Existing comment:
(40) Chicago-- Holiday Handbook, ca. 1967.
Probably published in Holiday magazine, March 1967.
Watercolor, ink, and silver gelatin photograph.
Art Wood Collection of Cartoon and Caricature
Prints and Photographs Division
LC-DIG-ppmsca-09127 (40)
This cartoon offers a witty, bovine fantasy on the past and present of downtown Chicago. Arnold Roth (b. 1929) shows a cow peering at a small town on a lake, kicking over a lighted lantern and imagining the twentieth-century skyscrapers of Chicago--specifically, the twin corncob shaped Marina City building complex completed in 1964. A gifted cartoonist, Roth cleverly combines fine ink drawing, brightly hued watercolor, and collage in his sophisticated spoof on the legendary origins of the city's modern center. Tradition holds that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed most of the downtown, began when Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern. |