Sept 13 at noon: Heidi MacDonald at Library of Congress

This is from Georgia Higley, in the Library's Serials Division:

Should you be in the DC area for the 2013 Small Press Expo, consider
visiting the Library of Congress a day earlier for a talk on Friday,
September 13:

Heidi MacDonald, creator of The Beat, a daily news blog about comics,
and former editor at DC Comics, will discuss "After Watchmen and Maus:
Exploring the Graphic Novel" at the second annual SPX talk sponsored
by the Serial & Government Publications Division.

We will also display some of our recently acquired SPX mini-comics
and selected works by Heidi MacDonald.

Please join us on Friday, September 13, at noon in the West Dining
Room, located on the 6th floor of the Madison Building, Library of
Congress, 101 Independence Ave, SE, Washington, DC.

The program is free and open to the public.

Lecture by Heidi MacDonald on Friday, September 13 at the Library of Congress

This is from Georgia Higley, in the Library's Serials Division:

Should you be in the DC area for the 2013 Small Press Expo, consider
visiting the Library of Congress a day earlier for a talk on Friday,
September 13:

Heidi MacDonald, creator of The Beat, a daily news blog about comics,
and former editor at DC Comics, will discuss "After Watchmen and Maus:
Exploring the Graphic Novel" at the second annual SPX talk sponsored
by the Serial & Government Publications Division.

We will also display some of our recently acquired SPX mini-comics
and selected works by Heidi MacDonald.

Please join us on Friday, September 13, at noon in the West Dining
Room, located on the 6th floor of the Madison Building, Library of
Congress, 101 Independence Ave, SE, Washington, DC.

The program is free and open to the public.

Gibson Girls exhibit review in today's Express

Dingfelder, Sadie.  2013.

A Belle Epoque Barbie: The Gibson Girl was a hottie who held her own with Kens.

[Washington Post] Express (June 27): E9

 

It's online here.

March 26: Comic Book Panel Discussion at Library of Congress

As always events are free and open to the public. The West Dining Room is on the 6th floor of the Madison Building near the yellow elevators. All inquiries should be directed to the John Kluge Center, 202-707-3302

Steven Heller on Thomas Nast's murals, and the Library of Congress connection

Check out this excellent article on a failed project by Thomas Nast for a Th. Nast's Grand Caricaturama:



A Caricamural View of the American Civil War.

Steven Heller

The Daily Heller blog (March 7)

http://imprint.printmag.com/daily-heller/a-caricamural-view-of-the-american-civil-war/

In the article, Heller notes, "In 1950 five of the large (8' x 12') paintings were found in a barn in Morristown, New Jersey, where Nast had lived. They were acquired by Erwin Swann, founder of the Swann Foundation of Caricature and Cartoon dedicated to scholarship on comics and cartoons in all media."

DC-area cartoon types should recognize the name Swann - his collection is in the Library of Congress. Swann curator Martha Kennedy confirmed for me that the paintings are in the Library, albeit in off-site storage because they're so large. This search should pull up the catalogue records and hi-res scans of the five 8 x 11 1/2 feet images.  Martha also says that 2 more of the paintings survive in the northeast.

More on Wertham's collection at the Library of Congress

Comic books' real-life supervillain: psychiatrist Fredric Wertham
Carol L Tilley
Boing Boing Mar 4 2013
http://boingboing.net/2013/03/04/comic-books-real-life-superv.html

More cartoons on view at Library of Congress

Continuing our recent survey of the Library of Congress' cartoons on exhibit - the Civil War in America show has at least three cartoons in it. Although they appear to our eyes as political cartoons, these were published as stand-alone prints that one would buy to admire and look at frequently - almost the television of their day. Go see them in person to get a better view than these pictures taken without a flash.







In the Words Like Sapphires: 100 Years of Hebraica at the Library of Congress, 1912–2012 exhibit, there's two original paintings by Arthur Szyk for playing cards.





Down to Earth: Herblock and Photographers Observe the Environment is only open for three more weeks.

