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thesis entitled

The Avant-Garde in America 1911—17:

A Study of The Masses,
Ladies' Home Journal
And Collier's Magazines

presented by

Aimee Nicole Marcereau

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

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THE AVANT-GARDE IN AMERICA 1911-1917:
A STUDY OF THE MASSES,
LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL
AND COLLIER’S MAGAZINES

By

Aimée Nicole Marcereau

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Art

1995

ABSTRACT

THE AVANT-GARDE IN AMERICA 1911-1917:
A STUDY OF THE MASSES,
LADIES’ HOME [OURNAL
AND COLLIER'S MAGAZINES

By

Aimee Marcereau

During the late nineteenth century, the literary and artistic avant-gardes
merged in France. Radical artists and writers alike joined in the spirit of revolt,
which took its most apparent form in politically charged graphic magazines. This
study is an attempt to assert the continuance of an avant-garde manifestation
from the graphic imagery of the European avant-garde in the later nineteenth-
century to the radical American graphic magazine The Masses , published
between 1911-1917.

Politically and stylistically, The Masses was aligned with its European
avant-garde precursors, supporting two of the avant-garde's basic tenets of
stylistic and political radicalness. Yet for the publication to be considered avant-
garde in America, it necessitates a comparison of some of its American graphic
contemporaries. Using The Ladies ’ Home Iournal and Collier '5 magazines as
specific examples, this study will assert that The Masses could be considered

avant-garde among them as well.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To any scholar writing on The Masses after 1988, much of the ground work has
been covered by Rebecca Zurier in her comprehensive text Art for The Masses: A
Radical Magazine and its Graphics, 1911—1917. I too owe her a great deal as she says

much of what I say, although earlier and albeit different conclusions.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

 

List of Figures v-vi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1

The Evolution of Revolution: The Avant-Garde in Europe 4
Chapter 2

Across the Atlantic: The Avant-Garde in America 14
Chapter 3

The History of Art and The Avant-Garde 68
Conclusion 74

 

 

Bibliography 77

iv

LIST OF FIGURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 1 ”The Argument”; Théophile Steinlen 9

FIGURE 2 ”The Unwed Mother"; Jean-Louis Forain 10
FIGURE 3 ”Ratapouil”; Honoré Daumier 12
FIGURE 4 "I’ gorry, I’m tired! ...,” ; Art Young for The Masses 36
FIGURE 5 ladies' Home Journal Cover, 1916 38
FIGURE 6 Collier’s Cover, 1916 40
FIGURE 7 Masses’ Cover, 1916 41
FIGURE 8 "Untitled”; W.B. King for The Ladies’ Home Journal 45

 

FIGURE 9 ”Adam and Eve, The True Story...,”; John Sloan for The Masses 46

 

FIGURE 10 ”Honestly Julia...,"; Cornelia Barns for The Masses 48

FIGURE 11 ”Untitled”; Arthur W. Brown for The Ladies’ Home Journal --- 49

 

 

 

FIGURE 12 Collier’s Cover depicting women 50
FIGURE 13 TheLadies’ Home Journal Cover depicting women 51
FIGURE 14 ”Gee, Mag...,”; Stuart Davis for The Masses 53
FIGURE 15 ”Gypsies”; Collier’s 54

 

FIGURE 16 ”Untitled” (Shouting Woman); Stuart Davis for The Masses --- 56

 

 

FIGURE 17 ”Race Superiority”; John Sloan for The Masses 57
FIGURE 18 "The Stranger Who Walked by Night”; Collier’s 59
FIGURE 19 ”The Perfect Soldier”; Robert Minor for The Masses -------- 61

FIGURE 20 Collier’s; Images of War; general

FIGURE 21 Collier’s; Images of War

FIGURE 22 The ladies' Home Journal; Images of War

FIGURE 23 "This man subjected himself...”; George Bellows for

TheMasses

 

 

 

 

vi

62

63

65

Introduction

Fostered by the ideal of liberalism, the avant—garde is based on the idea of
social renewal by cultural challenge} Therefore the imagery associated with an
avant-garde possesses a power to rise above the sediment of the iconic imagery
of its contemporaries. This study is an attempt to assert the continuance of an
avant-garde manifestation from the graphic imagery of the European avant-
garde in the later nineteenth-century to the radical American graphic magazine
The Masses which ran from 1911-1917. These years were politically charged as
the world unconsciously prepared for and participated in the largest disaster in
history. The cultural renegades of the European avant-garde were in the thick of
protest that took its most apparent form in politically charged graphic
magazines. This form of protest followed in a similar tradition in America. The
radical beliefs of artists who respectively illustrated for European and American
magazines, were reinforced by their use of the graphic medium. The crayon line
characteristic of these radical publications took on political significance as a
stylistic rebellion against the fine-line bourgeois illustration of their graphic
contemporaries.

To assert the existence or continuance of an avant-garde, I must first
define the term since it is laden with multiple readings gleaning bits from the
Hegelian notion of "progress" and Marxist ideology as well as from theories of
artistic production that have been developed outside academia, as literary
criticism. In recent post-modern scholarship, with its re-evaluation of the

dialectics of modernism and the avant-garde, "vestiges of old avant-gardist

 

1 Robert Hugithesmantmumznd ed., (New York:McGraw Hill Inc., 1991) p.
365, 372.

2
quarrels" (to use a phrase of Robert Hughes) were played against the new, thus

creating additional parameters from which to assess the theory. Nevertheless, in
this study I am not attempting to present a theoretical pastiche of avant—garde
scholarship, I choose instead to deal with it as a phenomenon focused on two of
its basic tenets: stylistic and political radicalness. In this study I work from these
tenets, tracing them to their literary origins in mid nineteenth-century France and
to their crossover into the visual medium in America in the twentieth-century. As
many recycled discourses on the avant-garde tend to be subjective, I
concentrated on original source material whenever possible and strove to
provide a firsthand study of these documents.2

Through a comparative analysis of style and politics or ideologies,
between The Masses and its European graphic counterparts, I contend the
continuance of an avant-garde from EurOpe to America in the graphic medium.
Then, with a comparative analysis between The Masses and its American graphic
contemporaries, using The ladies' Home Journal and Collier ’5 magazines as specific
examples, I also assert that The Masses could be considered avant-garde among
them as well. This assertion would pre-date the American avant-garde of the

1940's with the Abstract Expressionists which will serve as a future project.

 

2 I have utilized as much primary source material as possible to eliminate the reading of
other scholars. With any research undertaken if the sources are no longer available for comment,
their original remarks are as subjective as some of those imbued by secondary readings.

The question then is how, against the provincial background

of America, and given American Art as it existed up until 1946-47,
that it became possible to achieve such a radical transformation -
not only of art itself but of the American role in art- how it was
possible not only to join the "mainstream" but to go beyond it

and revolutionize it ....3

 

3 Bernice Rose, as quoted by Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole mg Idea Qf Mgflggu‘sm,
trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1983) p. 15.

Chapter 1
The Evolution of Revolution: The Avant-Garde in Europe

The history of modern art is the history of its avant-garde, as claimed by
Howard Fox in the introduction to his book on the avant-garde in the 19805,4
though the history of the avant-garde is much more than a century older.5 The
militaristic derivation of the word implies 'in front of,’ in French or 'before' the
remainder of the "garde" or troops marching into unknown territory. Its meaning
holds similar implications for art, being stylistically as well as politically 'in front
of,’ or 'before' the cultural mainstream. The term was originally used in the
criticism of literary styles and publications as Charles Baudelaire observed in the
personal notebook he kept from 1862-1864.6 Although, it was probably used as
early as the 1840's7 and was associated specifically with writers who were
ideologically on the left as a radical shift from the conservative mainstream. In
the plastic arts of Baudelaire's time, naturalism was viewed as a seditious
departure from the rigid, posed styles of the Academy. The historical joining of
these radical phenomena - leftist politics and stylistic naturalism - will hereafter
denote political and stylistic radicalness. This pairing occurred in the pages of the
independent little magazine, aptly entitled Ia Revue Indépendante, founded in
1880, which "gathered fraternally...the rebels of politics and the rebels of art."8

 

4 Howard Fox, mm. (L. A. County Museum of Art, 1987) p. 9.

5 As noted by Renato Poggioli, the avant-garde had its origins in literature and "it is rather
rare to find the concept or term outside political literature in the 1870's (and) nearly impossible in
the preceding decade,” as quoted from W trans. Gerald Fitzgerald
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968) p. 9-10.

5 Ibid., p. 10.

7 In an informal interview with Professor Eldon VanLiere, June 30, 1995, he asserted that
Baudelaire most definitely used this term in the 1840's.

5
Thirty years later and across the Atlantic, a similar phenomenon occurred in the

pages of another independent graphic magazine entitled The Masses which ran
from 1911 until it was suppressed by the United States government in 1917.
However, prior to examining this publication, it is first important to understand
the European environment in which the avant-garde arose.

As noted above, the avant-garde is rooted in European literary traditions
and is inherent to certain social contexts that fostered its existence. Though it
originates in this tradition, art historians concerning themselves with high art
examples cite Gustave Courbet, with his work of circa 1850, as one of the first
avant-garde artists. For that to bear out, Courbet is considered to have been
stylistically innovative and politically subversive. Following the Revolution of
1848, France was politically unstable. In attempts to abate further overthrow, the
government reacted with severe acts of suppression on the visual arts.9 Had they
been successful, Courbet’s revolt would not exist, or at least we would not know
it had existed. Similarly, if the revolution would have resulted in total anarchy,
without reprise, Courbet’s revolt would not exist either. Hence, in both cases, he
would not have been considered avant-gardeJ0 ”Avant—garde art is by its nature
incapable of surviving not only the persecution, but even the protection or the
official patronage of a totalitarian state and a collective society, whereas the

hostility of public opinion can be useful to it?“ Of course there is always the

 

8 Poggioli, p. 11.

9 In their respective studies, Robert Goldstein and Jane Clapp reveal that with every
revolution in France it was followed by the enactment and reenactment of suppression laws.

Goldstein, gnawing of Political Character in N inetgnthCentury France, (Ohio: Kent State
University Press, 1989) Clapp, Ag nghip: A Chmnolggy of Progrjfl and Pm'm Art,
(New JerseyScarecrow Press, 1972)

10 T.J. Clark talks extensively about this and the climate that gave rise to Courbet in Image
of m Pmlg; Gustave Courbet and the mud chh Republic, 1848-1851 (Greenwich CN: New
York Graphic Society, 1973)

11 Poggioli, p. 95.

6
prospect of revolution for revolution’s sake, but that is not the issue here, I am

merely attempting to delineate the determinants that give rise to the
phenomenon of an avant-garde.

