald's editorial cartoonist, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996, is in Landau, Germany, this week being honored as the latest recipient of the Thomas Nast Prize. He is only the seventh American cartoonist to win the award, given periodically by the Thomas Nast Foundation.

Nast was born in Laudau in southwest Germany in 1840. He lived until 1902 and is the only newspaper political cartoonist whose name, a century after his work was published, still is universally known.

His work day begins around 9:30 a.m., when, sketch pad and pen in hand, he walks into Herald Editorial Pages Editor Tom Fiedler's office, where the Editorial Board holds its daily morning conference. Here's how Morin describes his day:

"I go to the Editorial Board meeting. Then I go to sleep. Then I wake up ..." This is followed by his very best Jim Morin laugh, a roaring ha-ha-ha-ha that ends in a more-serious "No, really. Just listening to the debate [on issues discussed each day] gives me energy, which I bring back to my office and then go on from there."

An artist can represent great frustration to a writer. With a few strokes of his pen, Jim Morin often expresses what a good editorial might struggle to do in 450 words. What's more, he's funny - a gift, nurtured by hard work. After graduating from Syracuse College of Visual and Performing Arts, he sent "300 to 400" letters of inquiry to newspapers with circulations of 60,000 or more. Eventually, The Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise and Journal hired him. Although a long way from his native Massachusetts, "I was thrilled just to get in the business," he says.

"That paper put up with a lot of growing pains. You wouldn't recognize my work from that time. My stuff was very dark. I was into German expressionism, which didn't go over all that well in Texas ..."

He moved on to The Richmond (Va.) Times Dispatch, whose rival, the Richmond News Leader, boasted of Jeff MacNally, now with the Chicago Tribune. "My editors wanted me to be like Jeff, who is a very, very classy guy. So I went out of my way not to be like him. Nobody wants to imitate another cartoonist."

More and more, the unique, round-figured Morin style developed, supplanting the German impressionism. Morin credits another well-known political cartoonist, Pat Oliphant, for teaching him "how to use humor. A cartoonist learns to use humor to help make the point, but not get in the way of it."

He came to The Herald in 1978, having been noticed by former Herald Editor Jim Hampton, who retired at the end of last year.

Once the daily editorial conference is finished, Morin cruises back to his office, turns on CNN (before the all-news network began he listened to the Beatles, Leo Kotke and the Moody Blues while he drew) and hunkers down to draw with black, felt-tipped markers and a scratch pad.

Sometimes, he'll come up with five or six different, roughly sketched cartoon concepts on the same subject. He'll take them to Fiedler to get a second opinion, as he did to Jim Hampton for 20 years.

"Usually, if there's one I know is the best, in my view, that'll be the same one that'll be picked out as the best of the lot. That's the one people will usually see in the paper the next day."

Next, he draws the actual cartoon, refining and shaping it into his easily recognized style. Off to the camera room it goes, usually by midafternoon. Morin's cartoons are also syndicated by King Features and appear in as many as 40 newspapers.

Morin also does caricatures (a current favorite is that of Republican presidential-candidate and Texas Governor George W. Bush). And he has resumed doing the Magic City cartoon panels on Sundays for the Otherviews Etc. page whenever local events offer appropriate inspiration (not too tough in this locale).

Of Magic City, he says, "I created it because it's hard to come up with a single panel (cartoon) on local issues sometimes. Here, things are so convoluted, that we don't have simple problems, or simple solutions." That's not funny, but it sure is the truth, something Morin is awfully good at depicting with those seemingly effortless strokes of his pen five days a week.

September 21, 1999 Kathleen Krog

1996 PULITZER PRIZE

Herald editorial cartoonist Jim Morin, long considered one of the nation's sharpest, put the cap on his reputation Tuesday by winning the Pulitzer Prize.

So shocked was the unassuming, bespectacled satirist — though perhaps he should not have been — that if forced to draw his reaction, it would have been thus: "With my jaw dropping to the floor," he said.

