The recipient of the cartooning profession’s highest honor, the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year is chosen by a secret ballot of the members of the National Cartoonists Society. The NCS is pleased to announce this year’s winner is celebrated cartoonist andillustrator, Edward Sorel.
The coveted award was presented to Mr.Sorel on Friday evening, September 16th at the Reuben Awards gala dinner held in Kansas City, Missouri. Mr. Sorel was not present, but sent a sincere and characteristically cheeky acceptance speech, filmed by Curator for Comics and Cartoons at Columbia University, Karen Green.
Of Mr. Sorel, cartoonist Signe Wilkinson said, “New York City magazines, books and restaurant walls would have had the same visual panache as a suburban mall if it had not been for Edward Sorel and his miraculous pen. The kid from Brooklyn, raised on the movies and disappointed by an artless art school, forged his own style that looked like the fluid first sketch of an old master’s portrait –a portrait that illuminated… and then eviscerated the character of his hapless subject. Frank Sinatra never looked more like Frank Sinatra than in Sorel’s blistering 1966 Esquire magazine cover. He drew movie stars, presidents and politicians as well as delightful children’s books filled with beautifully drawn characters in beautifully drawn scenes. It’s a crime the NCS took this long to give him its highest honor but join me in applauding one of cartooning’s great… old… masters, Ed Sorel.
Sorel’s work is known for its storytelling, its left-liberal social commentary, its criticism of reactionary right-wing politics and organized religion. Formerly a regular contributor to The Nation, New York Magazine and The Atlantic, his work is today seen more frequently in Vanity Fair. He has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of America’s foremost political satirists”.
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