Art Young

"With more and more governments, however crude and experimental, dedicated to industrial democracy and universal brotherhood, the era of peace and joy in living will come on earth."

"In my youth I hoped for no higher status in life than to be among those who would follow in the wake of Thomas Nast, Joseph Keppler, and Bernhard Gillam, outstanding artists in the field of political caricature. And when in my early twenties I grew familiar with the political and social satires of the graphic artists of England and France across two centuries, these gave even greater stimulus to my ambition. Dreamily I anticipated that my destiny was to succeed as a caricaturist of some influence in public affairs."

"Sometimes a prosperous individual will say to me: "Any man can succeed in his ambition if he really wants to. Take you, for instance. Haven't you accomplished what you wanted to do?" And I answer: "Yes" Then I have a repentant feeling for saying that because "No" would be quite as correct. I tell him that "Yes" is only one small word of a full, honest answer: only a little part of the whole truth. I point out that I was compelled to waste about half of my life scheming and worrying over the problem of making enough money to keep going, while attempting at the same time to put aside some of it for lean years and old age, like a dog hiding a bone. This exercise of my acquisitive sense, this trying to mix business with creative ability-though it did not strangle my talent-might have done so except for fortuitous circumstances, kind and encouraging parents, limited competition, and an instinct which told me it ought not to be strangled if I could possibly help it. Or perhaps a little bird singing in a tree-top just for joy helped to give me the hint. Finally I achieved a kind of success."

"Material considerations thwarted me at every turn. It was my money-earning ability that determined my right to exist, and I got through in a way-but what a way! Having spent so much of my time maneuvering to make enough cash with which to live decently, I count most of that effort a hindrance to my development, both as a man and as an artist. Instinctively most men are proud to be able to provide for themselves and their dependents, and I was no exception to the rule. That duty I accepted willingly. Still it seemed to me unworthy of any one to make that the main reason for living."

"It took me a long time to understand why so much that surrounded me was too ugly to tolerate without protest. But eventually I learned the reason. I saw that the conduct of my fellow-men could not be otherwise than disappointing, in fact parasitical and corrupt, and that most of our troubles emanated from a cause which manifestly would grow worse so long as we put up with it. That cause was Capitalism. Man's natural self-interest. become perverted and ruthless! The motivating principle of business (though not openly confessed), when summed up, meant: "Get yours; never mind the other fellow." I saw, too, that our law-makers and judges of the meaning of the law put property rights first and left human rights to shift for themselves."

"experience proved that those in authority of publishing institutions were seldom impressed by that which was new or even a little different. Of course, they would tell us they wanted "something new" and were "looking for originality," but generally speaking they would accept nothing but the trite."

"I hope it will not be said of me that my cartoons never hurt. To be a caricaturist all one's life of the kind whose pictures "never hurt" is my idea of futility. It should not be the function of a political caricaturist just to be funny. The operation sometimes calls for cruelty. But to produce a cartoon that is nothing but an insulting burlesque of a public man is not my idea of a forceful cartoon. However, it often happens that a public man serves as a symbol of wrong because of his record and as such he should be a cartoonist's subject, not to be attacked as a man so much as the idea for which he stands. When one feels that everybody, even the most predatory of capitalists, is also a victim of his own system, one's steel is in danger of not being ground sharp enough for effective attack. But not to hurt with an idea and the manner of expressing it proves that the cartoonist is nothing but a court jester whom the money monarchs like to have around, and when he dies they will say "he never hurt.""

"A conviction founded on bitter experience is often overthrown by a passing mood. We forget the sorrow that taught us our truth, and fall right into the same kind of sorrow again. It is easier to bear the loss of something you need than to have something you don't need but can't lose."

"The unhappy mortal is the one who has not all the freedom his nature wants him to have. He starts to soar and then in a little time is jerked suddenly back by the thought of conventional duty. He's like the pigeon that a hunter tosses into the air to attract other pigeons and then yanks down by the string tied to its leg."

