Peter Arno was one of the great cartoonists of his generation, probably one of the greatest of all time. A mainstay of The New Yorker, his work helped define the magazine, and he was wealthy enough to party on with the types of people he lampooned in his cartoons. He was only 64 years old when he died in 1968.

In the introduction to his book, Peter Arno’s Ladies & Gentlemen (Simon and Schuster, 1951), Arno answered a few questions that had been constantly hurled at him over the years. One of my favorite responses was to the age-old question all creative people must suffer.

Here’s Arno:

“Question Number Two seems to be: ‘Where do you get all your ideas? Do they just come to you?’

“The last thing they do, madam, is ‘just come.’ My ideas are produced with blood, sweat, brain-racking toil, the help of The New Yorker art staff, and the collaboration of keen-eyed undercover operatives. For the first few years I did think up most of my own situations. I had to. I was developing a style and a new kind of format, and there was no way anyone else could do it for me. But as time went on, and a distinct pattern for my work was set, it became easier for others to make contributions. By “others,” I mean the scant handful of gifted idea-men (there are hordes of the other kind) who have grown up in the field during the past few years.

“This system, I think, is as it should be. No man, after he has evolved several hundred variations on the few basic human themes, can be expected to keep it up indefinitely. Not entirely by himself, at any rate. He has a large job, alone, in continuing to improve and vary the style he has developed; the struggle to avoid easy stagnation (if he wants to avoid it) is endless. For ideas for the pictures, new minds and fresh slants become a necessity.

“The ideal collaboration - and I’ve been fortunate enough to participate in several - consists of sitting down together, with lots of paper and pencils, and digging; staring into the microscope from all angles, till suddenly the elusive germ is spotted. And sometimes this is only the beginning. Often it takes days and weeks of patient tearing apart and rebuilding of an idea before the artist is ready to start work.

“I can hear the well-meaning matron who started this discussion saying incredulously, ‘What! All that fuss over a joke? Why do you go to so much trouble?’

“There are times when I wonder why.

“Money, I guess.”

Mike Lynch, the blogging cartoonist, did a recent post with an anecdote about a visit to Arno’s studio by the non-blogging cartoonist Mel Casson. What was discovered there sort of debunks his glib response about money (Arno also came from a wealthy family.)

Hairy Green Eyeball has a very nice selection of Arno cartoons to give you a taste of his talent.

[Artwork: two cartoons from Peter Arno’s Ladies & Gentlemen, © The New Yorker]

[Caption #1: “Is that one?”]

[Caption #2: “I’m afraid as a kid star, he’s through.”]