Constellation Similarity Assertions

Alan Dunn (1900-1974) and his wife Mary Petty (1899-1976) were American cartoonists. They married in 1927, and for more than thirty years lived in a modest, three-bedroom apartment in Manhattan that also served as their studio. They rarely left the city and, although they were members of several professional organizations and clubs and attended social events, Mary Petty and Alan Dunn spent a great deal of time developing their art and a unique view of life.

Alan Dunn studied at Columbia University, the National Academy of Design and the American Academy in Rome, an experience which provided him with a particular insight about both European cultures and American tourists. When he returned to the United States, his mild satire was well-received by magazines such as the newly established New Yorker, who began publishing his cartoons in 1926. Thanks to Dunn’s expertise at drawing architecture (beginning in 1936 he contributed regularly to "Architectural Record") viewers can easily identify European settings in his cartoons such as the Roman Forum and the Basilica of Maxentius, and his social satires often illustrate American tourists’ provincial nature and myopic sense of superiority. He defined himself as a "social cartoonist, whose pen is no sword but a titillating feather that reminds us that we do not act as we speak or think."

...

View Constellation