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Sempé Fi (On Covers): The Office
Filed under: Sempé Fi Tagged: art, books, cartoons, comics, covers, Fantagraphics, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Ivan Brunetti, Pollux
Pollux writes:
The color gray dominates Ivan Brunetti's bird's-eye-view of a typical American cube farm on the cover of The New Yorker for March 2, 2009. In this corporate necropolis of worthless PCs, dried-out water coolers, filthy coffee pots, and nauseating microwaveable meals, the wheels of American commerce fitfully turn like those on a rusty pump trolley. Even more defective than the machinery are the workers themselves: they weep, sleep, drink coffee, throw around office equipment, argue, and suffer termination, germophobia, and Post-it Note overload. They look for shoes and romance, both of the online and office varieties, and dance fitfully at a potluck. They get caught looking at pornography and lose precious time as the bespectacled Help Desk Guy dismantles their computer with a ruthless drill.
Brunetti's "Ecosystem" is a corporate world that at first glance seems to be a beehive of industry and activity, but we soon come to an awful conclusion about this American workplace: little work is actually being done. In the sickly gasps of a failing economy, we hear verses, through a defective intercom system, from Alighieri's Inferno: "Here heartsick sighs and groanings and shrill cries / Re-echoed through the air devoid of stars."
I wish this world were imaginary, for the U.S. economy's sake, but as a reluctant inhabitant of this type of purgatory myself, I find Brunetti's vision all too familiar. I have witnessed a Mardi Gras Potluck in which managers and supervisors walked around in feathered carnival masks while workers happily clipped their fingernails, checked Facebook for the umpteenth time, made multiple trips to the break room for bratwurst, Lay's Potato Chips, and stomach-churning lumps of cheese and steak, and looked forward to a night of office-sponsored glow-in-the-dark miniature golfing.
By a trick of perspective we look at Brunetti's egg-headed, stick-limbed figures not from above, but follow them on a downward trajectory as if in an etching by Piranesi. All are locked in their compartments, doomed to scamper endlessly on a hamster wheel they themselves have maintained. The artist's cartoon figures, normally subjected to the most wicked and outrageous torments (see, for example, his book HAW!: Horrible, Horrible Cartoons), now participate in the most perverse ordeal of all: the daily routine of office life.
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They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is currently written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. (Unsigned posts through October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.)
The site is designed and maintained by House of Pretty and illustrated by Jesse Ewing for Inkleaf Studio. Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (who also draws our daily comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The kissable Emdashes logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World; PDF, p. 20)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, man about town, and New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books--that are edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Proposal: a better-designed Metrocard (for A Brief Message)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Micro-essay: on saving time through inspiration (for A Brief Message)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
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Comments
Outstanding once again, Pollux. Not only is it apparently abuzz with activity that is (upon closer inspection) completely pointless, it's also the most adorable representation of sheer misery I can remember seeing, ever. Even after you take in all the horrific details, it continues being cute as hell.