Two For Tuesday: Clifford Berryman & Arthur Szyk

Golf.

It’s not just the game of kings but the preferred sport among American politicians.

And it isn’t anything new. Clifford Berryman’s early 20th-century editorial cartoons are proof of that.

‘Running for Office: Candidates, Campaigns, and the Cartoons of Clifford Berryman,’ running through Sunday, July 3, at Louisiana’s Old State Capitol and Robin Miller, for The Advocate, reviews the exhibit.

Berryman seemed to have a keen sense of the nature of politicians and government officials. He became chief cartoonist for The Washington Post in 1891, then left in 1907 to become front page cartoonist for the Washington Evening Star until his death in 1949. The Star was the most widely read newspaper in Washington at that time.

Humanities Texas and the National Archives have more Berryman and exhibit details.

The United States military—from West Point to the Naval Academy, from the Marine Corps to the more than 500 USO recreation centers spread throughout our country—had more respect, admiration, and interest in Arthur Szyk than any political artist in America during World War II…

How is it then that Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) had the vision, moral courage and outrage to attack the U.S. military establishment, which in the midst of its fighting Nazi and Japanese racism abroad simultaneously and egregiously manifested racial segregation and dehumanization at home?

As Szyk saw it, racism was so bad in the United States, that the greatest punishment for Hitler would be to capture him and drop him here in America where he would endure the torment, degradation and shame visited upon American citizens who were singled out simply because of the color of their skin.

Irvin Ungar, at Historicana, connects artist/cartoonist Arthur Szyk to Juneteenth. 

More about Arthur Szyk at Szyk.com.

The Arthur Szyk page at The Library of Congress.