It’s Hell But Here We Are Again (detail)
Young frequently designed and sent as many as 500 Christmas and New Year cards annually, and this one from 1938 features one of his many self-portraits and a reference to his several hell-themed books. As a working artist and small businessman he used his mailing list for contacts, especially when he was developing “Good Morning” magazine. This is a detail from the card.
From the collection of Anthony J. Mourek
Loyola University Chicago Archives & Special Collections
Print. In this card celebrating the New Year, Young, entering the penultimate year of his life, shows himself as a smiling old man, forging his way through “this whirld of woe” to bring his annual message of “faith, hope, and cheerity.”
Ink drawing. In 1943, Franklin Roosevelt was entering his twelfth year as president, was running for another four year term, and had four bright sons. With that limited information, the New York Daily News decided he was planning a dynasty, though Young was clearly skeptical of that idea. Roosevelt may have had such plans, but like many children of the great, his sons never got beyond minor office.
Ink drawing. In the last year of his life, Young actually defended Franklin D. Roosevelt. In this image, Roosevelt sits at a desk covered with papers listing the threats he faces while George Washington and Abe Lincoln look on approvingly. Young’s implied support for the New Deal in this cartoon is a noteworthy contrast to his criticism of Theodore Roosevelt’s watered down socialism in his “Stealing Thunder” cartoon decades earlier and his “I will never desert you Mr. Micawber” cartoon just a few years before.
Ink drawing published in The Nation (Washington, D.C.). Here, Young compares President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Wilkins Micawber from Charles Dickens’s novel David Copperfield, a perpetually destitute character who is convinced that his fortunes will one day turn around, and the members of the American public who still faithfully follow Roosevelt to Micawber’s loyal wife. When Young drew this cartoon, unemployment was still over seventeen percent, despite Roosevelt’s many projects aimed at reducing it.
Well Abe—So Far—People Ain’t Got Much Christmas Spirit
Ink drawing. Young drew hundreds of gag cartoons during his life and often used racial or ethnic stereotypes in them. Readers of the day would have known that Abe and his well-dressed colleague talking about “Christmas spirit” were Jewish merchants. This is a mild stereotype cartoon compared to others by Young picturing Jewish lawyers, the Irish, and Blacks.
Ink & Crayon Drawing published in Art Young and Heywood Broun’s The Best of Art Young. (New York: Vanguard Press, 1936). Caption: “You stop following me! D'hear. Here I am all dressed up for a second term and you spoil everything." Young depicts President Herbert Hoover as a squat, unromantic figure who wears expensive clothes and tries to escape the Depression that dogs his steps.
Ink & Crayon Drawing. In the 1928 presidential election, incumbent Herbert Hoover was the Republican candidate, while Al Smith was the Democratic nominee. Despite significant differences between them, Young dismisses both of them as servants of big business by drawing them as dogs fawning over a shepherdess representing business. Young has drawn himself in the lower left corner of the cartoon, and he says of the voters, “By golly, they like to be sheep.”
Ink & Crayon Drawing. Young again shows his socialist perspective in this cartoon about the 1929 New York mayoral election. Incumbent Democratic mayor James J. Walker and his Republican challenger, Fiorello H. La Guardia, are shown as “slap stick comedians,” performing for the amusement of their audience, especially the “Big Grafter.” Their costumes are those of the vaudeville comics of the day, who frequently caricatured immigrant groups and other minorities, including the Irish, like Walker, and Italians, like La Guardia. Their socialist challenger, Norman Thomas, carries papers labeled “sensible policy” and is dressed as a respectable, middle class American, but he is relegated to watching from the wings. Walker won the election by a landslide, receiving 865,549 votes to La Guardia’s 368,384, but both far surpassed Norman Thomas, who received only 174,931 votes.
Ink drawing published in New Masses (New York). This cartoon refers to the 1920 German film Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). Young has dressed President Coolidge as the sinister Dr. Caligari, echoed the cubist aesthetics of the film, and covered the cabinet with references to aspects of Coolidge’s presidency that Young found problematic. These include Coolidge’s dealings with organized labor, the Sacco and Vanzetti case, and his foreign policy towards Latin America.