"Step right up and hit the man you hate most. "I hate a Jew," says one. So he takes a throw at "the kike." "I hate an Irishman," says another, and he drives at "the mick." Another hates an Englishman, another a German or a Japanese; so the devil in human nature spends itself in this way until wisdom touches the human mind and says, "Now calm yourself and wipe the froth from your mouth!" Then one begins to think, and finally learns this truth: that race hatred is one of the lowest and meanest of human passions. Until we learn to judge every individual on his own peculiar merits, we haven't taken a first good step toward social intelligence."

"There is no bigger lie hurled at discouraged artists by the smug critics than: "Genius will always find its way through the direst poverty." Of course, it has been done, but at what cost to the genius no one else can know. Poverty is stifling, and having too much money can also be stifling, but most paralyzing to the creative faculties is poverty. If it ever acts as an incentive, it is more often destructive."

"While I had no great admiration for my own intelligence or my ability to understand political economy, neither did I have a servile respect for the intelligence of editors and publishers whom I had met, and who expected their writers and cartoonists to conform to a particular policy of their own. Think of spending one's life promoting and propagandizing the prejudices and political "principles" of a Frank Munsey or a Northcliffe or a Hearst! As a choice between accepting the political judgment of the average newspaper owner and my own judgment as to what was best for my country and the future of mankind, I voted in favor of myself. I'd make up my mind, and follow through. But the difficulty ahead was the small demand for my point of view in the editorial offices of successful newspapers and magazines."

"Though I was always curious about political platforms, statesmanship and the campaign issues which agitated the minds of my elders, at this period in my life it was drawing pictures, composition, light and shade, and all that goes with creative work which was my study and main interest. Ideas were secondary in importance. In my thirties, now living in New York City, with time to think things over, and beginning to experience something of the harsh problems which one with a family must encounter merely to exist, I came to the conclusion that this talent of mine ought to be purposeful and that the use I made of it was more important than having been born with it."

"As I view them retrospectively, it is some satisfaction to know that I did not spend many years of my life cartooning the trivial turns in current politics. Although a few of these are related to the topical issues of other days, it will be noted that practically all of them are generalizations on the one important issue of this era the world over: Plutocracy versus the principles of Socialism, which in a broader sense is the same old issue that has aroused the talent of artists and writers throughout history: the exclusive arrogance of birth or wealth that humiliates and enslaves the too-tolerant, common man-the same old issue which in this twentieth century is coming to a showdown."

"September 1st: As I begin these notes, I am where I ought to be in the summer, at my home among the stone-fenced hills of Connecticut. I will be 60 years of age January next. Three things are worshipful-the Sun, giver of life; a Human Being who believes something worth while and will die for it if need be; and Art, the recreator of life. I walked to the village today and noted a gentle rise of my spirits as I watched the butterflies careen through the fields of goldenrod."

"I look out over the hills this beautiful forenoon. It ought to be a day care free. Nevertheless, a taint of anxiety is in my mind. The rural postman has not brought the right letter. One with a check in it. The thought of expenses and inadequate income persists. This is the blot that is ever before the beauty of the world in the lives of most of us; anxiety that disturbs the harmony with our inner selves over money matters. There is a divine discontent that a humble man of understanding accepts gracefully, but this dollar discontent, this adjustment to a commercial age, is what prevents the artist-soul in all people from expanding. (September 2nd)"

"Literature and art ought to make people soul hungry. (September 4th)"

"The work of the world, the nerve, muscle and brain of human beings is the one big essential fact of our existence. Though most of labor is regimented and automatic, the skilled craft laborer, the artist producer-all, I like to think-do the best they can in a world where the big rewards go to those who have got out of the class called labor, into ownership and responsible management. (September 7th)"

"every town should have an art gallery for the people. (September 11th)"

"most people are artists and dreamers in their youth, but their talent and appreciation for art are destroyed by continual application to business and the duty of getting on. (September 11)"

"Dante's Inferno was peopled mostly with those who had committed crimes recognized as such by the statute laws of this world. I enlarged the conception of this inferno to include many other kinds of offenders-in fact, all of us. I wanted a bigger and better-a democratic Hell, and modern efficiency. I felt that editors, preachers, politicians, poets, landlords, lawyers, cartoonists-and many others-should not be exempt from a properly planned region for future punishment. (September 16th)"

"No day passes that one does not hark back to the personalities and events of yesteryear. (September 17th)"

