Dick Guindon
Encyclopedia
Star Tribune
The Star Tribune is the largest newspaper in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is published seven days each week in an edition for the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area. A statewide version is also available across Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota. The...
, The Realist
The Realist
The Realist was a pioneering magazine of "social-political-religious criticism and satire," intended as a hybrid of a grown-ups version of Mad and Lyle Stuart's anti-censorship monthly The Independent. Edited and published by Paul Krassner, and often regarded as a milestone in the American...
and the Detroit Free Press
Detroit Free Press
The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is entitled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep"...
. During the late 1950s, Guindon attended the University of Minnesota where he drew cartoons for The Minnesota Daily, as recalled by Stan Gotlieb:
- In the campus newspaper, The Minnesota Daily, a young, brash, twisted and immensely talented cartoonist named Dick Guindon put out social commentary in a Jules FeifferJules FeifferJules Ralph Feiffer is an American syndicated cartoonist, most notable for his long-run comic strip titled Feiffer. He has created more than 35 books, plays and screenplays...
vein but with more bite. I had first met Guindon when I was still in high school. Some friends took me to a storefront in east Saint Paul, owned by Dick's mother, where he had painted the walls black, put candles in old bottles, and installed a hi-fi and a toaster oven for heating frozen pizza. There, in the Jazz Lab, we were introduced to Dave BrubeckDave BrubeckDavid Warren "Dave" Brubeck is an American jazz pianist. He has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills...
, Chet BakerChet BakerChesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.Though his music earned him a large following , Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit."He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the...
, Thelonious MonkThelonious MonkThelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...
and other greats of jazz through their LP recordings. Guindon's most ubiquitous cartoon character was a student he called Huggermugger, who went around with bushy hair and a long beard, wearing an overcoat that was held together by a giant safety pin. Huggermugger was an enemy of pretention. I remember one panel where Huggermugger was peacefully eating a bowl of soup in one of the student cafeterias. An undergraduate woman in bohemian attire sits down next to him, and tells him, for the next two panels, how glad she is that he is there; how much she appreciates sharing her space with a kindred spirit, so au-courant, so genteel, so perceptive, just like her. In the final panel, her face showing great dismay, she turns to him and says, "Did you just spit in my soup?"
Biography
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
during the early 1960s, Guindon began contributing to The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
, Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
and Down Beat
Down Beat
Down Beat is an American magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond" to indicate its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois...
. He also drew cartoons for Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner is an author, journalist, stand-up comedian, and the founder, editor and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958...
's The Realist
The Realist
The Realist was a pioneering magazine of "social-political-religious criticism and satire," intended as a hybrid of a grown-ups version of Mad and Lyle Stuart's anti-censorship monthly The Independent. Edited and published by Paul Krassner, and often regarded as a milestone in the American...
and was associated with Krassner's class at the Free School. Guindon's best known work from the 1960s was published in The Realist, which included adult-themed references to politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
and current events of the time.
Leaving New York, Guindon returned to Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
where Mpls.St.Paul Magazine said in its "Encyclopedia Minnesotica" that Guindon is "Minnesota's greatest satirist"."
In 1981, Guindon moved from Minnesota to work in Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
for the Detroit Free Press
Detroit Free Press
The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is entitled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep"...
, which issued a 1984 datebook, Guindon's Detroit. In May 1984, he made an appearance on The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...
with Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson
John William "Johnny" Carson was an American television host and comedian, known as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 30 years . Carson received six Emmy Awards including the Governor Award and a 1985 Peabody Award; he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987...
. He had a three-month art exhibition, "Richard Guindon, 1981-1984" at the Flint Institute of Arts from March 10 to May 26, 1985. That same year, he took an extended vacation, continuing to draw his cartoons while driving around Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
.
Guindon began his self-titled cartoon series for the Minneapolis Tribune in 1974. At first it appeared three to four times per week, then became a daily in 1978 when it was picked up by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate
Los Angeles Times Syndicate
The Los Angeles Times Syndicate and the Los Angeles Times Syndicate International are newspaper syndicates which sold more than 140 features in more than 100 countries around the world....
. In 1981, the syndication was moved to Field Enterprises
Field Enterprises
Field Enterprises was a private holding company founded on August 31, 1944, by Marshall Field III and others whose main asset was the Chicago Sun. That same year the company acquired the book publishers Simon & Schuster and Pocket Books....
, and then in 1984 to News America Syndicate. The syndication of the panel appears to have ended in 1985, but the cartoon may have survived as a feature of the Detroit Free Press
Detroit Free Press
The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is entitled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep"...
until later, perhaps 1987.
When he returned to the United States, he moved to Traverse City, Michigan
Traverse City, Michigan
Traverse City is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Grand Traverse County, although a small portion extends into Leelanau County. It is the largest city in the 21-county Northern Michigan region. The population was 14,674 at the 2010 census, with 143,372 in the Traverse...
in March 1986, and the following August he set up his studio in the Masonic Hall building in downtown Traverse City with a third-floor view of Grand Traverse Bay
Grand Traverse Bay
Grand Traverse Bay is a bay of Lake Michigan formed by part of Northern Michigan. The bay is long, 10 miles wide, and up to deep in spots. It is divided into two arms by the Old Mission Peninsula...
. Eight months later, the historic four-story building was destroyed by fire. "I've lost 30-some years of work," said Guindon. "It's funny this building should wait 97 years for me to move into it before burning. It really hasn't hit me yet. I think tomorrow is going to be a very grim day" More than 5,000 cartoons and sketches burned in the April 1987 fire, but a few weeks later Guindon learned that Irv Letofsky, Sunday editor of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
"Calendar" section, had saved a copy of every Guindon cartoon syndicated over a decade.
In 1988, Guindon broke out of the single-panel mold and began a multi-panel comic strip, The Carp Chronicles, commenting, "Nothing ever works out in Carp City. I don't know why. They're very nice people. It's not a pretty story, but it has to be told."
Guindon now lives in Northern Michigan
Northern Michigan
Northern Michigan, also known as Northern Lower Michigan , is a region of the U.S. state of Michigan...
in the village of Suttons Bay
Suttons Bay, Michigan
Suttons Bay is a village in Leelanau County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 589 at the 2000 census. The village was incorporated in 1898 and is located within Suttons Bay Township....
. Guindon announced his retirement in 2005.