How the Artist Barry Blitt Turns Politics Into Cartoon Cover Gold

The cartoonist and illustrator Barry Blitt has created more than a hundred New Yorker covers. Whether he’s rendering Lady Liberty as an anxious tightrope walker or Putin as a blue-green sea creature, Blitt’s singular visual style is the vehicle for a dry wit—a sidelong comic style he characterizes as “passive-aggressive.” “I don’t always have the guts to come out and say something in bright, harsh colors—I’m sort of whispering it or saying it in brackets,” he says. In this video, Blitt lets the director, Nicolas Heller (also known as New York Nico), into his studio to discuss his vast archive of work. We see how a sketch comes to life, and get a taste of the artist’s lively humor away from the drawing board. In an age of politics that seems darker and more high-stakes than ever, his cartoons are a source of sorely needed comic relief. The New Yorker editor David Remnick sums it up: “Barry Blitt is the sane, funny guy in an insane time. He makes me happy.”