Lot 18: Jack Cole (1914-1958)

I could swear I smell burning rubber
signed 'Jack' (lower right), artist's stamp on verso, matted
ink wash on paper
15 1/4 x 12 1/2 in. (38.6 x 31.5 cm.)
RUN DATE: June 1954.

"In the rarefied realm of classic cartoon pin-up art, nobody did it better than Jack Cole. With his quirky line drawings and sensual watercolors, Cole, under Hugh Hefner's guiding hand, catapulted to stardom in the 1950s as Playboy's marquee cartoonist, a position he held until his untimely death at the age of 43.

"Jack Cole, most recently the subject of a book profile by Art Spiegelman and Chip Kidd (Jack Cole and Plastic Man: Forms Stretched To Their Limits) has been justly celebrated as the creator of Plastic Man and an innovative comic book artist of the 1940s. Cole had sold a handful of cartoons to magazines such as Boy's Life, Colliers and Judge in the '30s and '40s, but after finishing his 14-year run on Plastic Man, he found himself back at square one in an idiom that didn't come naturally to him: the gag cartoon. According to Cole, his savior was the Humorama line of down-market digest magazines. This girls and gags magazine circuit proved to be the perfect training ground to regain his footing and develop his craft at single panel cartoons. While Cole may have been honing his skills as a gag writer, his ability to render the female form was already without peer. Though he signed his cartoons 'Jake,' Cole's exquisite line drawings and masterful use of ink-wash -- a skill he carried over to Playboy -- betrayed his pseudonym. In comparison to his contemporaries, however, Cole was probably Humorama's least prolific artist. Though his images were frequently used for covers, Cole's cartoons were few and far between, with scarcely a single drawing appearing every five issues" (Fantagraphics).

Travelling exhibition through Germany, Cartoon Klassiker, 1999, p. 21.