Cartoonists and caricaturists bloom like cherry blossoms

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 30, 1998 | by Patrick Butters

Political cartoons and celebrity caricatures are hot items this spring in the nation's capital, where three shows present drawings long hidden in the Library of Congress and the National Portrait Gallery.

The simplicity and humor of cartoons and caricatures rarely betray their creators' skills and social consciousness. That's why "Monstrous, Craws & Character Flaws," a new exhibit at the Library of Congress, is such a joy, a lesson in fun not always delivered with a straight face.

"This is an area the library's not known for," says Harry Katz, curator of the show that has inaugurated the new Swann Gallery of Caricature and Cartoon in the library's Thomas Jefferson Building. "But we've got a world-class collection of cartoons and caricatures."

The cartoon only lately has become salable art. Superb works of draftsmanship either were thrown away or given free to fans. Animation cels, also booming in value, used to be erased for reuse. Now they're framed and prominently displayed.

Despite their recent rise in stature, most editorial cartoonists still look to the 19th-century French political satirist Honore Daumier as their standard bearer. (Katz had Daumier's 1834 lithograph, Rue Transnonain, moved from the Library of Congress' rare-books division to Swann Gallery so it would be part of the show.) But while the exhibit celebrates other famous artists from Thomas Nast to Garry Trudeau, many of their colleagues are less well-known.

Rose O'Neill, for example, was a pioneer female caricaturist (her ink drawing of bettors for a 1903 Puck cover is on exhibit). Oliver Harrington, an African-American trained at Yale University's College of Fine Arts, drew for black newspapers in the 1930s before moving to France and then East Berlin, where he lived until his death in 1995.

Harrington's seemingly bucolic cartoon of two black boys fishing is one of the show's more powerful images. One boy sits slumped, his hands drooping dejectedly between his knees, his eyes downcast; the other listens sympathetically. The caption reads: "The teacher says that everyone can git to be president. Then how come the whole class falls out laughin' when I tell 'em that's my dream?"

Perhaps the best-known caricaturist of all is 94-year-old Al Hirschfeld, a legend who still can be seen taking in a Broadway show. The library's exhibit includes Hirschfeld's Stage Door Canteen Reopens, a 1944 ink drawing exemplifying the artist's unmistakable flowing lines. Soldiers, sailors and their "dames" mingle, dance and drink in a vibrating web of wartime excitement. (Hirschfeld drew his bearded self in the foreground, a sailor with his back, humbly, to the onlookers.)

Cartoons will be splashed all over Washington this spring. The National Portrait Gallery will open "Celebrity Caricature in America" on April 10. The show will feature works by Ralph Barton, Al Frueh and Mexican Miguel Covarrubia and will focus, as its title suggests, on the depiction of 24-karat celebrity.

"It's quite distinct from Political cartooning," says Wendy Wick Reaves, the gallery's curator of prints and drawings. "It was a very prevalent art form that reached its peak between the two world wars. It was very much tied to the new kind of fame, which was the mass-media-generated celebrity."

Celebrity drawings permeated the press in the 1920s, splashing the glamour and carelessness of the era across newspaper columns. (Hirschfeld once said he took up as much space as he could since he was paid per column.) In 1927, Vincent Sardi Sr. hung caricatures of stars in his restaurant to attract customers. The practice became a tradition in New York and elsewhere, even in corner coffee shops.

The exhibit features artifacts as well as drawings, including a silk Coconut Grove dress, circa 1927, decorated with Barton's red-and-black caricatures of Charlie Chaplin, Lon Chaney Sr., Clara Bow, Erich von Stroheim and Lillian Gish. Barton also painted a theatrical curtain in 1922 that displayed caricatures of prominent opening nighters. "Of course, the people watching were all those fashionable New Yorkers," Reaves says. "So they had a wonderful time during the intermission trying to identify who was who and wondering if they were up there. It was a real compliment to be included."

Perhaps Frueh's ink and gouache of entertainer George M. Cohan is the ultimate in simplistic design, the mark of great caricature. "Al Frueh was the person who really abbreviated caricature," Reaves says. "Here we have George M. Cohan without any facial features, just the swing of his cane and the tilt of his hat."

In April, the Library of Congress also plans to mount an exhibit devoted to Georgetown resident Patrick Oliphant, arguably the best political cartoonist in the country.