His colleagues were not nearly so surprised. His boss, Editor Jim Hampton, had long expected that Morin would one day win journalism's highest prize. Through sources, he learned of the award Friday but succeeded in keeping it quiet until the official announcement Tuesday afternoon.

"It was the hardest secret I've ever kept," Hampton said. "I felt he's been overdue for this. Jim's style is original in a field in which many people copy the leaders. He doesn't copy anyone. He's bold, he's fresh, he's constantly inventive."

As the news bulletin flashed across a computer terminal, a shout of joy erupted from reporters and editors who just seconds before had gathered in The Herald's newsroom. Before they could toast Morin with champagne, he had to be dragged out of the office where he spends his days closeted at a drawing board.

"I just don't believe it," he said. "It's been 20 years of really hard work, and this is a culmination of sorts. It's a pat on the back, saying, 'Nice job.' And you wake up the next day and go back to work."

Noting that editorial cartoonists are something of an endangered species — several have been recently laid off by cost-cutting newspapers — Morin gave credit to Hampton and Herald Publisher David Lawrence.

"The tendency in editorial cartooning these days is that they're used as comic relief," he told his colleagues. "I feel fortunate to work for these guys. Not only do they not like that kind of cartoon, they actually reject my cartoons if they're too soft."

He also thanked the newsroom staff for keeping him well informed. "If it weren't for you doing your job well, I wouldn't have a chance," he said. Morin, 43, had been a Pulitzer finalist in 1990. An oil painter as well as a student of politics, he is admired by other cartoonists for his fine pen as much as for his often-biting commentary.

His trademark chiseled, stumpy figures have paraded across the Herald's editorial pages five days a week since late 1978. His editorial cartoons are syndicated through King Features and run regularly in 26 newspapers. Recently, he also began drawing a weekly strip called Magic City for Tropic, The Herald's Sunday magazine.

Morin is a nonpartisan lampooner, succinctly targeting the hypocrisy of politicians of all ideological stripes or the absurdities of modern life. To Morin, raising hackles is a necessary part of the cartoonist's job. It doesn't bother him if someone doesn't think a particular cartoon is funny.

"I want to express an opinion," he said, "what you find outrageous or amusing about the world we live in. Political cartoons don't have to be funny to be good." Morin was born and raised in a propitious place for a political cartoonist — Washington, D.C., whose follies he would later puncture with such relish.

"Growing up in the '60s and approaching draft age for the Vietnam War, you were interested in current affairs — intensely," he said. "I was also interested in animated cartoons. "It was actually my mother, who was a fine artist, who suggested I try political cartooning as a great way to make a living and combine those two interests."

He began his cartooning career at the Daily Orange in Syracuse University, where he majored in illustration and minored in painting. It took him a year to find a job, at the Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise and Journal. Let go in an economy move, he worked the next 18 months at the Richmond Times- Dispatch in Virginia.

After several failed attempts, he was hired in 1978 by The Herald, which had no editorial cartoonist at the time. He said he could not have landed in a place with richer material.

"What a great place to draw about," he marveled. "It was a huge challenge — the days of riots, of cocaine cowboys, of Joe Carollo and Maurice Ferre."

Of course, Carollo and Ferre are now back, and Morin isn't about to go anywhere else. "You really grow to love this place. As long as the paper will let me mouth off, it's my pleasure."

Wednesday, April 10, 1996 Andres Viglucci

WITH MALACE TOWARD ALL

ART OF CARTOONING THE CANDIDATES: WITH MALACE TOWARD ALL

The consensus among cartoonists is that caricature is created solely through exaggerating physical features relative to the appearance of the subject. I've never agreed with this slide-rule approach. Caricature is a visual commentary on what kind of man or woman that politician is. Just as important as physical appearance is how they sound, what they say, what they stand for, their accomplishments or lack thereof, and so on. Caricatures are not mere likenesses; they are psychological portraits that stem from something deeper than human anatomy.

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Excerpted from "Jim Morin's World"
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