Published illustrations (above) by New Haven's Merle Nacht (pictured below), subject of a new career retrospective at Merwin's Art Shop.
Frank Rizzo/ New Haven Arts Paper
One summer day in 1985, the illustrator Merle Nacht boarded a Metro-North train at Union Station, and carried with her a big dream and a portfolio of anxiety.
Her goal was to arrive where few freelance artists ever find themselves: on the list of regular cover artists for the prestigious New Yorker magazine.
In a sense, she already had her foot, and delicate hand, in the door. The publication had purchased several tiny black and white drawings used to break up dense pages of type.
Still, there’s was a big difference between that and the highly competitive four-color space that over the decades has featured the work of many of America’s most talented artists.
Merle hoped the several new drawings she would show the periodical’s art editor, Lee Lorenz, would impress him. They were different in appearance than the whimsical and understated style that had become her trademark, but she figured that to fit into Lorenz’s stable of artists she needed to channel prominent examples of success, covers that could make people laugh.
The problem for Merle, as she saw it, was that she wasn’t a salesperson. And, in her view, cutthroat Manhattan easily discards those who are shy, modest, and allergic to self-promotion, as she had been.
She recently told me the details of that day, in an interview in the New Haven apartment that she and her husband Arthur bought in 2003. The timing for the chat was tied to Tuesday’s opening of her retrospective at New Haven’s Merwin’s Art Shop, the first such show in the nearly 90 year history of this iconic place on Chapel Street.
That’s a story in itself, but first I need to return to that summer day 37 years ago when, for Merle, everything changed.
Much to her surprise, she found the New Yorker’s physical space on West 43rd Street “unpretentious, with plain little offices, not intimidating at all. I didn’t have the feeling I was walking into a holy place. It didn’t seem like they needed to impress anybody. They didn’t put on airs and I didn’t either.“
In short, her kind of place. The problem, it turned out, was not in her retiring manner but in the drawings she’d brought with her.
Lorenz, another quiet and mannerly person, liked her work enough to make a suggestion: That she should quit trying to make something funny and to “make something beautiful.” In effect, “Quit copying others and do your own work in your own way.”
This advice, far from dejecting Merle, was a great relief. She went back home that day with an improved comfort level.
Now she needed an idea for a cover.
One day, she and Arthur were driving along Interstate 84 and saw the Ferris wheel of a carnival just off the highway. They stopped, and she took photos of the giant ride.
Later, she drew it in her own playful style, pulling it out of reality and into a kind of visual fantasy. That was the drawing she sent to Lorenz, who bought it after making a suggestion about the placement of the Ferris wheel, and put it in the magazine’s art vault for future use.
The payment, however, was immediate: $2,850.
As time went on, similar checks arrived in the mail.
Those of us who had known Merle, as I did over many years as a contributor to the magazine I edited, Northeast, were thrilled to see her abundant talent recognized in that way. I had always thought of her as a modern-day James Thurber, who used a style much like Merle’s during early years of The New Yorker but with an often bitter tone.
Merle’s interpretations of everyday life were typically upbeat, and even when taking on serious subjects, such as menopause, as she did for the Chicago Tribune magazine. Her work brings to mind that of Roz Chast, another Connecticut talent.
Even so, Merle’s tenure at the New Yorker ended when the hard-edged Britisher Tina Brown took over as editor in 1992 and changed the direction and tone of the magazine. By then, fortunately, Merle’s reputation for excellent work led her to other prominent places, such as covers for major book publishers.
The man at the heart of her work and its success was her husband, Arthur. When I asked Merle about the source of her whimsy, she modestly responded that it came from him, and his dry wit. something she’s adored ever since they first met on the Syracuse University campus in the late 1960s.
In their case, the adoration is mutual, a tenet of a marriage that has thrived over 53 years. And it is also a reason that the Merwin’s first-ever exhibit came together.
Last August, showing his meticulous and purposeful nature, he intended to pull off a surprise gift for Merle’s 75th birthday, many months away in the spring of 2022.
He approached Teah Muller, who has run Merwin’s since the retirement of her father, and who knew Arthur as a regular framing customer, about his idea for a retrospective.
She was impressed, but explained that since the 1930s, the shop’s business plan has relied on framing art, the sale of prints that depict New Haven and Yale, and, in the last six decades, Japanese woodblock prints that her grandfather had collected. In nearly nine decades, then, not a one artist exhibition.
That’s when fate, employing a dose of history, took over to change an unchangeable policy.
The Nachts had moved to their New Haven condo in 2003 when Arthur enrolled in the Yale School of Drama to study theater management.
It was roughly that time that Merle’s life changed not only in not only geography but in intellectual direction.
She had noticed her hands starting to shake. And the simplicity and delicacy that she was known for was becoming more and more difficult to carry out. Tests revealed she suffered from Benign Essential Tremors causing, in medical lingo, “involuntary rhythmic contractions.”
In time, she had to give up drawing as a profession. Yet, as it always seems to be with her, she spins a sunny outcome.
She took up the opportunity to grow anew, auditing many classes at Yale, including the history of art and architecture, stagecraft, Italian cinema. Merle continued to be the quiet intellect in a world of confounding noise.
And it was the Yale connection that led to Merwin’s.
One of Arthur’s fellow students in the drama school was Amanda Walker, who was specializing in costume and set design. The two became friends. Arthur introduced Amanda to Merle, who became what she recalls a “kind and generous” mentor for her when she wanted to learn about illustration.
After graduation, Amanda did a lot of theater work, but when the pandemic hit, productions she had planned at the University of Hartford and Mount Holyoke were canceled. And, burned out by it all, Amanda sought more reliable employment.
She got a job at Merwin’s learning the framing and print trade. On the summer day that Arthur walked in, she didn’t recognize him because everyone was masked. But when he talked to Teah, Amanda heard his familiar voice. So, she jumped into the conversation.
She told Teah about Merle and her work, and her genteel personality
Teah was happy to hear this, and though she hesitated for a few days. “After all,” she told me, “I didn’t have any experience at mounting artist exhibits” — got back to Arthur with her decision. An enthusiastic yes.
Even so, Arthur’s plan to make it a surprise for Merle went awry. He couldn’t resist the urge to tell her right away what he’d done. And why not? When a pandemic reminds us that life is unpredictable minute to minute, there is no reason to wait to deliver good news, and to show gratitude for enduring love.
Merle Nacht: Drawings, Illustrations, Paintings: A Retrospective will be on display from today through April 16 at Merwin’s Art Shop, 1052 Chapel St. The shop’s hours: Tuesdays through Fridays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Saturdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.