"The Gibson Girl's America: Drawings by Charles Dana Gibson" Exhibition Opens March 30

Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington DC   20540
February 26, 2013
Public contact:  Martha Kennedy (202) 707-9115, mkenn@loc.gov

"The Gibson Girl's America: Drawings by Charles Dana Gibson"
Exhibition Opens at Library of Congress on March 30
In the 1890s, illustrator Charles Dana Gibson created the "Gibson Girl," a vibrant, new feminine ideal—a young woman who pursued higher education, romance, marriage, physical well-being and individuality with unprecedented independence.  Until World War I, the Gibson Girl set the standard for beauty, fashion and manners.
The Library of Congress announces a new exhibition, "The Gibson Girl's America: Drawings by Charles Dana Gibson," which opens Saturday, March 30 in the Graphic Arts Galleries on the ground level of the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C., and runs through Saturday, Aug. 17, 2013.  The exhibition is free and open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday.
"The Gibson Girl's America" presents 24 works, primarily drawings.  The exhibition highlights the rise of the Gibson Girl from the 1890s through the first two decades of the 20th century.  It also illuminates how women's increasing presence in the public sphere contributed to the social fabric of turn-of-the-20th-century America.
The items on display trace the arc of the artist's career.  Gibson (1867-1944) came of age when women's roles were expanding and social mobility was increasing.  He trained at the Art Students League in New York City and also in Europe.  The artist created satirical illustrations based on his observations of upper-middle-class life for such mainstream magazines as Life, Collier's Weekly, Harper's Weekly, Scribner's and Century.
Through creation and development of the Gibson Girl, the artist, an acclaimed master of pen-and-ink drawings, experienced unrivaled professional and popular success. Gibson's skills and prolific output meshed with the high-volume demand at the time for magazine illustrations.  His bold style and virtuoso technique exerted enormous influence on his peers and succeeding generations of illustrators.
The exhibition will be organized into five sections: Creating an Ideal, The Gibson Girl as the "New Woman," Social Relations Between the Sexes, High Society Scenes and Political Cartoonist.  The exhibition presents a selection of Gibson's lesser-known political images, spotlighting the concerns he addressed in his later work.
The items in the exhibition are drawn from Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, which holds the premier public collection of original drawings by Gibson.
The Prints and Photographs Division also includes approximately 14.4 million photographs, drawings and prints from the 15th century to the present day.  International in scope, these visual collections represent a uniquely rich array of human experience, knowledge, creativity and achievement, touching on almost every realm of endeavor: science, art, invention, government and political struggle, and the recording of history.  For more information, visit www.loc.gov/rr/print/.
The Library of Congress, the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 155 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats.  The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.

# # #

PR13-28
2/26/13
ISSN:  0731-3527

Wertham papers in Library of Congress add fuel to 60-year old battle

 If video killed the radio star, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham did the same for comic books. His papers in the Library of Congress have been recently opened, and Carol Tilley wrote article about his research methodology that's getting some big media attention.

Scholar Finds Flaws in Work by Archenemy of Comics

By DAVE ITZKOFF

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/books/flaws-found-in-fredric-werthams-comic-book-studies.html

and

How one man’s lies almost destroyed the comics industry

Annalee Newitz
Io9 February 19 2013
http://io9.com/5985199/how-one-mans-lies-almost-destroyed-the-comics-industry

Cartoons to see in the L.o.C.

The Library of Congress has several cartoon and comics exhibits up now.  Here's a quick overview.

You can buy District Comics in their gift shop in the Jefferson Building. My story on the Army Medical Museum is around page 90, wink, wink.

Also in the Jefferson Building for another month is  "Down to Earth: Herblock and Photographers Observe the Environment" curated by Carol Johnson and Sara Duke. Carol's the photograph curator, Sara the Herblock one. I thought this was an excellent exhibit. The photographs and the cartoons really complemented each other, and the unlikely pairing made for a stronger exhibit than either alone would have.

There's a small brochure for the exhibit, although you have to get it at the Madison Building's Prints & Photographs department.


At the same location is "Herblock Looks at 1962: Fifty Years Ago in Editorial Cartoons," an exhibit curated by Sara Duke. This smaller exhibit focuses on President Kennedy.

Obviously Sara made curatorial choices to influence this in both exhibits, but it's still depressing how relevant 50-year-old cartoons are:

The third exhibit is a small one on comic books featuring Presidents that Megan Halsband did in the Serials Department (in the Madison Building) for President's Day. The majority of these comics are from Bluewater's current biographical series, but she did find an issue of Action Comics that I don't remember seeing.









The Prints & Photographs division showed off its new acquisitions this week. Sara Duke showed some original comic book and strip artwork:



A piece by Keith Knight, and two pages from Jim Rugg's anthology. They collected the entire book except for the centerfold. Not shown is...



Above are voting rights prints by Lalo Alcaraz, possibly selected by Helena Zinkham.

Martha Kennedy had some great acquistions this year, including works by James Flora, editorial cartoonist Signe Wilkinson, Garry "Doonesbury" Trudeau, and Charles Vess' entire book of Ballads and Sagas:












This artwork isn't on exhibit, but you can make an appointment to view it.