The cultural climate in France that gave rise to Courbet and to the late
nineteenth-century radical publications which would prove influential to The
Masses, contained the necessary ingredients to foster an avant-garde. The
democratic government in France at this time was neither totalitarian nor
anarchist and for the most part, fairly caught up in the visual tradition espoused
by the French Academy. The environment therefore provided the 'social hostility'
necessary for artists going against this tradition as shown in the innumerable
radical graphic publications of the mid-to late nineteenth century, such as
L'Assiete au Beurre and Le Rire - two publications that were influential to The
Masses. This is evidenced by the works of Théophile Steinlen and Jean-Louis
Forain who illustrated for these magazines (as well as others) and preceding
them, Honoré Daumier, all of whom I will also prove were influential on the
artists of The Masses. These French artists ”were unable to accept the conditions
of that society and were forced to choose between reactionary or revolutionary
doctrines...“2 They used the publications they worked for as forums of exchange
for their radical beliefs as well as their innovative graphic style and techniques.
Therefore, it stands that these European magazines, deemed subversive in both
style and political affiliation, subsisted in an environment in which the
phenomenon of an avant-garde could exist.

These magazines served to "denounce with neither fear, digression, nor

mercy, the social inequities and their perpetrators...”3 Not only were they

 

12 EugeniaW.l-Ierbert, ' n 'lR : n 1' 1 (New
HavenzYale University Press, 1961) p. 101.

7
stylistically radical, they had political agendas as well. Many of them were

politically to the left or right of center and all of them seemingly called on the
artists to emerge from isolation and join the masses in their revolt, whatever it
might be. Regardless of political affiliation, they were ”allied in their attack
against the republican status quo, [for them] it was the focus of the myriad and
contradictory complaint against the middle of the road government of the
bourgeoisie.“4 This attack is visually represented through the rough coarse
crayon technique that all three French artists used.

Neither this type of argument, nor Théophile Steinlen, Jean-Louis Forain
and Honoré Daumier's choice of medium is revolutionary, only the way in which
their work is executed deems them stylistically radical to their contemporaries.
Prints arose in the early fifteenth century in order to elucidate for the common
person the personalities and events of political, social, military and religious life
as the ‘common person' was illiterate and could understand through images
only.15 Hence prints have been aligned with the people's cause and as Robert
Phillipe continues "bit by bit (they have) constructed the iconography of a social
Bible as pictures could at least render justice to the meek."16 In addition, the
nature of a print, unlike painting, allows for its mass production, therefore it is an
affordable medium and has the ability to reach a wide audience, thus it is the
ideal method for communicating messages.

As Ralph Shikes indicates, "the starkness of a black-and-white print unlike

painting, is often more appropriate for social message than is the sensuousness

 

13 Phillip Dennis Cate, ed., The Graphic Arts and French Society; 1871-1914 (New Jersey:
Rutgers University Press 1988) p. 160.

14 Herbert, p. 102.

15 Much of this summary on prints is extracted from Robert Philippe, Political Graphics: Art
Mm (Oxford: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1982) p. 2.

16 Philippe, p. 2.

8
of color...."17 Throughout history social artists such as Max Klinger and his

protégé Kathe Kollwitz supported this sentiment as both chose the graphic
medium above any other to deliver their social intent. This significance of the
association with black-and-white imagery and social message becomes greater as
all the images in The Masses were black and white with the exception of the
covers}8 as were those executed by Steinlen, Forain and Daumier.

As for his subject matter, Steinlen shared an interest with The Masses
artists in powerful depictions of life and laborers in the pages of several socialist
publications with the intent of "shocking the oppressed out of their ignorance
and into political education and action."19 He is often referred to as "The Millet
of the Streets,"20 as "there is a pervasive expression of humanity and fraternity in
much of his work"21 In contrast, Jean-Louis Forain's satirical pen attacked and
his ”acrid political and social satire seized on the scandals of the government
hypocrisy of the dominant classes...."22 Mediating between these two artists in
intent and style is Honoré Daumier. Steinlen shared his "savage wolfish
quality"23 in the coarseness of some of his works like The Argument, while Forain
shared his satirical bite (Frgures' 1 and 2). Daumier himself stands alone in both

form and content. Preodating the artistic activity of Steinlen and Forain by

 

17 RalphE. Shikes, i l ' in ' n
meosmm Bee1conPress 1969) p xxiv

18 The covers actually were black and white and only "obtained" color upon the addition of
a second plate.

19 Cate, p. 160.

2° Shikes, p. 227.

21 Ibid., p. 227.
Herbert, p.194.

23 Shikes, p. 231.

 

71-“.

FIGURE 1 ”The Argument" ; Théophile Steinlen

10

 

FIGURE 2 "The Unwed Mother" ; Jean-Louis Forain

11

nearly half a century, Daumier served as mentor to all those revolutionary
graphic artists who followed him and derived inspiration from his reductive
form, spontaneous line and ability to capture the life around him (Figure 3).
Daumier's ability led the critic Charles Baudelaire to champion him in his essay
"A Painter of Modern Life." Baudelaire venerated Daumier as well as another
graphic illustrator Constantin Guys, for their ability to capture, and in the case of
Daumier, comment on the modern life around them with biting humor and
satire.24

French artists that began commenting on the life around them felt the
necessity of doing so as a result of feeling a certain sense of alienation from their
academic contemporaries who exalted the past. Alienation from the mass
urbanization that was rising up around them, alienation in its social-economic,
cultural-stylistic, and historical-ethical variants, all which serve as antagonists, or
rather as catalysts for the formation of an avant-garde.25 Feelings such as these
gave rise to the subsequent formation of magazines that were deemed radical
toward the fin-de-siecle and by which the artists and writers of The Masses were
most influenced.

As Steinlen, Forain and Daumier experienced a disenchantment with their
environment, so too did the artists and writers of The Masses magazine. They

shared with their European precursors, a sense of alienation from the political

 

24 Louis Boe Hyslop, Baudelaire: Man of His Time, (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1980) p. 34-46.

25 Poggioli, p. 143. These factors serve as nominalistic proof for the formation of an avant-
garde. Though Poggioli continues in this line of reasoning and cites the fauves or the
lndependants as examples, I assert it can be applied to any group experiencing alienation in this
form and from these determinants.

12

 

 

 

 

Figure 3 "Ratapouil" ; Honoré Daumier

13
and stylistic mainstream of America in the early twentieth century and the

subsequent desire to break stylistically from the past.

Chapter 2
Across the Atlantic: The Avant-Garde in America

The spirit of revolt was ripe in the years leading up to and encompassing
World War I as America witnessed the fervent activity of artists and writers alike
caught up in the cultural heyday of New York's Greenwich Village. The Village
symbolized a "beacon to those dissatisfied with midwestern towns where
cultural life was limited to Booster Clubs and potluck suppers in the church
basement. "25 Man's discovery of his inner self came alive in the haven of
creativity found in New York, as it "offered the proto-avant-gardists(s) nothing
but the impetus to revolt. "27 These sentiments recall a certain naiveté prevalent
during this period which explains contemporaneous critic Genevieve Taggard's
reflection upon the spirit of the times. She stated that ”there was so much to be
said, done, thought, seen and tried, as the youth of the land was getting out of
doors and all winter taboos were being broken! ...the age hadn’t come to grips
with anything much more serious than the problems of rancid meat. ”23

The "youth of the land," as Taggard refers to, were the lot that strove to
break away from the preceding generation's tight grasp of Victorian ideals. These
were held by the older generation, as they were traditional and safe in a world
that was changing daily. The fear felt at the fin de siecle by the old garde was
being replaced by a new breed of utopianism among the youth in America, all
which was flowering under the political leadership of Woodrow Wilson. Its
effects upon society "encouraged the growth of a social, cultural, and political

 

2‘ Steve Watson. Wm: (New York:
Abbeville Press, 1991) p. 15.

27 Ibid., p.15.

28 Genevieve Taggard, MW (New York: Boni and Liveright, Inc. 1925) p. 3.

14

15
radicalism which had as its object the recovery of primitive modes of being, the

lost innocence of the race."29 Author, Christopher Lasch comments that "the
recovery of the secret self was seen not only as something desirable in itself but
as a means of bringing about far-reaching social changes as well...."30 The
writings of John Dewey, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and radical village writers
like Randolph Bourne were exposing the "evils" of society and proposing plans of
reform to overcome the ills created by those in power, mainly the government
and the church. The radicals were rebelling against the genteel traditions of the
conservatives and attempting to break down the Victorian cult of domesticity
carried over into the twentieth-century by conservatives and politicians. At this
time, these factions were one and the same and reflected mainstream values that
were subsequently repeated in commercial publications of the day. "The new
radicalism led to an attack on social problems ...the radicals could speak of the
need to liberate the creative energies of humankind and in the same breath, talk
of "adjusting" humans, as Jane Addams wrote, "in healthful relations" to one
another."31 Radicalism took the form of a new sort of politics in the early
twentieth century (Socialism) and according to Lasch, rests on a two-fold
discovery, that of "the dispossessed by men who themselves had never known
poverty from prejudice, and the mutual self-discovery of the intellectuals." The

combination of the two, Lasch continues:

accounted for the intensity with which the intellectuals identified
themselves with the outcasts of the social order: women, children,
proletarians, Indians, and Jews. 32

 

29 Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America (1889-1963) The lntellec_tual as a
W (New York- Alfred A. Knopf, 1965) p. 144.

30 Ibid., p. 144.

31 Ibid., p. 145-6.

16
The intellectuals felt displaced by society and felt a sort of kinship with other

"social outcasts." Collectively, they felt isolated from society and within this
collective they gained the strength and hope to fight the conservative
mainstream. Subsequently, these are the conditions that gave rise to the
formation of the radical Socialist publication, The Masses, and their protest was
indigenous to American radical life in early twentieth century America.

The Masses began in Greenwich Village in 1911 and its history chronicles
the experience of a generation of radical American intellectuals and sheds light
on the relationship of their politics and art in the early twentieth century.
Cooperatively run, The Masses was a monthly publication associated with the
Socialist party, dedicated to the working class and to serving the conscience of a
radical generation. At ten cents a copy, the magazine was launched during the
"golden era" of magazine publishing "where more than six thousand periodicals
covering every conceivable subject for almost every audience"33 appeared during
the first decade of the twentieth century. The Masses oversized format was
printed on newsprint with a heavier bond cover, and it addressed topics its
American contemporaries shunned or ignored, some of which eventually led to
the magazine's ultimate governmental suppression in 1917. Though the
publication was short lived, it stood at the cultural crossroads of important
political and cultural currents, mediating not only between the avant-garde and
the establishment, but also between literary and political milieus.

The Masses was the first publication of its kind in America to combine

radical art with radical politics effectively.34 This was undoubtedly aided by its

 

32 Ibid., p. 147.

33 Rebecca Zurier, an 191 The Mags; A Radical Magging ang its Graphics, 1911-1917

(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988) p. 30.

