From: the Charles Addams Foundation
Today would be the 101st. birthday of cartoonist Charles Addams, the creator of the The Addams Family. Popular illustrators tend to develop personas. While anonymous to the general public, the cartoonists fans come to believe that what they see is who the artists is. Rarely, do the man and the myth intersect.
Coming across Addams' macabre drawings while thumbing through old issues of the New Yorker you could easily get the sense the artist lived on the top floor of an asylum. For years stories abounded of how he was carried off to Bedlam, furiously sketching his best known works. Never happened.
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Much of his work was oddly sweet, all of it was funny, yet it was the ghoulish macabre stuff that sold the books and created the reputation.
As it turned out he was a lover of classic cars, something of a ladies man, a curious guy with an odd kick for the absurd, a self described Uncle Fester. In 1988 Addams had a heart attack and died in his parked car. His wife told the Times "He's always been a car buff, so it was a nice way to go."
Check your local library for a copy of Charles Addams, A Cartoonists Life by Linda H. Davis.
Toad
Coming across Addams' macabre drawings while thumbing through old issues of the New Yorker you could easily get the sense the artist lived on the top floor of an asylum. For years stories abounded of how he was carried off to Bedlam, furiously sketching his best known works. Never happened.
.jpg)
Much of his work was oddly sweet, all of it was funny, yet it was the ghoulish macabre stuff that sold the books and created the reputation.
As it turned out he was a lover of classic cars, something of a ladies man, a curious guy with an odd kick for the absurd, a self described Uncle Fester. In 1988 Addams had a heart attack and died in his parked car. His wife told the Times "He's always been a car buff, so it was a nice way to go."
Check your local library for a copy of Charles Addams, A Cartoonists Life by Linda H. Davis.
Toad
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