Our buddy Bernard examines Wertham's cold remains

Local comics historian Warren Bernard (friend of ComicsDC, SPX grand poobah) volunteers at the Library of Congress' prints and photos division, identifying editorial cartoons and topics for them, but he snuck over to the building next door to research and write an article on Fredric Wertham's anti-comics crusade for the Comics Journal #302. Warren's kindly convinced the journal to put his research material online.

Warren Bernard's Citations and Fredric Wertham Documents
BY Warren Bernard Feb 6, 2013   
http://www.tcj.com/warren-bernard-1954/

Oddity from the Library of Congress

Government librarian Sara Duke mentioned a bookplate collection today - so I did a quick look in the Library of Congress catalogue and came up with this Bookplate of English caricaturist Phil May.
It's part of the 14,000-piece  Ruthven Deane Bookplate Collection. It's out of copyright so you can download a hi-res version.

Years ago I wrote a brief piece for Hogan's Alley about Clifford Berryman's bookplates. It doesn't appear to be online anymore, so I'll recreate it here in the next day or so. 

Herblock lectures online

Comic Riffs caught that the Matt Bors award was online, but there's a bunch more cartoonist videos including Trudeau, Auth, Davies, Morin, Toles, Bagley and Sherffius (who's quit cartooning).   No Wuerker though.

March 29: How Early American Comic Strips Shed Light on the Nature of the Child

Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington DC 20540

March 6, 2012

Public contact: Martha Kennedy (202) 707-9115, mkenn@loc.gov

Swann Foundation Fellow Lara Saguisag to Discuss
How Early American Comic Strips Shed Light on the Nature of the Child

Swann Foundation Fellow Lara Saguisag, in a lecture at the Library of Congress, will examine how early 20th-century comic strips that featured child protagonists revealed the nature of the child during that era.

Saguisag will present "Sketching the 'Secret Tracts' of the Child's Mind: Theorizing Childhood in Early American Fantasy Strips, 1905-1914," at noon on Thursday, March 29, in Dining Room A on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Avenue S.E., Washington, D.C. The lecture is free and open to the public. No tickets are needed.

Saguisag will focus specifically on fantasy strips such as Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo in Slumberland" and Lyonel Feininger's "Wee Willie Winkie's World." These strips featured child characters who inhabited dream worlds and transformed their environments through their imaginations. According to Saguisag, central to these works is the idea that a child's perception and experience of the world was shaped by his/her proclivity for fantasy. This natural connection with fantasy, moreover, made the child a complex, sometimes inscrutable figure, one who was essentially different from an adult.

Comic strips that linked childhood and fantasy drew from and built on themes of late-19th and early-20th-century children's books such as Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses" and Frank L. Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." Such literature portrayed and celebrated the child as a highly imaginative being who enters and sometimes creates fantasy worlds that an adult could not readily access.

According to Saguisag, during the same period, psychologists and practitioners associated with the Child Study Movement were also intrigued by what G. Stanley Hall termed the "secret tracts" of the child's mind. Many psychologists concluded that imaginative play and reverie were healthful childhood activities and advised parents to take an active role in cultivating the child's imagination. The intersection of children's literature and psychology encountered in early American "kid strips" helped perpetuate and naturalize the image of the imaginative child.

Born and raised in the Philippines, Saguisag completed an M.A. in Children's literature at Hollins University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at The New School. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Childhood Studies at Rutgers University-Camden, where she held a University Presidential Fellowship from 2007-2009.

This presentation is sponsored by the Caroline and Erwin Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon of the Library of Congress and the Library's Prints & Photographs Division. The lecture is part of the foundation's continuing activities to support the study, interpretation, preservation and appreciation of original works of humorous and satiric art by graphic artists from around the world. The foundation strives to award one fellowship annually to assist scholarly research and writing projects in the field of caricature and cartoon. Applications for the 2013-2014 academic year are due Feb. 15, 2013. More information about the fellowship is available through the Swann Foundation's website: www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/ or by e-mailing swann@loc.gov.

# # #

PR12-48
3/6/12
ISSN: 0731-3527

March 29: Early Comics and the Nature of the Child Lecture

Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington DC   20540

March 6, 2012

Public contact:  Martha Kennedy (202) 707-9115, mkenn@loc.gov

 Swann Foundation Fellow Lara Saguisag to Discuss
How Early American Comic Strips Shed Light on the Nature of the Child

Swann Foundation Fellow Lara Saguisag, in a lecture at the Library of Congress, will examine how early 20th-century comic strips that featured child protagonists revealed the nature of the child during that era.