34 Carl Zigrosser, a leading American writer on the graphic arts, wrote about The Masses
which appeared in a short article found in the collection of John Sloan's papers. The article is

17
impressive list of contributors, who epitomized the revolutionary spirit in

America during the early part of this century. Its masthead read like a roll call of
some of the most popular young cultural renegades, including regular writers
John Reed, Randolph Bourne, Upton Sinclair, Mary Heaton Vorse, and Max
Eastman, with occasional contributions from Emma Goldmann and Mabel
Dodge. Some of is poes were Amy Lowell, Louis Untermeyer, Ezra Pound and
Vachel Lindsay, with early works of William Carlos Williams and e.e. cumrnings.
The artists consisted of many well-known illustrators like Boardman Robinson,
Robert Minor and Art Young, as well as feminist artist Cornelia Barns and many
Ash-Can painters such as John Sloan, George Bellows, Arthur B. Davies and a
young Stuart Davis35 whose early style drastically departs from his later abstract
works. These artists and writers stood for the struggle of social, economic,
institutional and moral liberty and believed in direct versus political action and
free verse versus meter. They set out to puncture the pious hypocrisies and
double standards of conventional morality through their articles and illustrations
and created what became one of the authentic mouthpieces of their era.

Although the magazine dealt with serious issues, humor was an important
aspect of The Masses 3" during the years 1912 - 17 and aligns it with is European
radical influences. The Masses sardonic sense of humor gnawed at mainstream
America and is values. It was different from is mainstream contemporaries light

humor, for it was an intelligent humor, a humor infested with truth. Through is

 

identified only by author with no date or source of publication if any. From this point forward, all
references of Zigrosser's (and John Sloan's) are from this source and will be identified by box
number only. Carl Zigrosser, misc. notes from 1913-17 in John Sloan Collection file Illustration,
box 192. John Sloan Trust, Delaware Art Museum, Willmington, DE.

35 Rebecca Zurier notes these artists involvment with The Masses throughout her text A1319;
W as does Carl Zigrosser in the source cited above.

35 In the exhibition of "The American Salon of Humorists," out of twenty-three exhibitors,
twelve were regular contributors to The Mass.

18
use of humor, it enabled some " to see the grinning soul of the whole system of

exploitation" 37 that is contemporaries only served to propagate. Humor was
something more than a mood, "it (was) the very pith and essence of that swift,
electric atmosphere which (was) so particularly our own ..."38

It was important for Masses staff to claim something of 'their own,‘ as they
were trying to set themselves apart from the current generation. They sought
spiritual guidance from radicals of the past to overcome the fears and
uncertainties of the age in which they lived. In An Amlggy for the Intelligensia,
Masses managing editor, Floyd Dell, wrote that:

in the time when we were growing up, the human imagination was a
chaos, filled with the wreckage of a century-long conflict of which we
were unaware, between utopian ideals and machine-made facs...we were
living in the debris of an age that had gone spiritually to smash. 39

The contributors to The Masses were essentially all children of the Civil War, Dell
continued, who ”heard of heroism on their grand dad’s knee...,” but ”too much
heroism pans/’40 In attemps to recapture some of that ’lost spirituality,’ not
taught in their schools, they sought the writings of transcendentalist’s like
Thoreau and Whitman, whom they considered ”freed us from whatever chains

most irked: ”41

 

37 Edmond McKenna, "Art and Humor,” Mass 6 1915, p. 10.

33 "Sad and Serious Reflections on the First Salon of American Humorists," June 1915, as
found in the Kenneth Russell Chamberlain Papers, reel 291 and also the Stuart Davis Papers, reel
N584, frame 36, Archives of American Art, Washington DC.

39 Floyd Dell, Intellmal Vagabondagg - An Amlggy for the Intelligentsia. (New York:
George H. Brown Co., 1926) p. 109.

40 Ibid., p. 116.

41 Ibid., p. 117.

19

We were spiritual vagrans seeking the true road... if in doubt, Whitman
appeared to us saying ’Don’t be afraid camerado .’42

The marginality associated with the transcendentalist's was reflective of the
philosophy of The Masses, and diametrically opposed to is mainstream
commercial contemporaries. This is evidenced in is masthead written in 1913 by

John Reed, which appeared on the inside cover in subsequent issues:

A Revolutionary and not a Reform magazine; a Magazine with
a Sense of Humor and no Respect for the Respectable; Frank;
Arrogant; Impertinent; Searching for the True Causes; a
Magazine Directed against Rigidity and Dogma wherever it is
found a magazine whose final Policy is to do as it Pleases
and Conciliate Nobody, not even its Readers - there is a field
for this Publication in America, Help Us Find it.43

The Masses did not have to "conciliate" anyone as it was economically
independent from corporate sponsorship. In turn it acted as a sort of American
Salon des Independans "print(ing) what (was) too Naked or True for a Money-
making press/’44 It is evident that Masses' staff believed in what the magazine
stood for, as the artiss and writers offered some of their best works gratis.45 John
Sloan, art editor and one of the key illustrators of The Masses, admits in his
personal notebooks that he submitted countless drawings to The Masses , when it
was during a period in his life in which he could have earned $300 - $500 for his

commercial drawings.46 Sloan recalled that it ”was the opportunity to get one’s

 

Ibid., p. 117.

Inside front cover. Masses 5 Oct 1913 p. 2.

see

Ibid., p. 2.

‘5 Sloan stated that he contributed to the cause without pay from 1909-17 in a letter he
wrote to John Black dated February 2, 1950. Found in John Sloan Collection, box 164 containing
information on printed matter and socialism. Delaware Art Museum, Willmington, DE. All
subsequent information on Sloan unless otherwise noted is from The John Sloan Trust collection,
or Helen Farr Sloan's verbatim notes of John Sloan, both of which are housed at the Delaware Art
Museum and will hereafter be denoted by box number and appropriate set of notes.

20
(more creative and perhaps controversial)47 works published that drew (them)

together," not the money and besides, ”it was an honor to be published in The
Masses.“8 Though it never gained the wide spread popularity of other
mainstream publications, it effected or perhaps infected those whom it did reach.

It caused outrage among many conservatives however, as the magazine
was an integral part of the Greenwich Village radical scene. It was epitomized by
Mabel Dodge's Salon‘9 on lower Fifth Avenue where intellectuals gathered at
her soirées to discuss political and economic issues like birth control, pacifism,
women's suffrage and other aberrations from the conservative norm. Carl
Zigrosser admis that one could not help being emotionally involved in these
revolutionary issues at this time . "There was ferment in the air," he conceded,
"stirrings not only of political revolt but also social and cultural revolt."

The political revolt Zigrosser referred to was the Socialist party, dominant
among many New York radicals in the early part of the twentieth century. Leftist
politics were against mainstream American politics and therefore, by association,
The Masses shared with their leftist European precursors, the political radical
tenet of the avant-garde. Though The Masses appeared united in is socialist aims,
with the exception of the hard-core socialists Maurice Becker (1889-1975) and Art
Young, many of is contributors - such as William Glackens, Stuart Davis, (1894-

1964) Glen Coleman and John Sloan, were not full-fledged party members.50

 

45 Helen Farr Sloan verbatim notes of John Sloan, box 192, p. 1.

47 My personal addition. As it did not monetarily benefit the artists and writers to submit
their work to The Mass, many of them sold their more conservative drawings to other
magazines for money.

43 Helen Farr Sloan verbatim notes of John Sloan, box 192, p. 3.

49 Zurier, p. 6.

50 Though Sloan was an active member of the Socialist party since 1909, he became
disillustioned with it during the outbreak of WWI, though he kept his faith in socialism as an

21
Regardless of who was or who was not socialist, all left-wing political activity at

this time in America was highly suspect and was regarded by many as Opposed
to the best interests of the US in relation to World War 1.51

The magazine's involvement with radical politics, which at its onset
served as a vital aspect of is existence, eventually served as is demise. This was
due in part to is second editor, Max Eastman, who used Socialism as a platform
for propaganda. Prior to this, The Masses was gathered together under the
editorial guise of the Dutchman Piet Vlag,52 who modeled the magazine on some
of the worker cooperatives he experienced during his youth in Holland .53 The
magazine ceased publication in August 1912 after failing to gain the notoriety
and circulation is financier expected. It began again in December that year by
newly "elected"54 editor Max Eastman who subsequently carried the magazine
until is governmental suppression in 1917. It was under Eastman's reign that the
magazine changed is format from right to left Socialism and "announced its

break with the earlier magazine and with almost everything else."55 With these

 

idea, this as well as the other artists political leanings are taken from Helen Farr Sloan verbatim
notes of John Sloan, box 192, p. 2.

51 . - 1
(New York: Kennikat Press, 1972) p. 1.

 

52 Piet Vlag's tutelage occupied the innocent years before World War 1, when "the pink of
the intelligensia" in their sandals, burning candles and writing scandals met in the basement of
the Rand School for Social Sciences to discuss the magazine’s monthly contributions. Carl
Zigrosser, misc. notes from 1913-1917 in John Sloan Collection file Illustration, box 192. The article
is identified only by author with no date or source of publication if any.

53 Trim pubications were la Cooperation and the daily Le Peuple, published by the worker-
organized cooperative, la Maison du Peuple in Brussels. Vlag hoped to provide a similar exchange
in America and thus launched The Masses with this in mind. Rebecca Zurier gives a solid account
of the rnagazines' history in chapter one of her text beginning on p. 29.

54 Eastman was "elected" editor, for "no pay," at an emergency meeting held by Art Young,
following the demise of the publication in 1912. Rebecca Zurier, Art for The Mags; a radical
' ' a hi 1911-1917 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988) p. 35.

55 Zurier, p. 35.

22
changes, the magazine joined in the ranks of ”the militant class struggle [as it ]

was more to the taste of the times than the cooperative stores, it was more to the
tastes of the artiss and poes.”56 This act aligned the publication in the spirit and
tradition of French avant-garde graphic magazines such as L'Assiete au Beurre, Le
Rire, and other radical publications57 from the preceding century. The Masses
under the editorial years of Max Eastman serves as an American manifestation of
these in both is political agenda and ideology, as well as is views on art and
aesthetics, yet it was unique among is own American contemporaries.

As noted, The Masses was a Socialist publication. Rather than preaching at
their readers about the ills of society and capitalism, as Vlag had done, under
Eastman, Masses contributors , meant to "appeal to the masses" (both Socialist
and non-Socialist) in a lighter tone and inject satire which had been scant or non-
existent in the publications' early days, due in part to the early graphic style.53
Rebecca Zurier notes that "the magazine also attempted to move away from is
former editor and financier's desire to use it to promote a specific line of thought,
and that this new emphasis on non doctrinaire Socialism was important to

Eastman, at least at the onset of his editorship.59 What the unsuspecting Masses

 

56 Max Eastman, Enn' men; of Living, p. 401.

57 The Masses was also influenced by Germany's Jugend and Simplicissmus, England's Punch
and some of the socialist publications in Belgium. For a complete listing of Masss influences, see
Rebecca Zurier, p. 35.

58 The tenor of the early Masses seemed condescending as every drawing was accompanied
with a lengthy text explaining its inherent meaning and how it served Socialism. Heavily
influenced by art nouveau, the majority of Masses drawings and illustrations under Vlag
appeared sentimental and soft, depicting doe-eyed working class children. This style was mainly
the result of Charles Winter and his wife Alice Beech Winter who contributed regularly to The
Mass in its early days. Their images combined fine line with an almost rnawkish quality that
proved ineffectual in garnering support for the cause or the magazine. They were not the only
artists contributing to the magazine, however their style was the most prevalent in The Mass
early days.

