MAD magazine’s oldest active artist is still spoofing what makes us human
Sergio Aragonés has drawn for the publication since he arrived in New York from Mexico 60 years ago‚ and at age 85 he’s contributed to its 70th anniversary issue: ‘Drawing has become like walking.’
Sergio Aragonés had long read MAD magazine back in Mexico by the time he first landed in New York... He stepped through the humor outlet’s front doors 60 years ago, expecting to find the place as wild in spirit as the publication’s satirically hip pages. This was, after all, the home of the staff’s self-anointed “Usual Gang of Idiots.”
Instead, the recent college student was introduced to a relatively staid Madison Avenue office. Where was the whimsy? The MAD-cap frivolity? This was no clubhouse of high jinks.
“I thought it was going to be a lot of jokes on the walls,” Aragonés says... After he was hired that day he walked in to sell his work, he suggested to publisher William Gaines, “Why don’t we paint one of the doors to make it look like an elevator — putting fake numbers at the top?” — befuddling visitors attempting to exit. Or perhaps better yet: “Why don’t we put a bomb in the roof with the sound effect ‘tick-tock-tick-tock’ ?”
“Bill looked at me like: ‘Sergio, this is an office of working people.’ He wanted the office to be very functional.”
'...beneath all his charisma is an ever-flowing fount of imagination. “I suspect if Sergio were to go and donate blood, ink would come out of him,” says John Ficarra, former MAD editor in chief. “He is incapable of not drawing.”
Sergio Aragonés has drawn for the publication since he arrived in New York from Mexico 60 years ago‚ and at age 85 he’s contributed to its 70th anniversary issue: ‘Drawing has become like walking.’
Sergio Aragonés had long read MAD magazine back in Mexico by the time he first landed in New York... He stepped through the humor outlet’s front doors 60 years ago, expecting to find the place as wild in spirit as the publication’s satirically hip pages. This was, after all, the home of the staff’s self-anointed “Usual Gang of Idiots.”
Instead, the recent college student was introduced to a relatively staid Madison Avenue office. Where was the whimsy? The MAD-cap frivolity? This was no clubhouse of high jinks.
“I thought it was going to be a lot of jokes on the walls,” Aragonés says... After he was hired that day he walked in to sell his work, he suggested to publisher William Gaines, “Why don’t we paint one of the doors to make it look like an elevator — putting fake numbers at the top?” — befuddling visitors attempting to exit. Or perhaps better yet: “Why don’t we put a bomb in the roof with the sound effect ‘tick-tock-tick-tock’ ?”
“Bill looked at me like: ‘Sergio, this is an office of working people.’ He wanted the office to be very functional.”
'...beneath all his charisma is an ever-flowing fount of imagination. “I suspect if Sergio were to go and donate blood, ink would come out of him,” says John Ficarra, former MAD editor in chief. “He is incapable of not drawing.”
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