Which U.S. cartoonists were indicted for sedition?
Art Young, Henry Glintenkamp and their colleagues at “The Masses” were eventually acquitted, but this WWI-era victory for freedom of the press was dampened when the Postal Service shut down the progressive journal anyway.
Which Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist coined the term “McCarthyism”?
Washington icon Herblock.
What was the first full-length animated film?
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” in 1937.
Laugh all you want, but cartoons have made an indelible imprint on American culture, reflecting and shaping opinions, amusing and tweaking noses long before TVs reprogrammed the world. Proof runs rampant in the new Library of Congress exhibition, “Cartoon America: Highlights from the Art Wood Collection of Cartoon and Caricature.”
The 100 selections from Art Wood’s collection of 36,000 original cartoons span three centuries. Wood, an award-winning Washington-bred cartoonist, says his love of reading began with comics.
Serving as mirrors and windows, spyglasses and wide-angle lenses, cartoon images commented on issues and culture more keenly than words alone.
The exhibition illustrates the medium’s versatility: satire, situation comedy, slapstick, drama, parody, pathos. Characters run from Blondie to Bambi, Popeye to Zippy, world leaders to Everyman. Joining them are the
picaresque, the rascals, con men and social vultures seeking easy money and pretty ladies – such as Bud Fisher’s “Mutt and Jeff,” America’s first daily comic strip that ran from 1907 to 1982.
Counterbalancing nostalgia with grim observations on political follies and the human condition, famous names such as Thomas Nast, Oliphant, Al Hirschfeld and Hanna-Barbera mingle with lower-profile cartoonists who made their marks in print and celluloid.
The unfussy installation lets the artistry shine, from precise cross-hatching to lush monotonal shading to astonishing figure drawing.
There’s Popeye fighting his way out of a jellyfish in a 1940 preparatory sketch, Tyrus Wong’s lush impressionist storyboard drawing of a stag for “Bambi” (1942), goodhearted hobo Happy Hooligan, Krazy Kat and Buster Brown up to their eyeballs in antics. From the 1830s, George Cruikshank serves up a macabre, succinct treatise on “Alcohol, Death and the Devil.” The enticing fine-lined style of “Uncle Sam’s Girl-Shower” shows why Nell Brinkley was one of the few successful women cartoonists of the past.
Harper’s Weekly 19th-century legend Thomas Nast appears among exemplars of the “ungentlemanly art” of skewering proponents of war and corruption. As for socialist rebel Art Young, look for “World of Creepers” from a 1907 edition of Life.
Fast-forward to 1963, when Bill Mauldin presents Kruschchev berating a military lineup of writers, artists and musicians: “You’ve been acting like civilians!” Then to 1982 for Pat Oliphant’s depiction of a clutch of “the
New Right” vultures criticizing Reagan for neglecting moral conservative issues.
Wood previously shared gems from his comic vault in the mid ‘90s through the National Gallery of Caricature and Cartoon Art in D.C. before funding ran out. Fortunately, the Library of Congress agreed to preserve and exhibit the collection, which also inspired a wonderful, just-published companion book, “Cartoon America: Comic Art in the Library of Congress,” edited by comics historian and former Library of Congress curator Harry Katz.
Go to the exhibit
Cartoon America
On view through Jan. 27
» Venue: Library of Congress, Jefferson Building, 10 First St. SE
» Tickets: Free
» Info: 202-707-4604; www.loc.gov
Buy the book
Cartoon America: Comic Art in the Library of Congress
Edited by Harry Katz (Abrams; 324 pp; 275 illustrations; $50)