"September 18th: To call one a propagandist is generally to dismiss him from the sacred realm of art. The favorite cry of critics, "Oh, he is a propagandist, not an artist." These propagandists against propaganda amuse me. Propaganda is a kind of enthusiasm for or against something that you think ought to be spread-that is, propagated. Your propaganda may be wrong-or not worth while from another's viewpoint, but that is a personal matter. Duty, sacrifice, beauty, bravery, death and eternity-all allowable subjects for poets and dramatists out of which they can fashion works of art. When others do not believe in your enthusiasm your work runs the risk of being condemned as propaganda. There never was a real work of art in which it is not plain that the author wants you to share his loves and sympathies and his ideas of right and wrong."

"Hardly a day goes by that the problem of duty to myself-versus duty to others does not arise. (September 29th)"

"I don't mind tinkling a little in this Bedlam called popularity, but my real desire is to ring true-as nearly true as I can get. I have always believed in my star, that light to live and create, and to express myself in pictures of simplicity and strength. (October 1st)"

"An artist will protect his offspring as a hen covers her chicks. Dismiss the created offering of an artist as unworthy, you start a rebellion that savors of outraged paternity. But one never ought to let rejection sink in. He should be up and at it. (October 6th)"

"...instructors never meant much to me. You listen to a teacher and are thankful for his point of view. But your art school is worth while mainly because you learn to be patient and because many others are there who are going in your direction toward creative expression. The atmosphere and contacts are congenial and stimulating. On the whole-the bigger and better school is the world you live in-alone you make your way. (October 7th)"

"aside from the appearance of a tree by day or night-is it not kin of the human family with its roots in the earth and its arms stretching toward the sky as if to seek and to know the great mystery? (October 8th)"

"What crimes and follies are committed by the need for money! Most people live at high pressure . (October 11th)"

"No great height is reached when it is said of you that you are a master of expression. What matters is what you have to say. Is your message big enough for humanity, or is it a reflex of your narrowness and petty prejudice? (October 11th)"

"In art and literature I am always on the side of the experimentalist and those who break with tradition, knowing full well that there are some rules of art just as truly as there is a law of equilibrium. These rules a real artist picks up as he does the brush, the pencil, or chisel that have come down from antiquity. But a real artist is also a rebel. Tradition, for all its accepted truisms, is the enemy. The fact that a few accepted or basic facts reveal themselves in all art from the primitive to the classical is not more important than that the iconoclast shall have his day. Within the larger truths there are always a lot of other truths that no one sees till the radical dares to investigate and bring them to light. (October 13th)"

"is it not wrong for intelligent, creative men to exercise the humorous faculties of their minds, every day, all of the time, year in and year out? I would say that it is brain-abuse. (October 16th)"

"Nothing is important but what we do and how well we do it. If money comes-well and good; if not-we may regret not having had the thrill of plenty to carry out our dreams; but there is comfort in the thought of having lived without being tempted away from our principles by too much consideration for a pile of money. (October 17th)"

"I have made many sketches of the moon and its frame of sky and cloud, always changing, never repeating. I never cease to wonder at the vast populations of the world since time began and no two faces have ever been just alike. And however much governments and society try to mold the human mind to think according to pattern, there is always a tiny something different and non-conformist in every human being, though they fear to express it. (October 25th)"

"When anyone tells me he hates a particular race of people, I can work up a little hate myself-not for the race-but for the one who is talking. (October 27th)"

"No matter how individualistic and aloof the creative mind is it wants the kinship of all kinds of minds. To be accepted by a few in authority, although a grateful distinction, is not quite satisfactory. In the long run every true artist wants the wave-length universal. (October 30th)"

"One has to catch a train in this kind of a civilization. You can't be careless or gay, you must crowd in and go somewhere, or get left on the desert of your dreams. (October 31st)"

"Judged by that standard of success which most of the American people accept and believe, I would be classed among the failures. Now past sixty, with an obvious talent and reasonably industrious in doing the work I like, yet never in my life very far from bankruptcy. If I should happen to be a money success when I am old-and the years ahead of me very few-the fact remains the same; in the common vernacular, I lacked brains to get on and clean up; throughout all the years of an average life-time. I belong with the failures-with the man who is sitting at home tonight after his day's work who knows that his wife, his relatives and friends think; "he is a failure." I'm with this man and the whole army of splendid men and women who wear the ragged badge of defeat. I know that some people are successful who deserve to be, but I am with the unadaptable, the out-of-luck, the weary with the money-struggle. I am with them but not sadly because in my vision of a new world there is going to be a different definition of success. (March 1st)"

