Before “Rube Goldberg” became an adjective modifying any machine or other human endeavor more complicated than necessary, it was the name of a cartoonist whose work graced the funny papers, the editorial page, magazine covers, advertisements, and countless other formats for more than 50 years. If you lived in the United States in the first half of the last century, you couldn’t escape his work, and not many people wanted to. Curiously, for a man so gifted in so many venues (he was also a newspaper columnist, a songwriter, and, briefly, a vaudeville star), Goldberg remains famous for one thing: his single-panel drawings of absurdly complex contraptions that in fact accomplish a simple task. Or maybe not so curiously, because these Dada chain reactions have lost none of their genius—or their humor—with time. Anyone who feels as though he or she is drowning daily in technocratic complexity can still laugh at a Goldberg drawing.
This slide show is taken from The Art of Rube Goldberg (A) Inventive (B) Cartoon (C) Genius, Selected by Jennifer George, Introduction by Adam Gopnik. Published by Abrams ComicArts.
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Born in San Francisco on July 4, 1883, the son of an immigrant real estate speculator who became powerful in local politics, Rube took his first art lessons from a sign painter (secretly at first and then with his father’s permission), and one of his early drawings won an art competition. “I was 11 years old when my first picture was exhibited,” the cartoonist once recalled, “and for a few weeks, I felt as I would have called Michelangelo ‘Mike’ if he had been around. It was a pen-and-ink drawing, a picture of an old violinist, and was shown at the old John Swett Grammar School [in San Francisco]. Then it was hung in the Board of Education rooms of San Francisco for a great many years to show what the pupils could do. I would not have traded that drawing for a Corot, and any art connoisseur will tell you that’s going some.”
© Heirs of Rube Goldberg
Unlike those cartoonists linked indelibly to one strip, e.g., Charles Shultz and Peanuts, Goldberg moved easily from sequenced panel cartoons to single frames, from series to one-offs. Among the earliest were his Foolish Questions cartoon series (“O, Dearie, did you cut yourself shaving?” “No, my little humming bird, I fell asleep by a buzz saw”) and The Ancient Order of the Glass House, a virtual encyclopedia of hypocrisies.
© Heirs of Rube Goldberg
Goldberg’s first invention cartoon appeared in 1912, although he would fiddle with the format for decades. But the joke never changed: the invention was always ridiculous and impossible. And the more impractical it became, the funnier it got.
© Heirs of Rube Goldberg
Mike & Ike debuted in the Sunday funnies in 1913, although the idea for the one-panel cartoon had been kicking around since 1907, when Goldberg introduced The Look-Alike-Boys. The jokes were pure vaudeville. Henny Youngman could have written the captions.
© Heirs of Rube Goldberg
Professor Butts walks through a glass door and when they pick out the pieces they find an idea for an automatic cigar cutter.
Zoovle-Pup (A) seeing master coming up the path wags tail for joy upsetting candle (B) which sets fire to excelsior (C) in box on floor. Flames (D) heat popcorn (E) which Eskimo mistakes for falling snow and dances with glee, getting his belt (F) caught on suspended hook (G), which jerks string (H) and pulls trigger of pistol (I). Bullet (J) hits Zingus bird which opens its mouth in surprise and drops worm (K). Swordfish (L) jumps out of bowl (M) after worm and its sword neatly lops off end of cigar.
Now, the big idea is to get the swordfish back into the bowl. I would suggest that you leave that entirely to the swordfish.
© Heirs of Rube Goldberg
Boob McNutt was Goldberg’s longest running strip in the funny pages. Goldberg bedecked the feature with all manner of side-show subdivisions, including Boob McNutt’s Ark, a cavalcade of creatures that never lived anywhere outside Goldberg’s imagination. As Rube enjoined his audience: “Cut ‘em out! Put ‘em on the wall!”
© Heirs of Rube Goldberg
Even fake inventions need trial runs. Among Goldberg’s papers, the family unearthed several pages on which he worked out the baroque details of his fantasies.
© Heirs of Rube Goldberg
From bottle stoppers to album covers, no commercial surface was safe from Goldberg, who licensed his material, often created original drawings, and in general did everything he could to spread his “brand.” Cynical? Perhaps, but you know you want one of those drinking glasses.
© Heirs of Rube Goldberg
Goldberg drew political cartoons for about three decades. They don’t hold up so well over time, mostly because political cartooning styles are so different now. Goldberg worked in an era when symbolism was pretty heavy handed and every object came with a label. The Grim Reaper was always standing in for “Famine” or “War.” But Goldberg’s knack for visualizing ideas, and for rendering them with such immediate simplicity that anyone could understand, never failed. In 1947, he won the Pulitzer prize for cartooning for this image.
© Heirs of Rube Goldberg
In 1963, Goldberg retired as a political cartoonist, and immediately took up sculpting—at the age of 80. He sculpted everything from cartoon characters in three dimensions to busts of himself and President Nixon.
© Heirs of Rube Goldberg
For four decades, Rube designed the family’s Christmas cards.
© Heirs of Rube Goldberg
Professor Butts, while overhauling a 1907 Ford, find an idea for a simple way to sharpen ice skates.
Wire bundle-basket (A) in sporting store hits floorwalker (B) and knocks him dizzy. As he sinks to floor his knees hit end of seesaw (C) which tosses basketball (D) into broken net (E). Balls falls on tennis racket (F) causing group of tin cans (G) to fly up out of reach of hungry goat (H). Goat, being robbed of his dinner, jumps in fury and butts his head against boxing dummy (I). Dummy sways back and forth on swivel base (J), causing two eccentric wheels (K) to push file (L) across blade of skate (M) and make it sharp enough to use for skating in the winter and shaving in the summer.
You may think it cruel to hit the floor walker on the head. But we assure you there is nothing inside which can be damaged.
© Heirs of Rube Goldberg