Saguisag will present "Sketching the 'Secret Tracts' of the Child's Mind: Theorizing Childhood in Early American Fantasy Strips, 1905-1914," at noon on Thursday, March 29, in Dining Room A on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Avenue S.E., Washington, D.C.  The lecture is free and open to the public.  No tickets are needed.

Saguisag will focus specifically on fantasy strips such as Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo in Slumberland" and Lyonel Feininger's "Wee Willie Winkie's World."  These strips featured child characters who inhabited dream worlds and transformed their environments through their imaginations.  According to Saguisag, central to these works is the idea that a child's perception and experience of the world was shaped by his/her proclivity for fantasy.  This natural connection with fantasy, moreover, made the child a complex, sometimes inscrutable figure, one who was essentially different from an adult.

Comic strips that linked childhood and fantasy drew from and built on themes of late-19th and early-20th-century children's books such as Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses" and Frank L. Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz."  Such literature portrayed and celebrated the child as a highly imaginative being who enters and sometimes creates fantasy worlds that an adult could not readily access.

According to Saguisag, during the same period, psychologists and practitioners associated with the Child Study Movement were also intrigued by what G. Stanley Hall termed the "secret tracts" of the child's mind.  Many psychologists concluded that imaginative play and reverie were healthful childhood activities and advised parents to take an active role in cultivating the child's imagination.  The intersection of children's literature and psychology encountered in early American "kid strips" helped perpetuate and naturalize the image of the imaginative child.

Born and raised in the Philippines, Saguisag completed an M.A. in Children's literature at Hollins University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at The New School. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Childhood Studies at Rutgers University-Camden, where she held a University Presidential Fellowship from 2007-2009. 

This presentation is sponsored by the Caroline and Erwin Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon of the Library of Congress and the Library's Prints & Photographs Division.  The lecture is part of the foundation's continuing activities to support the study, interpretation, preservation and appreciation of original works of humorous and satiric art by graphic artists from around the world.  The foundation strives to award one fellowship annually to assist scholarly research and writing projects in the field of caricature and cartoon.  Applications for the 2013-2014 academic year are due Feb. 15, 2013.  More information about the fellowship is available through the Swann Foundation's website: www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/ or by e-mailing swann@loc.gov.

# # #

PR12-48
3/6/12
ISSN: 0731-3527

Biographical Sketches of Cartoonists & Illustrators in Library of Congress going out of print

Excuse my whipsawing you on this, but I'm going to remove Biographical Sketches of Cartoonists & Illustrators in the Swann Collection of the Library of Congress from sale in the next couple of days. For a good reason - Joe Procopio of Lost Art Books is going to do a professionally typeset and illustrated version instead. And I know which book I'd rather own...

So if you need the information sooner rather than later, or you're a completist, buy a copy in the next day or so. At the end of the weekend, I'm going to set it back to invisibility as a private project.

The two people who bought a copy should update the entry for John Celardo to read "died 2012". Mea culpa.

Seriously, Joe does nice work, as does Sara, so I'm looking forward to seeing the 'ultimate'* edition.

*except one could hope that some cartoonists in LoC's prints and photos collection, but not in the Swann collection could be added to a new edition which could have an even longer title...

New book: Biographical Sketches of Cartoonists & Illustrators in Library of Congress

I've known Sara Duke since the early 1990s, and have always been impressed with her scholarship and breadth of knowledge. At some point, when I was complaining to her about the lack of a cartoonist biographical dictionary, such as had been done in the UK, she replied that she had a draft of one that had never been published. Terry Echter had begun the project, and Sara took it over in 1993 and completed it by 1995 when the Swann Collection became publicly available (although no additions were made to the collection after 1983). She was kind enough to forward a copy to me, as it is in the public domain.  I have edited and updated it slightly, but this volume remains overwhelmingly the 1995 version that Sara wrote. 

Now available at cost: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/biographical-sketches-of-cartoonists-illustrators-in-the-swann-collection-of-the-library-of-congress/18846113 (print) or http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/biographical-sketches-of-cartoonists-illustrators-in-the-swann-collection-of-the-library-of-congress/18864437 (pdf) or a free download at https://archive.org/details/DukeBioSketchesOfCartoonistsInSwannCollAtLOC

Biographical Sketches of Cartoonists & Illustrators in the Swann Collection of the Library of Congress
by Sara Duke, 340 pages

Inside this book are short biographical sketches about the many artists represented in the Library of Congress' Swann Collection compiled by Erwin Swann (1906-1973). In the early 1960s, Swann, a New York advertising executive started collecting original cartoon drawings of artistic and humorous interest. Included in the collection are political prints and drawings, satires, caricatures, cartoon strips and panels, and periodical illustrations by more than 500 artists, most of whom are American. The 2,085 items range from 1780-1977, with the bulk falling between 1890-1970. The Collection includes 1,922 drawings, 124 prints, 14 paintings, 13 animation cels, 9 collages, 1 album, 1 photographic print, and 1 scrapbook.