"Only last year we lost the gay, faithful friend and comrade, Art Young, who "kept up with the procession," till the last moment of his life. The very night he died, last New Year's Eve, he mailed me a post card on which he wrote, "Dear Ella-It has been a long road but now I think we are getting somewhere." And then in a corner he put the word "Teheran", which means so much to us."

"On the twenty-ninth day of December he mailed me one of his unique postcards, Art himself toiling up a big hill with all kinds of war birds and "blitzkrieg" around him. The card is inscribed underneath, "It's a long road, but now we are getting somewhere"...Art had been through many hard places in the "road" with me, and our "comradeship" of so many years is even closer than a family. It is our family...He really loved people, like our mutual friends, Gene Debs, Horace Traubel-Whitman's disciple-Fred Long, and a few others, close, and understanding. Now, all of these comrades have passed out of life and we must keep their memories green, paying more attention to the young people the new generation; that was the strong point in the character of Art Young...Art Young is still in our lives. His work remains. We just have to close our ranks, get a little closer with more understanding love and when the history of the "people's culture" of America is written, Art Young's name will shine very brightly. Because of his great talent in illustrating the struggles of the people against fascism in all its forms-not only in art forms, but also in humorous understanding words-he will be understood and loved by the youth of the future, and we older ones, in spite of loneliness and misunderstanding, shall work a little harder to win the war. The word "remember" was also on Art's card. Yes, we will remember and translate that memory into action."

"Cartooning capitalism is far more inspiring than capitalistic cartooning. Compare some of the weak, insipid, vulgar pictorial attacks upon Socialism in capitalist papers with the virile, gripping, masterful specimens of the art produced by such revolutionary artists as Ryan Walker, Art Young, Balfour Ker, Ward Savage and Walter Crane, in their terrific onslaughts upon the capitalist system and its regime of riches and squalor, money and misery, crime and corruption. These are the young artists of the social revolution. Their every perception and touch has the divine quality of inspiration, and they are rising grandly to supremacy and exaltation."

"Art Young drew a picture of a complacent cherub carrying a tiny pail of water dipped from the "Ocean of Truth." The pail was marked "Dogma," and my editorial read: "I publish this little picture in answer to numberless correspondents who want to know just what this magazine is trying to do.' It is trying not to try to empty the ocean, for one thing. And in a propaganda paper that alone is a task.""

"Art Young's drawings are published in the principal Army paper, Red Star, the satirical magazine Crocodile, Ogonyok magazine and others. He belonged to those artists to whom working means fighting for justice, and in our time one cannot fight for justice without being an active anti-fascist. Art Young was our friend and comrade-in-arms because his efforts were directed against Nazism. His biting cartoons appeal to the masses. His hard-hitting style is effective not only in his country but far beyond it. His works, impressive for their clear-cut statement of political themes and simplicity of form, can be achieved only by an experienced master. I have on my table one Art Young drawing dealing with the heroic struggle of the Red Army against Hitler's Germany. Hitler is shown in it. This is one of those social caricatures depicting the loathsome character of the Nazi regime with great impressiveness. Drawings such as this expose the rottenness of Hitler's "New Order" and the monstrosity of Nazi crimes. Thus, a fervent anti-Nazi takes part in the great battle waged by freedom-loving nations against evil forces. The artistic intelligentsia has lost one of its outstanding members. But Art Young's work will live on and call upon his young colleagues to take an active part in the struggle against Hitler's Germany for the happiness of mankind."

