Spacing friend Alfred Holden is the former editor of the Toronto Star‘s Ideas and Insight section. During his tenure he ran a series of columns by Dusan Petricic called Dusan’s World. Now’s there’s a collection of his work out and an exhibit, launching tomorrow. Here’s what Alfred says, of Dusan and how the cartoons came about:
The idea was to step out of the usual editorial cartoonist’s parliamentary territory onto the streets and into the grit of the great city. You see commentary on current affairs — there was often a “newspeg” to the week’s cartoon, you will find your memory twigged — but oriented toward city life more than public figures and politicians. By the way, Dusan is otherwise kind of world famous, in his low-key way — New York times, New Yorker, Wall Street journal, and of course, the Toronto Star. And he’s illustrated dozens of kids’ books. Google him and a world comes up.
Now, he did all the work, but we talked often on the phone and sometimes looked at the city together. For a time he had a big Buick (now a shrunken one, I think). One winter day, he picked me up at 1 Yonge, and we went up to Downsview to see the old DND hangars (then threatened, now gone, more going). The security people wouldn’t let us near, so we drove around and found a spot on the other side where we could look at the buildings through a fence. To actually stop he had to drive up on the curb and park the Buick on the grass (I was worried it would sink in). So he did a cartoon of the hangars, for a series he invented, “Sleeping beauties of Toronto,” in which he’d identify relics, and re-imagine them as part of the city again. In the tradition of editorial cartoonists, there was advocacy cleverly embedded in almost every project.
Dusan noted, sometimes honoured, the big lights, like mayor Miller (now perhaps more understood than then), but also lesser-known but distinctive people, sights and lights. When a retrospective on architect Uno Prii (of the swoopy apartment houses) appeared at U of T’s architecture faculty, we “covered” the event via Dusan. We talked a lot on the phone, swapping ideas. Sometimes I would reject a cartoon — silly me, actually — but he’d just some back with another, and bingo, he’d nailed it in a new way.
When we started the series, I began thinking, “Hey, some day this will make a good exhibit,” and sure enough….! Thursday! And a book!
Nowadays I stumble into Dusan’s World in the Star’s electronic library, and I’m wowed by their cleverness, their warmth toward the fabric of the city — the love that went into them. His, mine too it seems, and another guy’s, btw. There was a designer named Bob Bishop — the best on the planet, who “drew” (as we say in newspaper jargon) the pages — the whole Ideas/Insight section actually, those were the days. So the setting was lovely too.
So take a look.