59 Zurier, p. 36.

23
staff did not know, was that the creative outlet and free exchange of ideas they

sought, which were the very reasons these artiss and writers gathered together,
would be what eventually became jeopardized by the propagandistic aims of is
newly elected editor which would surface with World War 1.

Max Eastman was the type of man that insisted humans could shape their
environment and used his position as editor of The Mass to achieve his goals.
Eastman's insistence reflecs his propagandistic spirit which eventually surfaced
and created a rift between he and fellow Masses ' contributors. His romantic
sentiments expressed through The Masses however, seem unfounded}50 as he had
recently quit a teaching position at Columbia University where he was formerly
invited by John Dewey, with whom he also studied. Despite this pairing,
Eastrnan's sentiments overpower his academic training.

Although Eastman was an academic and a writer, and literary editor of
The Masses, he felt that the art contribution to the magazine expressed a "new
insurgency with great effectiveness, possibly more so than the literary
contributions, (in fact, he) considered art the most provocative and successful
aspect of the monthly.”51 It served his propagandistic purpose and he wanted to
unite it with propaganda.” This union took the form of editorial captions added

to drawings after they were submitted, therefore changing the meaning or in

 

‘0 Dewey invited Eastman to teach logic at Columbia University, though Eastman believes
Dewey wanted him there more as a student of his than as a teacher. Eastman eventually
completed enough coursework to obtain a Ph.D. in philosophy with a concentration in
psychology but he never took the degree. He was satisfied in knowing he completed the
requirements, he did not need the piece of paper to prove this task. Milton Cantor, The Divided

g3: AMQan Ragiglism, 1900-1979. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978) p. 47.

51 Louis Untermeyer, me Another World; The Autobigraphy of Louis Untermeyer (New
York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1939) p. 60.

‘2 Incidentally, Eastman’ s realization of the power of imagery as a means for propaganda is
not a revelation, it follows in the tradition of Daumier and other radical artists in Europe which
were influential upon The Masses.

24
some cases simply giving meaning to the graphics when there was none

intended. These captions served Eastman and the other hard-core socialiss aims,
however, they were considered propagandistic by those less politically engaged.

Founded as a c00perative, the majority of is artists and writers, felt The
Masses should remain as such. Eastman along with contributing artist Art Young
had a different aim in mind. Eastman saw art as the perfect means for
propaganda and felt that it could and for that matter, should communicate a
specific social message, whereas other contributors, namely, John Sloan
disagreed.‘3 This was the chief difference between Eastman and Sloan, though
they both thought art in is visual form, should communicate life. Eastman felt
that "the defining function of the artist was to cherish consciousness,"64 and to
"live life and communicate it. "55 He thought radicals and artists alike could find
strength for their lives of action through the medium of art and when art
reflected that life, ”it’s very being (would be) brought to consciousness...”66
Eastman took this line of thinking too far in promulgating Masses art to the level
of propaganda. What he did not consider however, was that many of The Masses
radical artiss fought for personal free expression, not the expression of a

someone else's, i.e. Socialism's agenda.

 

53 Though Sloan spoke favorably of Eastman, referring to him as a friend, he stated that
Eastman’s latter writings on The Masses reflected a false ideology to suit his "current” beliefs.
Sloan was referring to Eastman’s statements about fighting against ”bohemianism" when the
issue was drawn between propaganda and social satire. Sloan claims these statements were
untrue as Eastman and Young wanted their way all the time, as they kept a steady hammering at
the ideology of Socialism. John Sloan Trust, box 192, p. 2.

54 Eastman, Ag am the Life of Action, p. 72.
65 Ibid., p. 76.

66 Ibid., p. 74.

25
Rather than propaganda, Sloan saw art as an ideograph, if an artist was

not making ideas, he was not making art.57 He thought art should communicate,
as Eastman did, but the primary difference was that Eastman insisted on
attaching political meaning to art work, whereas Sloan felt social satire was what
made the magazine successful. ”It had been our theme in starting the magazine
and we wanted a hint of humor to remain... our position was out-voted,
(however, as) the original policy was to represent the poins of view of (all the)
contributing editors, not the majority rule.”68 Sloan, who was an original
member of the magazine before Eastman was elected editor, stated that the
purpose of the magazine ”was to educate through humor and to reach new
groups...as soon as the magazine became strictly partisan, it lost is flavor.”59
After August of 1914, Sloan stopped making political cartoons and after 1915 he
had "lost interest in the magazine as it was no longer a cooperative thing,” and in
1916, he led a walk out of artiss. 7° Sloan, along with the other artists that walked
out with him did not believe the idea that art should serve the contemporary
generation in the form of propaganda as their fellow editor Max Eastman
advocated.

Not only did Eastman promote the amalgamation of art and politics, he
had his own idea of what constituted ’beauty’ and the role of the artist and it was
in sharp contrast to the conventional and usually idealized beauty found in

commercial publications. Within Eastman's theory on beauty, he included

 

57 Helen Farr Sloan verbatim notes of John Sloan, box 192, p 2-3.
68 Ibid., p. 1.
59 Ibid., p. 1.

7° Sloan stated that even after he left in 1916, Eastman kept some of his drawings on hand
and continued to publish them. Helen Farr Sloan, verbatim notes of John Sloan; lectures, 1931.
Illustration box 192, p. 2.

26
“distinctly unbeautiful" and even “unpleasant objecs,” as life he assers ”has a

thirst after experience which is very general and is willing to suffer a good deal
of pain for the sake of tasting reality.”71 This philosophy was reflected in the
pages of The Masses during Eastman’s editorial reign, though not reflected in the
pages of is ’pop’ contemporaries.

According to Eastman in his text leumals' m Verges Ag , commercial
artiss were not depicting the life around them, but rather an idealized or
conventionalized form. He felt that aside from the many ’incidental tasks’ that
artiss may fulfill, their major and defining function was to live life and
communicate it and if they lived small lives, their communications would be
small and vice versa. Eastman associated communication with active forms and
felt artiss should draw from the world around them spontaneously, not from the
stagnant forms found in their studio. Eastman thought these forms lacked
communication and therefore were ’passionless.’ This aesthetic theory (if it could
be called that) was alien to popular publications; however, one newspaper critic
recognized the merit of The Masses effors as he considered them ”noble and
praiseworthy for an artist to uphold” and questioned that ”if art has found
inexhaustible inspiration in the visionary and impossible Christian idea of
redemption, why can't it find suitable material in a logical, possible and human
one?”72 What he was suggesting was that art needed to turn to a new means and
why not the communication of contemporary life. Eastman's sentimens, reflect
those of John Sloan's former teacher and prophet Robert Henri, who exclaimed

"Truth over beauty!" to Sloan and other studens. This exclamation resulted in a

 

71 Eastman, leurnalism Versus Art, p. 9.

72 CD. Gregorio, ”Can’t art serve a noble purpose?," Vita, New York, September 1, 1915.
Kenneth Russell Chamberlain Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution,
Washington DC. Reel 291.

27
style that Sloan explained as realism, or rather the ’realization’ of realism, and

can be traced back beyond Henri, to Charles Baudelaire, who, like Henri,
championed Honoré Daumier in answering his call for a ”painter of modern
life.” Henri also served as the link between Daumier and The Masses via John

Sloan, as expressed in a letter dated November 5, 1899 from Henri to Sloan:

Are you interested in the work of Daumier? -I am sending you by mail
in a paper a few drawings (lithographs) by him - They came out in the
”Charivari"...Daumier was a great painter as well as draughs man...there
was one of his pictures ”En troisieme Class” with wonderfully drawn and
interpreted characters - most masterfully painted (none of the modern so
highly esteemed clever smartness - but great solid simple painting) It is a
picture that ranks at least with the best of Millet’s - and if they were side
by side I might say more-73

Sloan was reported to have accepted the prins and hung them in his studio and
referred his future studens to ”look to Daumier" for style and inspiration.

If one concerned oneself with the communication of contemporary evens,
as did Daumier, Steinlen, and Forain, such as religion, politics, psychological or
political truths, he or she would avoid the “sentimental aestheticism" seen in
many of the works of Salon artiss and the illustrations found in mainstream
magazines of the day. Artiss should concern themselves with everyday life and
not rely on the forms and modes of the past to convey their message. Eastman
quotes noted philosopher Clive Bell, who firmly believed that artiss needed to
have something to ”get in a passion about," which was not found in posed studio
pictures or still life's.“ Eastman took Bell’s sentimens a step further in claiming

that Bell denounced ”beauty” as an aim of art and maintained that ”genius

 

73 Robert Henri, Henri Correspondance to John Sloan. Beinecke Rare Book and M55
Collection, Yale University. Zurier also mentions the connection between Henri and Daumier and
Sloan, p. 129, although she does not quote the entire passage I have.

74 Zurier hints at this connection, p. 154, although it is further outlined in Eastman's own
text cited below.

28
worship" (of the previous era) was the infallible sign of an uncreative age.75 It is

significant that Eastman is in accord with Bell's major line of reasoning, as he was
a prominent figure in early twentieth-century thought, however, Eastman, unlike
Bell was not entirely convinced that one could define ’beauty' nor was he certain
that it was even important to do so. What he did feel was important was for
people to remember, refine and philosophize about the distinction between all
the immediate values, which he felt have their certification in themselves and
those mediate, or moral, or practical values which look to some ulterior76 benefit
to certify them.77

The "ulterior" benefit Eastman most likely was referring to was the
commercial aims of mainstream publications. Editors' tastes, he felt were subject
to economic interpretation which he asserted resulted in a publication with a
little bit of everything that would sell.73 Eastman believed that artiss learned to
draw pictures that would sell, hence they were usually banal and conservative.
His diagnosis of published art in America was that it was ”business art,” as is
only aim was to achieve profis. The aim of the money-making magazine he
therefore asserted was ”neither to give intense pleasures nor displeasures to a
few, but to please everybody a little all the time.”79 This is evidenced in many of

the magazines publishing art in America in the early twentieth-century including

 

75 murmomodlbeiaeuoeieup. 74.

75 Contemporaneous spelling for 'alterior.‘ See page reference in following footnote.

77 Eastman, leurnalism Ve_reus Art, p. 8.

73 Eastman, ”What is the Matter with Magazine Art," Masss January 1914, p 12. This article
first appqeared in the Masses, but eventually was expanded and formed into the text Journaliem

79 Eastman. leuraalismimuaan. p- 23.

29
those I offer for comparison and contrast, namely Collier 's and The Ladies’ Home

Journal.

As a publication, The Masses opposed is commercial contemporaries in is
attitudes towards audience and financial dependency. While the goals of their
more popular contemporaries, The ladies ' Home Journal and Collier 's, were
increased publication and public curiosity,80 The Masses on the other hand
"conciliated no one, not even is readers."31 ldeologically and visually, The
Masses stood alone in is whole-hearted rejection of the type of bunk allegedly
perpetrated by mainstream publications. Therefore, The Masses philosophy serves
as a foil against that of The ladies' Home Journal and Collier 's which were selected
as the corollaries for dominant stylistic and political conventions in early
twentieth-century America.

