Cold Plunge

written and illustrated by Leanne Shapton

One might think, given our recent blizzards and cold snap, the idea of climbing into a tub of freezing cold water is the definition of unappealing. But in the last two years I’ve been seduced by—and convinced of the benefits of—the cold plunge. This newsletter, covering the art and illustrations in the February 12 and February 26 issues, comes courtesy of a few “temperature contrast sessions” I did between closing the two issues at a tiny place on 27th Street, where for an hour the hydrophilic bather can alternate between a 180-degree sauna and a 39-degree ice bath.

The sessions made me think of the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean the night the Titanic sank (28 degrees) and the ill-fated Franklin expedition of 1845, when 130 sailors vanished on a voyage to the Arctic, three of whom were later found buried on Beechey Island in Canada’s far north. When their bodies were exhumed in 1984, they had been perfectly preserved by the permafrost. Both thoughts have kept me feeling grateful and warm during these gray winter weeks.

The cover of our February 12 issue is a painting by a favorite artist of mine, Nathalie Du Pasquier, a French painter and designer who lives in Milan, where she was one of the founding members of the 1980s Memphis Group. We’ve used paintings of hers to illustrate articles before, but this is her cover debut. When I picked up the book Arranging Things: A Rhetoric of Object Placement, a collaboration between Du Pasquier and the writer Leonard Koren, at Mast Books in the East Village, I flipped through it and made a mental note to try to get her on a cover this year. A week later, when I showed the editors her work and observed that the radicchio felt both wintry and somehow Gertrude Stein–like in its pairing with the staple gun, the vote was unanimous.

For Hermione Lee’s review of Francesca Wade’s biography of Stein, I asked Fanny Blanc for a scene showing Alice B. Toklas and Stein. Blanc wrote that she found Stein’s need for Toklas’s approval touching and that she “wanted to depict them in that moment, Stein nervously awaiting Toklas’s reading of her texts. I tried to maintain a touch of harshness in Stein’s posture.”

We wanted some sort of collage for Aryeh Neier and Gara LaMarche’s investigation of philanthropy in the Trump era, so I wrote to the photographer and designer Michael Schmelling (whose work also featured on our November 23, 2023, cover). The artist John Brooks took on a portrait of Jane DeLynn for Regina Marler’s review of the reissue of her autobiographical novel In Thrall; afterward he wrote to me: “It might be my favorite amongst the [portraits] I’ve done for you. There are not so many images of her, but I found this on her own Facebook page!”

For Adam Kirsch’s essay about Gabriele Tergit’s 1951 novel Effingers, I asked the Berlin-based illustrator Sophia Martineck to draw Tergit. In her consistently thoughtful style, Martineck showed Tergit, as she wrote to me, “in London with a German newspaper, a Buddenbrooks book and an Anne Frank book under her arm. And with her suitcase as a symbol for her life in exile / being a refugee. The roses stand for the mentioned book she wrote on flowers and gardens.”

The designer Paul Sahre cleverly illustrated Laurence Tribe’s review of Jill Lepore’s new book about the Constitution, We the People, by creating an ASCII version of the Constitution.

The series art in the issue, titled Improvisations in Ink, is by the cartoonist Harry Bliss. “You have no idea what a treat this is for me,” he wrote of doing the abstract work. “I could do this all night.”

The cover of the February 26 issue was intended as a nod to Ian Tattersall’s essay about the diversity of nature, but the ink painting of a big black flower (titled Flor negra), done by the Spanish artist Jesús Cisneros in a 2022 sketchbook, wound up suiting a number of darker subjects inside the issue: Fintan O’Toole’s essay about the murders in Minneapolis, Ben Rhodes on McNamara and Vietnam, Oscar Lopez on coercive adoptions of Guatemalan and El Salvadoran children, and Ben Tarnoff’s essay eulogizing the philosopher Asad Haider. I was eager to use the image—so large and graphic—on the cover, and Cisneros sent a crisp new scan.

O’Toole’s essay about the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers was filed a few days before the issue shipped, and after reading it, O’Toole’s editor specifically requested John Brooks’s realistic, strong style. Brooks was catching a flight the next morning, but he stayed up late drawing the pair. He later posted the work to Instagram and wrote, “With the fulfillment of this assignment, I felt less like I was doing my job as an artist and more like I was doing my job, in some small way, as an American citizen.”

Edel Rodriguez drew a banker in a whirlpool for Trevor Jackson’s essay about the Fed and central banks. Vivienne Flesher sent no fewer than twelve gorgeous versions of Toni Morrison for Namwali Serpell’s essay about Morrison’s humor and darkness. It was hard to pick one.

Ben Tarnoff wrote about his friend Asad Haider, a philosopher and theorist of “millennial socialism” who died, age thirty-eight, in Toronto, where he taught at York University. Though the designer Oliver Munday is better known for graphic collage work, he’s also done good portraits, so we asked him for one of Haider. In addition to designing and illustrating, Munday also writes, and a collection of his short fiction, Head of Household, was published yesterday by Simon and Schuster.

For Vivian Gornick’s review of Mother Mary Comes to Me, by Arundhati Roy, I asked Ciara Quilty-Harper for one of her tender portraits. She sent us four sketches, but the one invoking the figure of Roy’s mother won out. After reading Larry Rohter’s essay about the Chilean writer José Donoso, I looked up photos of Donoso. His face made me think of Andrea Ventura. Ventura was available and sent a sketchy bearded likeness for the final, its underdone style giving Donoso an animated quality.

One of our assistant editors found Baby (2020), a painting by José Mario Dellow, a Guatemalan artist who was also adopted, to run alongside Oscar Lopez’s essay about the adoption industry in Guatemala and El Salvador.

The series art in the issue, Hard to Soft, is by the theater poster artist and illustrator James McMullan.

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