Kliban..Cats not included

One of my favouite cartoonists is Bernard Kliban and I wanted to cover some of his lesser known works in this post.

He's probably best known for his Cat-series of books and spin-off merchandise, which made him a very wealthy man, but is in my opinion, the least interesting examples of his prodigious output.

Here's a photo of his non-Cat books from my collection - built up over a period of a year-or-so, some time ago. I'm glad I got them when I did as some are becoming increasingly scarce. There are atleast 2 unpublished volumes that I know of : Dancers (planned 1999) and a retropective "Art of B. Kliban" by Cathy Fenner and Arnie Fenner (planned 2005). The latter title has been in my Amazon wish-list for 8+years, so I'm not holding out any hope that it'll ever get published.

Kliban's non-Cat books

Image from the unpublished "Art of B. Kliban"

As well as the published books there probably another couple of books-worth of uncollected cartoons dotted amongst various publications. I'm sure the Playboy volumes don't collect together his entire Playboy output (1964-1980+), and his early work also appears in Nexus, New Yorker, Punch and Evergreen Review. I'm sure that it'd be quite a task to track down all these various cartoons.

In addition, there is his commercial advertising work, LP covers and psychedelic 60's posters too. The unpublished "Art of B. Kliban" hints at further self-portraits, but I don't know if these have ever been exhibited or published elsewhere.

There are plenty of great cartoon images over at : http://www.coldbacon.com/kliban2.html

And a rare uncollected cartoon from Evergreen Review, June 1968 can be seen here :

http://themagicwhistle.blogspot.com/2010/11/evergreen.html

Lastly, here are some examples of more cartoons and artwork, not found elsewhere.

Cool psychedelic poster. 1967

David Bromberg LP, 1977



Advert, 1968

Poster, 1967

Poster, 1968