The Ladies' Home Journal and Collier '5 claims were in direct opposition to
The Masses and this was due in part to their dependency on funding solicited to
offset printing coss.32 Concerned with their readership, The ladies ’ Home Journal
and Collier 's were intentionally shaped as '"high class' magazines for people
aspiring to respectability." 83 This in turn attracted merchans who wished to
market their goods to this type of audience and readership. As a result, they
often contained as many advertisements as they did stories and illustrations,
with the advertisemens invading the space of the publication breaking up

articles mid-sentence. The monthly ladies' Home Journal contained the most

 

80 Edward 30k, The Am‘gnr’gfign of Edward Bok; The Autobigggphy of a Dutch Boy
W (New York: Charles Scribner's and Sons, 1921) p. 377.

81 Inside back cover, Masses 5 October 1913.
82 Zurier, p.30.

83 Richard Ohmann, "Where Did Mass Culture Come From? The Case of Magazines."
Berkshire Review 16, 1981 p. 91.

30
advertisemens out of the three publications. This is probably why it could afford

to sell at fifteen cens a copy, contrasted with Collier '5 weekly which at five-cents
a copy added up to be the most expensive of the three at twenty-cens a month.
In contrast, the ten-cent Masses monthly contained only two pages of
advertisemens from those who supported its cause, one on the inside front cover
and the other on the inside back cover.34 Economically independent from
corporate sponsorship, The Masses relied solely on private funding solicited from
wealthy patrons, which barely covered is printing coss. As a result, artiss and
writers of The Masses did not have to conciliate anyone and the publication was
allowed the freedom to offer a forum of radical exchange for is artiss and
writers. This set it apart from is commercial contemporaries, whose style
remained inoffensive in order to attract the largest number of readers. Collier 's
and The ladies' Home Journal ’5 bland conservatism was the marked result of a
corporate dependency which the radical Masses did not share. The Masses
promised to be a publication "for the release of socially conscious anti-capitalist
literary and artistic expressions for which there was hardly any demand by the
well printed newsstand variety of magazine.”5 This is reflected in the number of
subscriptions it received in contrast with is commercial contemporaries. Though
no records of circulation for The Masses remain, it is estimated that at is peak, it
claimed 40,000 subscribers, compared to the nearly two million subscribers to

The Ladies’ Home Journal and presumably a similar number for Collier 's.36

 

34 Most of the advertisements appearing in The Masses were those advertising books and
literature. Among them were Margaret Sanger's pamphles on birth-control, Carl Jung's book,
MW socialist anti-war publications and Russian experimental theatre

productions.
35 Art Young, Art Young; His Life and Times, (New York: Sheridan House, 1939) p. 271.

36 Phillips Wyman, in ir ' n: An in f M h M anin (New
York: McCall Company, 1936) p. 6.

31
Phillips Wyman of McCall '5 magazine notes that "the larger the circulation of a

magazine, the more representative is the reader group of people in general and
the more diverse is the range of buying habis, the publication therefore must
cater to these buying habis just like the producer of any other product."37

Collier 's and The ladies’ Home Journal fulfilled Wyman's expectations. They
nurtured the habits of a "moneyed readership," to use Richard Ohmann's term, as
evidence of a break down of occupations for newsstand buyers. General
executives, professionals, managers and ouside salespeople comprised the
nearly seventy percent of magazine consumers of general weeklies like Collier 's
and women's magazines such as The ladies ' Home Journal, followed by clerical
workers, laborers and the unemployed making up the remaining thirty percent.88
Such magazines therefore became a commodity, marketed to the masses, in
direct contrast to The Masses, which really did not represent the masses at all.

As both Collier 's and The ladies ' Home Journal were extremely commercial,
depending on the financial backing and solicited advertisemens of big business
to keep themselves in print, they also propagated the sentimens of the
mainstream culture and the government in their visual representations. The
Masses recognized is contemporaries' plight, yet did not concede to the pressures
or the format of their competition. In fact, on the relatively young cultural soil of
America, the visual representation and artistic philosophy of The Masses artiss'
was considered alien to the established aesthetic concepts of the time. Not only
was their style alien, but the way in which they utilized the graphic medium was

also against the slick styles of their contemporaries.

 

87 Ibid., p. 22.

88 For the specific figures and complete table on occupations of newsstand buyers, see the
above cited, (Wyman) p. 36.

32
Prins and the graphic medium historically hold deeply set social

implications, even the very language of printmaking is indicative of is intended
social nature; the "acid" and "bite," in an etching, the "cut" in a wood block all
make up part of the language of attack.39 Despite the use of the graphic medium
by the other two publications I am comparing, Masses ' artists utilized this
medium to assert their message of individuality and freedom directly assaulting
the 'artificiality' of commercial art.90 They disdained their French and American
Academy predecessors whose highly posed pictures seemed stagnant and
passionless, yet they also could not relate to the abstraction of the Modemists
who had invaded New York via the Salon des Independans in 1908 followed by
those exhibiting at the Armory Show of 1913. The Masses style, like their French
avant-garde precursors, Honoré Daumier, Théophile Steinlen and Jean-Louis
Forain tends more toward what the French call naturalism.

Masses artiss were constantly striving to achieve this naturalist style
through their technical reproductive process. They wanted to achieve the look of
the active coarse crayon technique of Daumier, Steinlen and Forain, yet unlike
the French, who eventually refined the techniques of Gillotage and zincograph91
for this purpose, American printers still found it easier to work from pen-and-ink
drawings.” The photo-engraving or line cut which was widely used in America

in the 1880's allowed artiss to work in pen-and-ink among other mediums such

 

Shikes, p. xxiv.
9° Zurier, p. 139.

91 Gillotage is a type of mechanical photography for reproducing line drawings and
zincograph is a method of printing from zinc plates srnilar to lithography, the drawing or
decoration is made on the plate, processed and printed, sometimes a relief plate is made by
etching a zinc plate. W eds. D. Runes and H. Schrickel (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1946)

92 The information on The Masses print and reproductive processes is largely drawn from
Rebecca Zurier, p. 132.

33
as crayon and charcoal on a variety of textured papers. Following the initial

drawings, they were then photographed and the negatives printed on chemically
treated light-sensitive zinc or copper plates. The plate could then be etched in
acid and show only the artiss' original lines. The medium offered great freedom
and was used by commercial illustrators like Charles Dana Gibson, however, it
was not used to mimic the coarseness of Daumier's line. The half-tone engraving
was another process developed around the same time as the photo-engraving
and line cut. It allowed the reproduction of a full range of grays which were
transmitted into tiny black dos upon photographing the image onto a metal
plate through a finely cross-lined screen. While this technique achieved a full
range of tones, it was costly and worked better for paintings rather than crayon
drawings, because as Zurier assers, "the paper on which the sketch was made
showed up as a gray background, making the lines appear muddy and
indistinct.93 John Sloan refined the zinc plate process as recalled in The Masses
experimens with medium as he noted in his personal notebooks housed in the

Delaware Art Museum:

Masses illustrators could not afford to spend money on half-tone cuts,

so they experimented with graphic textures that could be reproduced

by linecut, which was achieved in placing thin paper over canvas or a
pebbly surface and combined with pen work. This procedure made for
more spontaneous variety of texture than normally achieved with Benday
mechanical textures94

It also allowed the images to assume a more autographic quality. In the same
section of his notebook, John Sloan credis Steinlen for inventing this scheme of

placing paper over a textured surface, which he adopted after he stopped

 

93 Zurier, p.132.

94 Helen Farr Sloan verbatim notes of John Sloan, box 192, p. 2-3.

34
drawing directly on the lithograph stone for his illustrations in French

magazines.95

John Sloan not only concerned himself with the technical processes' of The
Masses' style, line was very important to he and other Masses’ illustrators. Sloan
said that it was the line rather than the literal symbol that was important and that
"line significance is a fundamental necessity.”96 He continued, ”we cut loose from
a sort of tight type of illustration current at the time... instead of depending on
posed models we drew with more freedom, imagination, (and) emotional
intent.”97 This is invoked in the spontaneity of line and quick sketch-like quality
of illustrations found in The Masses in contrast to some of the calculated fine lines
and the more mechanical appearance of the images found in their mainstream
contemporaries. The Masses imagery suggess the spontaneity in which it was
executed and again links it with is French graphic precursors.” Masses ' artiss
"discerned the significance of Daumier and his fellow caricaturiss who in truly
depicting their own time, broke through romantic and personal barriers of
artistic isolation."99 They 'broke through' because their drawings exuded an
immediacy not found in their more commercial contemporaries. As Rebecca
Zurier has observed, the immediacy this technique imbued, broke down

traditional barriers between the artist and viewer.100 There was a certain power

 

95 Ibid., p. 2-3.

96 Ibid., p. 2.

97 Ibid., p. 2-3.

93 It is significant to note than the majority of Mass artists were formerly newspaper
illustrators and therefore trained in capturing the moment, or rather the essence of their subject.

This may explain their penchant for the style of Steinlan, Forain and Daumier.

99 Francine Tyler, "Ihe Impact of Daumier's Graphics on American Artists: c.1863-1923
"Print Review 11, 1980, p. 109.

10° Zurier, p. 138.

35
in the rough images this technique produced as they challenged our perceptions

of reality and although they were somewhat realist in style they pushed the
boundaries of our expectations of realism.

The term realism as roughly applied to the style of The Masses ' artiss, is
not to denote the photographic realism often seen in popular publications of their
day. The Masses, which, in (some of) is utter rawness, allowed the artiss' direct
feelings to come through in their work, unlike illustrations found in most
mainstream magazines including those I am comparing. Max Eastman felt the
imagery found in these types of publications contained mechanical precision as a
result of their commercial nature. Eastman likened this type of magazine artist to
a reproducing machine, one who could reproduce anything, ”except (the) human
perception”101 exposed on The Masses pages. Artiss in the early twentieth-
century strove for likeness. Eastman felt that gave people satisfaction. Many of
The Mass artists drew a more personal perception of their subjecs and this is
what enraged most of the critics at the time when they viewed sketchy figures
with ”unfinished” hands or feet, or disproportionate limbs in relation to the main
body as evidenced in this image by Art Young (Figure 4). Eastman commented
upon this phenomenon professing ”it (was) a progress away from knowledge
about things toward experience of things, (original emphasis) away from
abstraction toward concrete perception/102 The ladies' Home Journal and Collier ’5
magazine did not go much beyond mere likeness of images for recognition, they
were safe, commercially acceptable, deemed artistic and au currant among other

popular magazines.

 

101 Eastman, leurnalism Versue M, p. 26.
102 Ibid., p. 31.

36

 

Art Young for The Masses

e
I

FIGURE 4 "I' gorry, I'm tired..."

