I learned of the death of Sempé – one of my favorite contemporary artists, whose specialty was little men in big cities – last night while reading the current issue of The New Yorker, the magazine he drew over 100 covers for. Googling, I found an obituary from the Washington Post, written by my friend Brian Murphy, who quoted the artist in the third paragraph. “What I like so much about cartoons is the way they can express certain ideas discreetly. It is a way of talking about yourself without really seeming to do so.”
Of course, Sempé was more than a cartoonist. One of his brilliant illustrations shows a man standing on a busy street – traffic and pedestrians swirling all around him – and looking through the window of a gallery at a still life.