UPDATED 2/22/2017: A new printing has been uploaded with a correction - deleting TE Coles and adding in CE Toles.  You can print out the following and insert it in your first printing -

Biographical Sketches of  Cartoonists & Illustrators in the  Swann Collection  of the

Library of Congress - Errata sheet for first edition, first printing (2012)

Delete the entry for T.E. Coles.

Insert instead

CLAUDE ELDRIDGE TOLES (“Hugh Morris”)

1875-1901

American cartoonist, who was born and grew up in Elmira, New York and worked as a cartoonist for the Elmira Telegram in 1893 after starting his working career as a clerk. Editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post in 1894. His work appeared in the Texas Sandwich a humorous periodical, as well as the Canadian magazine Toronto Saturday Night. He returned home in 1895 to recover from pneumonia. Cartoonist who worked for the New York Herald as a freelance cartoonist in 1896. In 1898, he went to Baltimore to work for the International Syndicate which distributed his work nationally. He joined the Baltimore Sketch Club while there. His work was distributed to the Philadelphia Press between 1899 and 1901. He soon rose to the position of art director. He created The Reverend Fiddle D.D. for the New York Journal in 1898. He also contributed cartoons to Puck and Judge. He drew under his own name and several aliases, including Hugh Morris. At the time of his death, he had formed the Baltimore Illustration Syndicate. He died of Bright’s Disease – kidney failure – on December 16, 1901 in Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, New York, while visiting his in-laws. He was buried in Elmira, New York. Editorial cartoonist Tom Toles is not related.

Info from: “Guide to the SFACA Collection: Newspaper Comic Strips, series II: comic strips – Philadelphia Press,” Ohio State University, http://cartoons.osu.edu/finding_aids/sfaca/philadelphia_press.html , 10/04/2011 {See Swann Collection}; “Claude Eldridge Toles Collection (1875-1901), http://charleywag.wordpress.com/ , 06/11/2013; “News of Yore: The Life and Times of C.E. Toles,” Stripper’s Guide Blog, entry for March 3, 2012,  http://strippersguide.blogspot.com/2012_02_26_archive.html , 06/11/2013: “Wellknown Cartoonist Dead,” Westfield (N.Y.) Republican, December 18, 1901, p. 2; Mike Rhode, “Claude E. Toles exhibit at the Cosmos Club,” ComicsDC Blog, entry for October 25, 2016,  http://comicsdc.blogspot.com/2016/10/claude-e-toles-exhibit-at-cosmos-club.html , 10/25/2016

Dean Haspiel's minicomic collection

Here's photos of Dean Haspiel's minicomic collection being sorted through before going to the Library of Congress for the new SPX collection.

Bully lecture - Library of Congress November 29 @ 11:30 in Dining Room A

Rick Marschall speaks on Teddy Roosevelt in political cartoons at the Library of Congress. His new book will be for sale as well.

Sept 25: Cartoonists at National Book Festival (corrected)

It's on the Mall today, and includes Richard Thompson, Kazu Kibuishi and others. I'll be introducing Kibuishi at 1:55, so feel free to grab me to say hello.

Here's my intro, as it stands now:

Kazu Kibuishi (KAH-zoo Kee-boo-EE-shee), was born in Japan in 1979, but came to the United States as a young child. Trained in film-making, he worked in animation, , but as comics evolved in recent years, he has distinguished himself in new formats. He began his webcomic Copper in 2002, and the short stories follow the dreamlike adventures of Fred and his dog Copper. These stories were collected in a book in 2010. Kibuishi began the Flight anthology book series in 2004 to showcase the work of young cartoonists, including animators. It was originally published by Image Comics, but moved to mainstream publishers to get into bookstores. He recently ended the series with book #8. While working on Flight, he also created the steampunk graphic novel Daisy Kutter: The Last Train which was an American Library Association 2006 pick for Best Books for Young Adults. In 2008, he began Amulet a child-friendly steampunk series published by Scholastic. His newest book is Amulet #4: The Last Council which debuted this month on the New York Times’ bestsellers lists.

Here's more details on the cartoonists:

The National Book Festival Is Cartoon-Friendly, Too
by Mike Rhode on Sep. 23, 2011
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/books/2011/09/23/the-national-book-festival-is-cartoon-friendly-too/