37
Artiss submitting to these commercial magazines and other such

publications, reflected their editors' needs and not their own, as markes tend to
impose a certain uniformity of presentation on objecs and the choice of medium
was therefore considerably influenced by market expectations. Invariably, this
aspect played a major part in the resulting style of graphics in The ladies ’ Home
Journal and Collier '5 magazines. Studies prove that the graphics in commercial
magazines were aimed at consumers and thus they employed whatever tactics
were necessary to induce consumerism, such as idealized images and color. As a
result, Collier 's and The Ladies' Home Journal ran frequent color drawings, most of
which were reproductions of paintings or advertisements, inevitably it was a
material good they wanted to sell not a social message. The black-and-white
images Collier 's and The Ladies' Home Journal did contain, lacked the strong
linearity and high contrast of black against white of those images found in The
Masses. In comparison, it made those images in Collier 's and The Ladies' Home
Journal seem negligible.

Thus far, I have established that The Masses ideological and stylistic
transplantation from their European contemporaries was in marked contrast to
their popular American counterpars. The theoretical discourse on ideas and
ideologies in support of The Masses continuance of an avant—garde, will be
supplanted with a visual analysis of the three magazines respective imagery. All
three publications were oversized with color covers, yet this is where their
similarity ends. On the basis of type face, style and subject matter, a study of
three respective covers from 1916 is indicative of their different contents and
ideologies. The Ladies' Home Journal, with is "thin" scripted lettering, muted
colors and depiction of a 'career girl' dreaming of a man reflecs is contens of

idealized women, and romance stories, (Figure 5) whereas the stockier

 

FIGURE 5 Ladies’ Home Journal Cover, 1916

39
block-print of Collier 's with its subheading 'The National Weekly' demonstrates

firm, solid values and the publisher's belief in its ability to speak for the nation
(Figure 6). This perception is emphasized by the cover image of a strong soldier-
like youth breaking out of the picture plane, quite appropriate during this time of
uncertainty regarding this country's involvement in World War I. The Masses
cover of June 1916, however, through is unique possibly hand-lettered type-face
of thick and thin letters in varying shapes and sizes, represens the diversity of is
contributors (Figure 7). Is subject depicts a grirnacing one-eyed soldier broken
by battle, with an oversized sling emphasizing the appendage that most likely
held a weapon responsible for killing. The Masses cover shows the reality of war
and of life in the revolutionary style of Francisco Goya's Execution, Third ef May.
1&8, while the other two publications, like those images of Goya's predecessor
Jacques Louis David, show the idealized or exalted.

While a comparison of the style and techniques of these three respective
publications may seem evident in a cover study alone, their differences become
more apparent in assessing the subjecs and thematic material within which they
dealt. I will concentrate on the artistic contributions of Masses ' artists, Robert
Minor (1884-1952) and Art Young, (1866-1943) as well as feminist artist Cornelia
Barns, (1888-1941) John Sloan (1871-1951) and a young Stuart Davis (1894-1964)
to prove that artistic radicalism within The Masses was central from the start. 103
The artistic submissions chosen from The Masses commercial contemporaries
have been selected on the basis of commonalty of style as reflective of the subject
matter. Consistently, the illustrations from The Masses, Collier 's and The ladies'

Home Journal, essential for inclusion in this study, share a triad of broad interess:

 

‘03 Robert M Crunden. W
W (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1982) p. 110.

40

CZ copy
[mo 21 1911;

5a

M" eras-111

:mm

’s

WEEKLY

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

FIGURE 6 Collier ’5 Cover, 1916

41

JUNE
l7|6
‘Ocenrs

 

FIGURE 7 Masses' Cover, 1916

42
women, other minorities, and a combination of images representing church and

state. These works also reflect changes in the way their creators perceived
themselves, (specifically Masses' artists) as their social and professional roles and
stylistic and formal concerns evolved.1°4

One example of this difference in the treatment of the subject of women
among the three graphic magazine is the idealizafion of women and the
portrayal of women as passive, beautiful, fragile creatures, which was a direct
remnant of the nineteenth century Victorian cult of domesticity as still evidenced
in early twentieth-century magazines. Publications like Collier 's and especially
The Ladies' Home Journal continued this tradition and though one might find an
occasional ’suffrage’ article, ”those” women were usually depicted as ’hags’ or
less than ideal, as this is how society viewed women who stepped out of their
sphere.

Typically, the commercial magazines played out to women as consumers,
while "educating" them in the ways of the world. Jeanette Eaton, offers her
insightful response to women's magazines in a contemporaneous article she

wrote forThe Masses:

...they have glorified the work-basket and the egg-beater and

have infinitely stretched women’s belief in the miracles which
may be wrought with them... [These magazines have taught
women] ...the right way to puff her hair, care for her baby and why
she should win her daughter’ s confidence. [Aside from teaching
women these valuable skills, these types of publications offered a]
great service for America today...it is a service to men, a
fundamental service to the established order. [The existence of
traditional women’s magazines propagating the myth of ’women’s
sphere existing in her home’ were viewed by many emancipated

 

104 In contrast to contemporary belief, Sloan (or other Masses illustrators) never pitied the
subjects they drew, or idealized them or sought to pmpagandize about poverty. Sloan recalls that
he ”felt with them, but didn’t think for them...Sympathy for the people, I am all for that, but not
ideology.” John Sloan Trust, Illustration, box 192.

43

women as not only man’s best friend, but as] ...the final hope of our
chivalric civilization. 105

In response to this, The Masses ran complete editions dedicated to
women’s issues which were equally charged with word and picture as the back
cover of the November 1915 Women’s Citizenship number reflects. In it, Kenneth
Russell Chamberlain (1891-1984) responds to the myth about women and their
supposed sphere existing only in the home. His picture is of a spotlight on the
earth set against the cosmic backdrop of the solar system with a caption reading
’Women’s Sphere...” Regardless of The Masses efforts, the social relationship
between the sexes was continually being ’constructed’ via forms of visual
imagery more widely disseminated than their own; art, film, newspapers,
cartoons and advertisemens. ”Construct(ed), because sexual identification is
neither biologically determined nor fixed, but rather made and remade under
historical circumstances.”06 One cannot expect to see the visual representation
or emancipation of women during a time in which that was not expected. John
Stuart Mill writes in the end of the nineteenth century, that ”we accept whatever
is as natural/’10" if women were expected to appear as the idealized Victorian
model, corseted and demure, then that is expected. In other words, ”the thing
that determines what we grow up to be is the natural expectations of those
around us,...If society expects a girl to become a fully developed, active and
intelligent individual, she will probably do it...likewise, if society expects her to

remain a doll-baby all her life, she will make a noble effort to do that...” of course

 

105 Jeannette Eaton, ”The Woman’s Magazine," Masses, November 1915, p. 19.

10‘ Ellen Wiley Todd, The ”New Weman" Revised: Painting and Gender Politics on
W (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) p. 26.

107 John Stuart Mill, "Ihe Subjection of Women" (1869) in Three Essays by John Stuart Mill,
World's Classics Series, London, 1966, p 441, as cited in Linda Nochlin's article "Why Have There
Been No Great Women Artists?" Art News January 1971, p. 22.

44
there are hereditary limitations, ”but the responsibility of the main trend of the

result is with the social conscience.”108

An illustration by W.B. King for The ladies' Home Journal affirms the social
conscience of the era and it appears as if women were relegated to "doll-babies"
(Figure 8). King's illustration depics a women directly out of the Beaux Ars
tradition from France. She appears as an object, corseted and demure in her
ruffled gown and bonnet, seated erectly on her pedestal. The two men in the
image cast their gaze as if upon an objet d'art. This depiction of women was
standard in commercial magazines and was selected because it represens the
style and in a sense, the consciousness of illustrators during that period. The
Masses however, contradics this supposed consciousness, for during the same
time span as the revered ”Gibson Girl," John Sloan’s drawing of Adam and Eve
depict the couple of original sin, only in reversed roles. Eve appears ungainly
and disheveled and a giant compared to Adam. She is seen in a series of
depiction's washing him and hunting and protecting him from danger (Figure 9).

Cornelia Barns was another graphic illustrator for The Masses, whose body
of work concentrating on the depiction of women challenged mainstream
conventions. Although she never achieved the fame that Sloan and the others
did, Carl Zigrosser, foremost authority on prins in the early twentieth century
whose scholarship spans six centuries of the history of prins, recognized her
talent, and includes her in the circle of Peggy Bacon, Mabel Dwight, and Caroline
Durieux.1°9 Her scenes rely on humor, not merely as an element of a whole, in

her illustrations, humor predominates. Artists during this time usually

 

108 Maurice Becker Papers, (regular artistic contributor to The Masses)Archives of American
Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, reel 128, frame taken from November 1915 issue
of Masss, p. 8.

109 Zigrosser, box 192, p. 1.

1 1 .. 1
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... r. ... .. .!:.1 stiflllll
. ... .ratcuouwufivirbaununnwlt;

. .. ......l . ......11: ..
.l 1. . .llfltvdd". ".11 a.» ... 111005))...h
. 1 ...1.

 

FIGURE 8 "Untitled" ; W.B. King for The Ladies' Home Journal

 

FIGURE 9 "Adam and Eve, The True Story..." ; John Sloan for The Masses

47
misspent their time drawing pictures of the ”follies, fashions and foibles of the

immature American female - until Barns came along/’110 Barns set down her
illustrations as a warning to women and men alike. The words of a fellow Masses
contributor attest to her sentimens stating that she viewed the young American
male as ”callow, sallow, and silly.” In this illustration she depics an upper
middle-class couple as noted by their attire in a small rowboat that appears
barely afloat (Figure 10). The woman sits at the stern of the boat, her end nearly
submerged, while her thin, weak mate struggles to keep the boat above water
level with two oars. Behind him, she looks directly at another boat apparently in
no danger and filled with a family whose stocky man returns her glance with a
tilt of his cigar. Her thin mate knowing he has ”failed her test,” quips ”Honestly,
Julia, Which Do You Prefer - Brain or Brawn?”111 In direct contrast, an
illustration selected from The ladies ' Home Journal depics how women were
viewed by mainstream America. Unlike Barns portrayal of Julia's weak mate, the
man in Arthur William Brown's illustration overpowers the female, who appears
to shrink under his intense stare and firm grip (Figure 11). Her eyes and frail
stature affirm his power. Countless other comparisons could be made between
the art depicted in The Masses as opposed to that in Collier 's and The ladies’ Home
Journal, yet one need go no further than the cover of these magazines. In the
former, the "dreamy-eyed" woman decked out in the latest attire clutches her
purse, propagating the stereotype of woman as consumer (Figure 12), while in
the latter, the coifed woman with the "far-away look" is consumed with the
opposite sex (Figure 13). In sharp contrast to these ”pretty-girl” cover

illustrations, Stuart Davis drew a picture for The Masses of two working women

 

11° Edmond McKenna, ”Art and Humor,” Masses 6 1915, p. 11.

"1 Cornelia Barns, Masses 5 Sept 1914, p. 9.

 

 

 

 

 

.?" ; Cornelia Barns for The Masses

FIGURE 10 "Honestly Julia,...

49

 

Home Journal

I

I5

Brown for The Lad

Arthur W.