"Sometimes I'm lonely, but I am never discouraged," Art said to my sister Katherine, her daughter Frances, and me, when we were together at what was to be his last supper. He died a few hours later. In retrospect, it seemed as if he unconsciously spoke his own epitaph, not in a somber or foreboding spirit but in his naturally philosophical and calm manner. "I figure I should be able to live another twenty years," he continued, "and I know that in that time I will see socialism spread through the world." Our conversation was desultory-now serious, now gay, but with an undercurrent of the great changes taking place in the world, of which he was so keenly aware...He spoke considerably on longevity that night, of George Bernard Shaw and Mother Bloor and of our mother...He was a consistent and courageous admirer of the Soviet Union and the Red Army and described himself to me more than once as "A non-party Bolshevik." He had an extraordinary capacity to remain friends with people far removed from his social ideas-if they were honest in their views. But he would never sell his talents for what he disbelieved in, no matter how great his personal sacrifices. His friendship with Brisbane was on this basis...Art Young was gentle in manner, kindly and reassuring. But he was a great fighter against injustice, poverty, inequalities, and against fascism in all its forms. He was never downhearted about the progress of the world. He spoke to us rather regretfully that night about having to sell his little place in Connecticut where he had always planned to have a museum for his pictures and which he had started to build, I believe, or at least had designed. "I got a little money to live a little longer," he said. He said once to his friend Marguerite Tucker: "If I was in the Soviet Union I would be a people's artist and would not need to worry about money."

"Since Mark Twain, have there been many clearer notes expressed of the basic American folk-mind than may be found in the drawings of Art Young? All the virtues and faults of the American people are contained in these shrewd scratchings of a master-pen: the credulity, the good-natured humor, the scorn for windbags, political and ecclesiastical, a sort of generous gambling spirit, an instinctive hatred of injustice, a simplicity and homely barnyard greatness...Art Young carries over into the modern social revolution this native tradition of a cornfed socialism that extends from Father Abraham Lincoln down through Mark Twain, and Bob Ingersoll, Walt Whitman, Thomas Nast, Edward Bellamy, Brann the Iconoclast, Ryan Walker, Carl Sandburg, the old Appeal to Reason and Eugene V. Debs...Going through the capitalist Hell with him, I am shaken with horror and indignation. Only a great imaginative artist could illuminate so plainly the truth we are prone to forget: that we are living in Hell. War is hell. Peace is hell. Everyday life under capitalism is hell. There is no compromising with such a system-it is Hell, and must be destroyed. Art Young can rouse these feelings in any American mind, and I wish more of us could learn to be as effective."

"He was a great artist with a generous heart full of feeling and understanding. He suffered with the struggles of the downtrodden, and sided with them in their plights. When an injustice had been committed, he flashed his sharp pen and brush against the tyrants and fascists. His art, like himself, had a keen wit that penetrated deeply. Wherever and whenever Art Young's name is mentioned, people, without exception, express a love for the man and his work. He was truly a people's artist...I once asked him if he ever felt lousy about any cartoon he had done, and he told us of one he had been asked to draw for the old Life, when it was a humorous weekly. The editor had asked for a double-page spread, on which he was to draw a comic figure of a Jewish Broadway producer controlling the gay White Way. Art finished the drawing and received a hundred-dollar check which he needed very badly. But he was somehow not very happy about the idea. At that time, Art recalled, we had no political awareness, no organizations that fought anti-Semitism. So he went to the editor, returned the check and asked for his cartoon back. He walked down the street tearing it up, and with every rip he said he felt happy, although hungry. To most of us artists, Art Young was more than a friend; more than a fellow-artist who for so many years had worked with us, with whom we had exchanged confidences. We all had a special respect for Art Young. He carried with dignity our convictions, and in trying times, when some writers of the old Masses and Liberator went sour one way or another, Art Young stood fast, and the artists were with him. The works of Art Young will live, and the principles and spirit that Art Young stood for will remain an outstanding inspiration, an everlasting monument to a great man and a great artist."

"Art Young was one of the most picturesque and highly regarded cartoonists of his generation, one of the early masters of the medium. Usually forgotten these days, he was, in his day, the subject of a certain amount of sensational news coverage. And he can be credited with a couple of historic firsts, too. But mostly, he was an artist of principle at a time, the turn of the 19th into the 20th century and immediately thereafter, when cartoonists weren't yet particularly noted for doing much more than making funny faces."

