I
I wish that the American artists whose lot is cast in the pleasant
domain of caricature would learn something of the charm of moderation
and the strength of restraint. Their “cartoons” yell; one looks at them
with one’s fingers in one’s ears.
Did you ever observe and consider the dragon in Chinese art? With what
an awful ferocity it is endowed by its creator—the expanded mouth with
its furniture of curling tongue and impossible teeth, its big, fiery
eyes, scaly body, huge claws and spiny back! All the horrible qualities
the artist knows he lavishes upon this pet of his imagination. The
result is an animal which one rather wishes to meet and would not
hesitate to cuff. Unrestricted exaggeration has defeated its own
purpose and made ludicrous what was meant to be terrible. That is, the
artist has lacked the strength of restraint. A true artist could so
represent the common domestic bear, or the snake of the field, as to
smite the spectator with a nameless dread. He could do so by merely
giving to the creature’s eye an expression of malevolence which would
need no assistance from claw, fang or posture.
The American newspaper cartoonist errs in an infantile way similar
to that of the Chinese; by intemperate exaggeration he fails of his
effect. His men are not men at all, so it is impossible either to
respect or detest them, or to feel toward them any sentiment whatever.
As well try to evoke a feeling for or against a wooden Indian, a
butcher’s-block, or a young lady’s favorite character in fiction. His
deformed and distorted creations are entirely outside the range of
human sympathy, antipathy, or interest. They are not even amusing. They
are disgusting and, as in the case of foul names, the object of the
disgust which they inspire is not the person vilified, but the person
vilifying.
Perhaps I am not the average reader, but it is a fact that I frequently
read an entire newspaper page of which one of these cartoons is the
most conspicuous object, without once glancing at the picture’s title
or observing what it is all about. I have the same unconscious
reluctance to see it that I have to see anything else offensive.
I once sat reading a Republican newspaper. The whole upper half of the
page consisted of a cartoon by a well-known artist. It represented
Mr. Bryan, the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, standing on
his head in a crowd (which I think he would do if it would make him
President, and I don’t know that it would not) but I did not then
observe it. The artist himself sat near by, narrowly watching me, which
I did observe. A little while after I had laid down the paper he said
carelessly: “O, by the way, what do you think of my cartoon of Bryan
with his heels in the air?” And—Heaven help me!—I replied that I had
been a week out of town and had not seen the newspapers!
A peculiarity of American caricature is that few of its “masters”
know how to draw. They are like our great “humorists,” who are nearly
all men of little education and meagre reading. As soon as they have
prospered, got a little polish and some knowledge of books, they cease
to be “humorists.”
One of the most popular of the “cartoonists” knows so little of anatomy
that in most of his work the human arm is a fourth too short, and
seems to be rapidly dwindling to a pimple; and so little of perspective
that in a certain cartoon one of his figures was leaning indolently
against a column about ten feet from where he stood.
A fashion has recently come in among the comic artists of getting great
fun out of the lower forms of life. They have discovered and developed
a mine of humor in the beasts and the birds, the reptiles, fishes
and insects. Some of the things they make them say and do are really
amusing. But here is where they all go wrong and spoil their work: they
put upon these creatures some article of human attire—boots, a coat or
a hat. They make them carry umbrellas and walking-sticks. They put a
lightning rod on a bird’s nest, a latch on a squirrel-hole in a tree,
and supply a beehive with a stovepipe. Why? They don’t know why; they
have a vague feeling that incongruity is witty, or that to outfit an
animal with human appurtenances brings it, somehow, closer to one’s
bosom and business. The effect is otherwise.
When you have drawn your cow with a skirt she has not become a woman,
and is no longer a cow. She is nothing that a sane taste can feel an
interest in. An animal, or any living thing, in its natural state—is
always interesting. Some animals we know to have the sense of humor and
all probably have language; so in making them do and say funny things,
even if their speech has to be translated into ours, there is nothing
unnatural, incongruous or offensive. But a cat in a shirtwaist, a
rabbit with a gun—ah, me!
Obviously it is futile to say anything to those “dragons of the prime”
who draw the combination map-and-picture—the map whereon cities are
represented by clusters of buildings, each cluster extending half way
to the next. It would be useless to protest that these horrible things
are neither useful as maps nor pleasing as pictures. They are—well,
to put it quite plainly, they sicken. Sometimes the savages who draw
them sketch-in a regiment or so of soldiers—this in “war-maps” of
course—whose height is about five miles each, except that of the
commander, which is ten. And if there is a bit of sea the villain
who draws it will show us a ship two hundred miles long, commonly
sailing up hill or down. It is useless to remonstrate against this
kind of thing. The men guilty of it are little further advanced
intellectually than the worthy cave-dweller who has left us his
masterpieces scratched on rocks and the shoulder blades of victims of
his appetite—the illustrious inventor of the six-legged mammoth and the
feathered pig.