I

FIGURE 11 "Untitled"

50

 

FIGURE 12 Collier’s Cover, depicting women

: five

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FIGURE 13 The Ladies Home Journal Cover, depicting women

. ,3,”
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52
from Hoboken who challenge the conventions of beauty standard to that era with

their intense penetrating eyes unlike the far off look of those women usually
portrayed by commercial magazines (Figure 14). Davis acknowledges their
surprise in the added caption, ”Gee Mag, Think of Us Bein’ on a Magazine
Cover!" which further emphasizes Davis' awareness of breaking tradition. Davis
was not the only one aware he did something different, his cover caught the

attention of one reviewer for the New York Globe:

The cover...shows two girls’ heads, not Gibson girls, nor Howard
Chandler Christy girls, but girls from over Eighth avenue way....Most
cover designs don’t mean anything. But this one does.112

The artiss of The Masses were directly responding to their need for free and
independent expression and for the realistic depiction instead of the idealistic
imagery of their more capitalist contemporaries.

Another subject which set The Masses apart from their contemporaries was
in their depiction of minorities other than women, both foreign and domestic.
Traditionally, if Collier's or The ladies’ Home Journal depicted these groups at all,
they appeared oppressed, heads hung low and in the case of immigrans, looking
every bit the gypsy as their stereotype insisted (Figure 15). Another popular
motif in depicting minorities was to exoticize their heritage as the Academy
painters had done in EurOpe. Again, social circumstances must be taken into
consideration as to what was eXpected, yet Masses artiss were approaching these
subjecs in a different way.

Masses artiss like Stuart Davis and John Sloan represented the minorities
they depicted as emancipated. On the onset, their style is often viewed as

extremely stereotypical crossing over into the derogatory. Yet through humor,

 

“2 Book of the Week section, New York Globe, May 24, 1913, as found in Stuart Davis Papers,
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., reel N584, frame 30.

 

 

 

rTuAEr Dav-2

 

 

 

FIGURE 14 "Gee, Mag..." Stuart Davis for The Masses

1““1 it ,
(V54 [$171111 1

 

 

FIGURE 15 "Gypsies" ; as appeared in Collier 's

55
that unique device in which The Masses artiss were known, they surpass their

contemporaries through style and wit. In Davis' illustration he depics the stereo-
typical 'big black mammy' as evidenced in countless advertisements such as
Aunt Jemima found in commercial publications (Figure 16). Davis makes the
woman larger than life emphasizing her stereotypical attributes. In a
contemporaneous Commentary on Davis’ style in depicting African Americans,
the critic remarks that ”Davis draws the ’Negro' vigorous and graphic and
human and lovable, he draws him just as he is...It is a great joke on the American
people, but it is not to laugh ...There is an incongruous aspect to Davis’
work...."113 Eastman also came to Davis' defense in claiming that he "portrays the
colored people he sees with exactly the same cruelty of truth with which he
portrays the whites."114 Much like Davis, John Sloan's portrayal of the African
American also played upon their stereotypical representation. However, there is
a subtle twist to this stereotype in his illustration entitled "Race Superiority"
(Figure 17). Rebecca Zurier notes that Sloan attacks white racism while
incorporating is own racial stereotypes.115 In this drawing, Sloan shows a care-
free (grinning) black boy sitting on a fence eating watermelon, while a thin white
family passes by noses in the air, on is way to factory jobs. Clearly, Zurier
admis, the black child is portrayed as superior in vigor and happiness to his
white counterpars. Though Sloan and Davis' images may seem to play on
stereotypes, their material is drawn from real life, from the streets and back
alleys of Greenwich Village. Unlike their commercial contemporaries, Sloan and

Davis embrace issues their contemporaries depict safely, or ignore all together.

 

"3 McKenna, p. 11.
114 Zurier, p. 16.

“5 Ibid., p. 17.

 

 

 

 

S.

2 7:...-

 

has...

 

FIGURE 16 "Untitled" (Shouting Woman) ; Stuart Davis for The Masses

  
  
   

  

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FIGURE 17 "Race Superiority" ; John Sloan for The Masses

58
”Professors think these things should be harmonizing, modifying and blending,

that is art, they say...(if so) Davis [and Sloan] make [their] pictures out of what
the artist ignores/”15 In ignoring a risky subject altogether, like emancipated
women and minorities, one does not run the risk of public dissent, yet that is
what The Masses thrived upon. If one is going to "chance" running pictures of a
risky subject matter, the depiction most likely will be a stereotyped preconceived
notion of that particular subject. An example of this is found upon a search for
the representation of African Americans in Collier 's and The ladies’ Home Journal
during the same time span as The Masses run (1911-1917). Not only is their
representation scant, when they were depicted at all, both Collier ’s and The
ladies' Home Journal portray them as primitive and tribal, or subservient as
evidenced in their many advertisemens. This type of representation is aptly seen
in an April, 1915 edition of Collier 's, in an illustration accompanying an article
entitled "The Stranger Who Walked by N ight" (Figure 18). Aside from these
stereotyped illustrations depicting African Americans, both publications
included photographs of African tribes to their supposedly primitive origins.
Once again, ”printing what was too naked or true for a money-making
press,”1 17 the artiss and writers of The Masses continued to depict subjecs that
their contemporaries would not attempt, or if so, would only attempt with a
much more conservative slant. ”Whether the artists (of The Masses) realized it or
not, they were creating pictures almost without precedent in American visual
culture.”113 In their depiction of the political tenor of the time, Masses artiss and

writers tried to inform the American public about the atrocities of war

 

“6 McKenna, p. 11.
“7 Extracted from The Masses ' masthead, as penned by John Reed in 1913.

118 Zurier, p. 153.

 

FIGURE 18 "The Stranger Who Walked by N ight" ; as appeared in Collier 's

60
and the realities the government hid. The Masses staff, opposed the war, and did

everything it could to expose is evils. In an article ”Concerning War," Max
Eastman begins, ”War is beautiful...it is most beautiful to the savage who is
naked of moral or intellectual trammels and to whom the organic shock of
bloodshed is not sickening/’119 The pictorial representation of these sentimens
about war are aptly reflected in an illustration by Robert Minor entitled ”The
Perfect Soldier," which depicts a half-naked headless brute, muscles bulging off
is massive frame (Figure 19). "Perfect,” because it could not think and because it
could not think it could kill and carry out is mission as a machine does, without
any sort of consciousness. With arms folded, this complacent killing machine
epitomized what The Masses fought against and that was soda] or political
organizations or practices. In contrast, Collier 's and The ladies' Home Journal gave
a different message, these magazines exalted the soldier to hero-like status,
typically represented in this illustration found in Collier '5 magazine, although
similar illustrations were represented in other mainstream publications (Figure
20). Collier 's and The ladies ' Home Journal wholeheartedly supported their
country via their own brand of bombastic articles and illustrations (Figures 21-
22). They were nationalistic to the core yet fell into what Clive Bell considered
”sentimental aestheticism.” 120 Though they were depicting war scenes, mostly
through photographs, their drawings elevated the soldier to god-like status, even
though these soldiers were going against their Holy Father’ 5 Commandmens. In
a passionate drawing by Masses artist George Bellows, he commens on the irony

of this situation (Figure 23). In a dank cell, Bellows’ shackled figure hangs his

 

“9 Max Eastman, ”Concerning War,” article from The Masses as found in Maurice Becker
Papers, reel 128.

12° Eastman. W p- 74-

   

61

       

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FIGURE 19 "The Perfect Soldier" ; Robert Minor for The Masses

62

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general

Images of War;

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FIGURE 20 Collier 's

63

 

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FIGURE 22 The Ladies’ Home journal; Images of War

THIS mun subjectui
himself to imprison-
ment and probably to
being shot or hanged

 

T HE prisoner used
language tending to
discourage men from
enlisting in the United
States Army

IT is proven and in-
deed admitted that
among his incendiary
statements were—

THOU shalt not kill
and

BLESSED are the

peacemakers

 

FIGURE 23 "This man subjected himself...." ; George Bellows for The Masses

66
head low, while he awaits judgment. Bellows alludes to the Christ figure in

placing his own figure in the pose of the crucified Christ as he hung nailed to the
cross, Bellows furthers this symbolism in placing an elliptical-shaped brick which
can be read as a halo directly above the figure's head. This Christ-like imagery
was common among Masses' artists and can be seen in the work of several other
contributors,121 as can other subjects which were eventually deemed
"treasonable" by the United States Post Office upon the passing of the Espionage
Act in June of 1917.122

Before the onslaught of World War I, The Masses enjoyed the freedom to
create in its own style and language with little or no retribution, yet with
America’s entrance into the war, the romanticism America enjoyed was forever
vanquished. The war not only served to bring untimely death to thousands of
young American soldiers, but to The Masses itself. The Masses was never a
"harmful" publication as it did not incite or support violence or total overthrow
of the church and state. Yet, during World War 1, America tightened the system
and formed the Espionage Act of 1917, under which Masses artists eventually
were tried for their alleged anti-American sentiment and the magazine was
suppressed, thereby forcing an end to the ideological flexibility of The Masses
period.123The Masses artists pushed the extremes of established culture and
played upon the antiquated beliefs of mainstream America which they
considered dogmatic. It was precisely this avowed freedom from dogma that

 

121 See specifically the works of Boardman Robinson, Maurice Becker and Robert Minor.
122 Zurier, p. 59.

123 Richard Fitzgerald. WWW (Westport.
CN: Greenwood Press, 1973) p. 535.

67
allowed The Masses to separate itself from its graphic contemporaries'ColIier's

and The Ladies' Home Iournal. 124

From the outset, these three publications demonstrate their apparent
differences in a graphic study alone, although when combined with The Masses
history of radical politics in addition to their radical style, it is evident that the
views expressed within this publication were unquestionably those of the
minority. Therefore, its commercial contemporaries in the United States provided
The Massa an impetus for revolution and the environment necessary for the
existence of an avant-garde which can be seen as a continuance of that

phenomenon transplanted from France.125

 

124 Eastman is specifically referring to the dogma surrounding the struggle for racial equality
and women’s rights, intelligent sex relations as well as birth and population control, W

of Living, p. 419.

125 Though The Masses was put to rest, the issues and art it embodied were not dead. It found
new life in The Liberator (1918-1924) which was Max Bastman's attempt at providing a similar
forum of radical exchange after The Masses was suppressed. Art Young also formed Good Morning
and eventually in 1926, even The Massa was re-formed under the name The New Masses (1926-44)
Communism was replacing Socialism in the pages of these reformist magazines as they dealt
with the problems of daily life in relation to social change. See Zurier for complete history or

Milton W Brown. WW (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1955)

Chapter 3
The History of Art and The Avant-Garde

"A thing that is finished is dead..."
Robert Henri 1910

The history of modern art is the history of its avant-garde according to
Howard Fox, as noted in the beginning of this study. The caveat for my intended
use of the term avant-garde will now be relinquished as it is necessary to turn
once again to the theory of the avant-garde to bring this study back into form. It
is important to note that the avant-garde is not and more importantly was not a
homogeneous entity. The concept or notion of an avant-garde was different
during the early twentieth-century than it is today and anyone attempting to
understand the avant-garde must account for certain historical considerations.
That is why a historico-philosophical analysis of the situation is necessary to
bring to light what often times is only labeled avant-garde a posteriori.

