MAN BITES MAN
Heller, Steven
VIEWS REV I E W S MAN BITES MAN BY STEVEN HELLER There was a time, not so long ago, when cartoonists were as respected (and ofttimes feared) as political columnists and investigative...
...The daily editorial cartoon, for better or worse, is preeminent, and the gag cartoon continues to nip rather than bite...
...In Man Bites Man I have tried to celebrate this graphic exuberance through the work of twenty-two extremely varied artists...
...He took on Joe McCarthy and The Bomb in Harper's and The New Republic, well before almost anyone else...
...All have made distinguished additions to the cartoon legacy...
...Needling of church and state led to arrest and imprisonment for many an artist in Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century Europe: Daumier and his publisher, Phillipon (of La Caricature), served time for insulting the Citizen King, Louis Phillipe...
...Richard Nixon, of course, was the cartoonist's dream...
...VIEWS REV I E W S MAN BITES MAN BY STEVEN HELLER There was a time, not so long ago, when cartoonists were as respected (and ofttimes feared) as political columnists and investigative reporters are today...
...And everyone knew it...
...in Germany, the Kaiser's underlings confiscated Georg Grosz's portfolio of "sacrilegious" prints and fined the artist 500 marks after his work in Munich's Simplicissimus magazine gave offense at the height of World War I. In the United States, Art Young's turn-of-the-century "seditious" cartoons in The Masses prompted Supreme Court battles...
...Out of the Gilded Age newspaper boom in the United States emerged two distinct forms of cartooning which still flourish葉he comic strip and the sometimes strident, often partisan editorial cartoon of the dailies...
...It is from the shooting gallery for satiric snipers that cartoonists made of the late 1960s and early 1970s that the accompanying pictures are assembled...
...Political cartooning was considered an "ungentlemanly art" but an honorable profession...
...One hopes that the ink-stained satirist will find much of value to do in these days of Reagan, Haig, and Weinberger...
...Before photographic reproduction was commonplace, a cartoonist could enhance or destroy a statesman's image at will...
...From the Daumier era to Art Young's time, in Europe and America, satiric and comic weeklies were a publishing industry staple, giving valuable space to acerbic, witty graphic commentary...
...Then, when the bullets began to fly in Vietnam and a new public conscience surfaced, Lyndon Johnson gave generously of himself as the target for a cartoon renaissance in the manner of the expressionist masters...
...During the Eisenhowered 1950s and Cameloted 1960s, only two graphic commentators (aside from Herblock) experimented with the form while questioning the status quo由obert Osborn and Jules Feif-fer...
...Unfortunately, Jimmy Carter, his toothiness notwithstanding, took the wind out of most satiric sails...
...Feif-fer is . . . Feiffer...
...They speak of a period of experimentation, variety, and great intelligence...
...Today, other media葉elevision and film, for instance揺ave stripped the cartoon of its watchdog role...
...Steadman, Ungerer, Rauch, Myers, Roth葉heir work says much more than any tract...
...Graphic satire could upset the equilibrium of kings, prime ministers, prelates熔f anyone enjoying power and position who came under scrutiny...
...His work has been a rallying point for a generation with a need to dissent...
...well葉he expressionist drawing (epitomized by Grosz), indigenous to France and Germany and rooted in the vocabulary of modern art...
...David Levine, first in Esquire and then in The New York Review of Books, has inspired countless imitators with his Nineteenth Century-styled caricatures...
...In Europe, a third category of graphic statement emerged as Steven Heller is an art director at The New York Times...
...So it went in the heyday of satiric drawing, when a strong cartoon could ignite rebellion, when a telling caricature would hold an official up to popular ridicule...
...Osborn was a true pioneer...
...He found his line in The Village Voice, and literally grew up with the paper...
...This is the mode favored by the artists represented in Man Bites Man...
...There are ever fewer print vehicles offering a regular diet of satiric protest art...
...Edward Sorel draws his emotion-charged "unofficial portraits" in the ink of savage humor, cutting through the pomposity of our heretofore sanctified leaders and betters...
...it drew strength from the imagery of Gilray, Goya, Daumier, and the fin de siecle German cartoonists...
...Aris-tiode Delanoy was jailed for a year after attacking Briand and Clemen-ceau in the satiric weekly, L'Assiette au Beurre...
...If the book succeeds, it is because the specimens culled from two decades of critical art not only recall an explosive era but remind us of the power cartooning has always had to alter worldly perceptions...
...his reign offered, as they say, an embarrassment of riches...
...some dwell on politics and society while others reflect personal passions and obsessions...
...Understandably, there is no rising tide of strong new talents...
...The marketplace is to blame, and so is public apathy...
...He edited "Man Bites Man: Two Decades of Satiric Art," published by A&W Publishers last October...
Vol. 46 • February 1982 • No. 2