"For a brief time, roughly between 1912 and 1918, The Masses became the rallying center-as sometimes also a combination of circus, nursery, and boxing ring-for almost everything that was then alive and irreverent in American culture. In its pages you could find brilliant artists and cartoonists, like John Sloan, Stuart Davis, and Art Young; one of the best journalists in our history, John Reed (journalist), a writer full of an indignation against American injustice that was itself utterly American; a shrewd and caustic propagandist like Max Eastman; some gifted writers of fiction, like Sherwood Anderson; and one of the few serious theoretical minds American socialism has produced, William English Walling. All joined in a rumpus of revolt, tearing to shreds the genteel tradition that had been dominant in American culture, poking fun at moral prudishness and literary timidity, mocking the deceits of bourgeois individualism, and preaching a peculiarly uncomplicated version of the class struggle. There has never been, and probably never will again be, another radical magazine in the U. S. quite like The Masses, with its slapdash gathering of energy, youth, hope...As one looks back across the shambles of the intervening decades, it is hard not to envy them: the fierce young John Reed (journalist) making his prose into a lyric of revolt, the handsome young Max Eastman mediating among a raucus of opinions, the cherubic Art Young drawing his revolutionary cartoons with the other worldly aplomb of a Bronson Alcott. History cannot be recalled, but in this instance at least, nostalgia seems a part of realism. For who among us, if enabled by some feat of imagination, would not change places with the men of The Masses in their days of glory?"

"One explanation for the neglect of women's part in shaping The Masses and its content may lie in an image of the magazine constructed by its chroniclers. Indeed, the extent to which historians have neglected discussion of Masses women is quite remarkable. Daniel Aaron, in his Writers on the Left (1961), devotes some twenty pages to The Masses. He deals with Eastman, Dell, and Reed at considerable length, while mentioning the founding members Inez Haynes Irwin and Mary Heaton Vorse in a single line...More recent histories redress the balance somewhat-notably Judith Schwartz's study of women of the Greenwich Village Heterodoxy club, many of whose members had ties with The Masses, and Art for The Masses, Rebecca Zurier's 1987 anthology of the work of Masses artists. Nancy Cott's frequent allusions to Masses women in The Grounding of Modern Feminism (1987) indicate how very central to that grounding to the shaping of turn-of-the-century feminist discourse Masses women were. But in many imaginations, The Masses remains the project of Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, Reed, Art Young, and Charles Winter."

"It was in 1917 that my teacher and I first met Art Young at our Forest Hills home. He was a guest whom Anne Sullivan Macy especially welcomed. Her many-faceted personality was an open book to him. Then his delightful kindliness, humor, sudden whims, sincerity, and the dreams of beauty hovering round his fighting citadel endeared him to her kindred spirit. At a time when reaction was riding roughshod over the earth and throttling those who protested against the betrayal of the people's aspiration to genuine liberty by the capitalist empires, Art Young was emerging from his trial for anti-war charges a gentle yet formidable Samson, and I recall the gay courage with which he defied any power to muzzle the thunder and lightning of his art. It was a marvel how many truths he packed into pictures which opened blind eyes to our community of fate and interest with the downtrodden and the toilers of the world. Some of Art Young's drawings were embossed for me, and I sensed vividly the highly individual and forceful manner in which he presented with the brush ideas that he hoped would serve as a ferment in American economic philosophy. My fingers could appreciate his pictorial power in uncovering hell and its network of race prejudice and enslavement. A year never passed during which I was not thrilled by his inventiveness in devising themes that provoked wide discussion and pushed further the painfully slow campaign of education in true freedom among the working people. Little by little the pillars loosened at which his Samson hatred of oppression tugged, and it is devoutly to be hoped that his death has left them irrevocably sagging to their downfall. There is no calculating the might of patient efforts like his which quietly root themselves in the granite of tyranny and crumble it into life-giving soil. Besides the keen-eyed radical and uncompromising idealist there was another aspect of Art Young I knew-his brimming joy in all things friendly and wholesome, all things that foster song, laughter, and poetry. He said the song of a bird or a burst of morning-glories at this door or a sparkle of dew-wet verdure was enough to crowd new ideas into his day, and evening peace flooded his imagination with fantastic beckoning forms in the trees around him. In all moods, places, and activities he sought to make his labors a telling force in a future that would enable everyone with a special gift or genius to achieve a nobler civilization."