A relevant example is found in the contemporaneous criticism of the
Armory Show in 1913. Art historians' often reflect that the Armory Show was the
turning point for art from recognizable or tangible subject matter to non-objective
subject matter and consider it to be one of the most influential exhibitions in the
history of modern art aside from the Salon des Independants in 1908. However,
contemporaneous criticism of the Armory Show assumes a different tone. One
newspaper columnist whose article appeared in The International Studio in April
1913, less than one month after the Armory Show closed,1 26 considered the show

 

125 The Armory Show ran from February 17 to March 15, 1913, and was held in New York at
the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory. Brown, p. 47.

68

69
to be a house of primitive art and that the style was only an 'evolution' from cave

art and not anything revolutionary at all:

The principle upon which this seemingly radical and ultra-modern
work is founded is one of the oldest existent esthetic principles, one
which, to the best of our knowledge, has been practiced since the
Paleolithic age, some fifty thousand years ago. It is, in sum, the principle
of simplification.127

Still other critics relegated the art exhibited at the Armory Show and the new

trends in general to something of a freak occurrence tending on madness:

Bizarre effects attract the eye - but may be absolutely lacking in
artistic quality. Frequently they do not even have the semblance

of anything in nature or sane imagination but are the expression

of an assumed madness - an unintelligent reaching out for novelty.123

Although there were some positive reactions to the art exhibited at the Armory
Show, the general consensus among the mainstream was negative. 129 Artistic
taste today has swung full circle since the days of the early twentieth-century
when most Americans preferred the realistic style of the Hudson River School
and later, gradually accepted the Impressionist style. The artists whose styles
were considered "mad" are the same artists that are more well known than their
realist contemporaries today. This comparison of the concept or notion of an
avant-garde and the contemporaneous criticism of some of the artists that it

comprises is relevent because a similar situation occurred for artists of The

 

127 Christian Brinton, "Evolution Not Revolution in Art," The International Studio, (Vol 49,
April 1913) p. 28.

123 Alexander M. Hudnut, ”Tendencies of Modern Art," The International Studio, (Vol 64, June
1918) p. 118.

129 A positive reaction to the Armory Show, despite its initial negative slant can be found in
the article by Brinton quoted above in The International Studio. It admits "That (what) we as a
nation above all else need is a more robust and decisive racial consciousness in matters artistic.
And it is this lesson that the current exhibition despite the incidental crudity and incoherence of
its presentation, manifestly inculcates." See Brinton, p. 35. Other sources for contemporameous
criticism can be found in "Post Impressionism Arrived," The Literary Digest, (March 1, 1913) and
"The Mob as Art Critic, The Literary Digest, (V0146 March 29, 1913) pp. 708-9.

70
Masses. These artists did not receive credit for their revolutionary graphic style

during the reign of the magazine, and are not considered avant-garde among art
historians today. Rebecca Zurier, the scholar who has written the most
comprehensive study of The Masses to date, states that "The Masses presented an
art that was contemporary but hardly modern - radical, perhaps, but not avant-
garde."130 Vis a vis fine art in the early twentieth century, Zurier is correct,
however among The Masses graphic contemporaries the publication and its
graphics could be considered avant-garde.

Throughout the body of this work the avant-garde possesses other
characteristics aside from the two tenets of radical style and radical politics
previously discussed, which contributing artists to The Masses magazine upheld.
These characteristics include the program of change which is inherent in any
avant-garde, and the American cult of youth of the early twentieth century, both
discussed by Antonio Poggioli in his text The Theory of the Avantfiarde.

The program of change Poggioli and other scholars - namely Robert
Hughes and Howard Fox referred to, allowed the avant-garde to exist in
America. For Hughes, he views the phenomena of the avant-garde as a
pendulum, swinging from one change to the next stating the 'isms' of art were
becoming the 'wasms.’131 While Fox asserts that this program is no longer
applicable as it has become change-for-change sake and that (some people he
believes, feel that) "art is sliding into a dismal philistinism unworthy of the heroic
struggles of modernism... and that the avant—garde position, to challenge and
provoke, has been corrupted by an omnivorous audience too eager for

novelty..."132 Poggioli contends that this constant swing of new replacing old

 

13° Zurier, p. 161.

131 Hughes, p. 365.

71
creates a 'father-son' antithesis, which gives rise to an "....aesthetic radicalism

often expresse[d] by opposing that special category of society called the old
generation, the generation of the fathers."133 These are among countless examples
that arise in art criticism to support this statement of the cyclical nature of the
avant-garde and its need for individuality and therefore progress.

Individuality and progress in relation to the members of The Masses
magazine are evidenced in Floyd Dell's sentiments quoted earlier in chapter two,
which offer one example of the young artists of his generation wanting to claim a
'lot of their own.’ 134 These young radical artists wanted to separate themselves
from the antiquated beliefs held by the majority of those of the previous
generation. Similar views were also expressed by other members of The Masses as

noted in a letter Adolph Dehn wrote to his mother in 1917:

If one is not disgusted at things he does not progress -
dissatisfaction makes one strive harder - forces one to bigger
things.135

Masses’ artists were disgusted with their surroundings and became emotionally
involved with individuals who preached progressive action rather than
regressive action as noted by the topics they addressed and the company they
kept in contradistinction to their mainstream contemporaries.

This spirit of revolt as a by-product of progress aligns The Masses with the
European avant-garde. The spirit was coincidentally expressed during the

optimistic youth of many contributors which they later realized and 'grew out

 

132 Fox, p. 10.
133 Poggioli, p. 34.

134 See Floyd Dell, Intellmal Vagamngagg." p. 109.

135 Adolph Dehn Papers, (contributed one illustration to The Masseshowever he contributed
regularly to its successors, The Liberator and The New Masses)Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., reel 2938, frame 124-5.

72
of.‘ Several of the Massa ' contributors became affiliated with the cause

(Socialism) out of these same reasons. Most of them were involved with the
movement more on a personal level rather than the political and began to loose
interest, as John Sloan had when the movement turned toward violence. 136
Regular Masses’ contributing artist, Kenneth Russell Chamberlain links the idea of
radicalism and youth in a postscript found among his papers in the Archives of
American Art:

As you get older you get more gentle, you try to get more
humor in it, or you try to see a little of the other side sometimes.
Everybody goes through that.137

Chamberlain further supports the idea of the cult of youth and the avant-garde in

a statement about Max Eastman and other radicals:

Eastman and most former radicals have just outgrown their
youthful enthusiasm. Radical artists wearied because of well,
just age. As you get older you lose that flash of youthful
enthusiasm.”8

Poggioli also asserts the connection between the cult of youth and the avant-
garde which he in turn relates back to the idea of progress.

The avant-garde authenticated change and therefore appealed to the
young. According to Robert Henri, if there were no changes in art, it would

stagnate. 139 The Masses possessed these characteristics of an avant-garde that

 

136 Helen Farr Sloan verbatim notes of John Sloan, box 192, p. 2.

137 Miscellaneous unpaginated postcript found within Kenneth Russell Chamberlain Papers,
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.,

138 Ibid.

139 The quote at the beginning of this chapter was quoted in the margin of m
mam", by Steve Watson, although for a general overview on Henri's artistic philosophy see

Milton Brown, W pp. 12-13.

 

73
essentially would not resurface in America until Abstract Expressionist art of the

19405. What is left to assert is formulated in a question by Kirk Varnedoe:

Can the things people make in one set of circumstances
communicate anything useful to other people in other times and
places, without some explanatory lexicon?“10

The avant-garde is always changing, yet it is based on some of the same
underlying principles wherever and in whatever form it exists. It is a
phenomenon that should be realized everywhere and serve as inspirational to

artists of generations to follow.

 

140 Kirk Varnedoe, r" ' a - M k M rn M (New York: Harry
Abrams, Inc., 1990) p. 19.

Conclusion

Throughout this thesis, I concentrated upon two of the avant-garde's basic
tenets of stylistic and political radicalness asserting that The Masses could be
considered avant-garde, not only as transplanted from their European radical
precursors, but avant-garde as well among its American graphic contemporaries.
When one considers the history of an avant—garde, one tends to think first of
painting, hence the link with Abstract Expressionism mentioned in the
introduction. In this study I have acknowledged the presence of other avant-
garde artists, however given the literary and graphic origins of the avant-garde,
it is necessary not to overlook The Masses magazine and the artists who
contributed to its pages.

In attempting to assert the existence of an American avant-garde that pre-
dated that of the 19405 with the Abstract Expressionists, I can only briefly
entertain how The Masses might link up with them. To fully explore this assertion
would require another study. On the outset, there may appear to be more
differences than similarities among the two groups. Abstract Expressionist art is
considered art for artist's whereas Masses art was art for the masses. The Abstract
Expressionists were not politically aligned with any party, however some
consider their apolitical stance to be a political affiliation. 1 ‘11 The Masses, as I have
shown, was associated with the Socialist Party. In as much as The Masses
contended to be for the working classes, its publishers were not overly concerned
with its 'mass appeal.‘ Similarly, the Abstract Expressionists created art for
themselves, they reflected an inward expression, which happened to catch the

 

141 In an informal interview with Professor Sada Omoto, June 28, 1995, he asserted this point
of view existed among some scholars.

74

75
eye of the art market and later, the public. Though the Abstract Expressionists

became famous, unlike the graphic art of The Masses' artists, both groups went
against the tradition and what was the established style in their respective times.

The radical artistic style of The Masses was linked with the spirit of youth
and revolt against the older generation which occurred in early twentieth century
America. In chapter three, I outlined the history of art and the history of the
avant-garde and asserted that the study of the two is intrinsic to the truth content
or rather the validity of an avant-garde. This in turn necessitated an analysis of
the historical situation during which the artists in question lived and worked.
Issues like birth-control, pacifism and Socialism, which consumed many of the
artists and writers of The Masses, can only be understood in relation to the
political tenor of the times and how divergent the ideology of The Masses was in
contrast to that of its mainstream American contemporaries.

Artistically, The Masses artists support the avant-garde's credo of
individualism. As the illustrations I have selected are evidence of their
autographic choice of medium, style and graphic reproduction processes', not
only do they align themselves with their French avant-garde counterparts, they
defy their American mainstream graphic contemporaries'. The coarse crayon
style afforded Masses artists' the freedom of expression illustrators of Collier 's and
The ladies’ Home journal did not have. The tight, often idealized fine-line
drawings of these commercial magazines reflected the Victorianism of the
previous century whereas the loose, uninhibited and un-corseted images of The
Masses echo their French predecessors Honoré Daumier and later Théophile
Steinlen and Jean-Louis Forain.

Although The Masses magazine was published during a time when
various movements of modern art abounded in the early twentieth-century,

"there was perhaps none so revolutionary as the phenomenon of the avant—garde

76
itself...inspired by an ideal of deliberate progress in art."142 The avant—garde with

its program of change has come a long way from claiming naturalism as
stylistically innovative and the commercialization of advertising today has
forsaken the magazine as a forum for radical art and literature, however, it is
significant that the avant-garde is rooted in this tradition and gives claim to this

study.

 

142 Fox, p. 9.

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