And there is no doubt that a serious political issue, when presented in the form of a telling cartoon, will be borne home to the minds of a far larger circle of average every-day men and women than it could ever be when discussed in the cold black and white of the editorial column.
—Arthur Bartlett Maurice and Frederic Taber Copper

The power and efficacy of political cartoons has long been recognized; because of their readability and visual immediacy, they appeal to and are understood by a wide audience. They take the essence of a particular situation or character and further distill it into a single image, telling a clear story in way that is masterful, terse—and influential way. Collectively, they are “in essence a vernacular record of the social and political history of a people.” (William Murrell).

The Brains of Tammany
Thomas Nast

In perhaps the best known example of the force of the political cartoon, Thomas Nast’s images in Harper’s Weekly played an important role in the overthrow of the Tweed Ring in 1870s New York City. An exasperated Boss Tweed is recorded to have demanded of his henchmen, “Stop them damn pictures. I don’t care so much what the papers write about me. My constituents can’t read. But, damn it, they can see pictures.”

Join or Die
Benjamin Franklin

The American political cartoon was born in Philadelphia over one hundred years prior to Nast’s work. This momentous parturition is sometimes credited to Benjamin Franklin for his famed Join or Die of 1974, showing a severed snake, its separate parts labeled as colonies. But four copperplate images, a 1764–65 series, are considered the true beginning of the tradition in their comic-but-cutting depiction of a political event, and particularly, of Franklin himself.

The Paxton Expedition inscribed to the Author of the Farce by H.D.

The intricate engravings not only include captions, but elaborate comic verse that provides detailed narrative. In all four, armed volunteers assemble in front of the Old Philadelphia Courthouse, mustered to fight the Paxton Boys. These were a group of frontiersmen notorious for their massacre of peaceful Conestoga Indians living near white settlements in Lancaster; in the aftermath, they planned to march on to Philadelphia, murdering any Native American in their path. Franklin vehemently denounced the Paxton Boys and their gratuitous violence, publicly championing the citizen’s rise against them. However, he met the mob outside the city and persuaded them to turn back, quietly diffusing the conflict and leaving the volunteers deflated. The incident, “formidable military preparations followed by the bursting of the bubble through gentle talk,” made Franklin ripe for criticism as a waggish double dealer (Martin Snyder) His political maneuvering is clearly censured in these works; he is addressed as the “Author of the Farce” in one and as the devil’s agent in another. The series inflamed tempers during the 1764 elections and ultimately cost Franklin his seat in the Pennsylvania Assembly, the only election he was ever to lose in his long career.

Uncle Sam's Tailorifics
E. W. Clay

By the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Philadelphia was rife with artists, engravers, and publishers of political cartoons. From publishers like Childs & Inman, Matthew Carey, L. Rosenthal, Mathias Keller and J. Neff came cartoons by a long list of nationally known artists, including David Claypool Johnson, Francis Kearney, William Charles, and Edward Williams Clay. Their cartoons proliferated, dealing not only with political parties, candidates, and issues but with the social and cultural mores of the city. E. W. Clay, whose .00001 is shown in this exhibition, was known as well¾for his caricatures in a series of etchings from 1828 and 1829 entitled Life in Philadelphia¾as for his political cartoons. And, as evidenced by the 1890 and 1891 covers of Puck, a New York weekly humor magazine that lampooned all aspects of contemporary society, Philadelphia got its share of national attention (and criticism) into the turn of the twentieth century.

The political writer must exercise a certain dignity and restraint. But the cartoonist is a privileged character who may tell the plain, homely truth as people see it and feel it . . .
— Albert Shaw

The mythic power of cartoons has continued to grow since Thomas Nast took on William Tweed, placing the cartoonists role in an exalted position as a standard-bearer for integrity and truth in journalism, as the voice of common sense—the boy revealing that the emperor has no clothes.
— Stephen Hess and Sandy Northrop

In the nineteenth century and at the turn of the twentieth, there were as many as 2,000 editorial cartoonists, most often representing Republican and conservative perspectives. They published their work in broadsheets sold at print shops and then, more frequently over time, in a series of newspapers, weeklies, and monthlies. ( Hess and Northrop; Maurice and Cooper.

Ha! Ha! I’ve eaten the tiger!
Walt McDougall

Cartoons were not part of the daily news until the late nineteenth century, when technological advances made reproduction faster, cheaper, and easier. According to one account, the cartoon that appeared on the front page of the New York World on October 30, 1884, by Walt McDougall carried the trend forward (Jim Zwick). McDougall’s satire entitled The Royal Feast of Belsshazzar Blaine and the Money Kings, referred to a dinner held for Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine. It ran across the full width of the paper’s front page, equal in space to the articles, but stronger in impact. The cartoon caused a sensation and was credited with contributing to Blaine’s defeat. Publishers and editors began to compete for cartoonists to grace the editorial pages of their dailies.

Today only about 150 full-time newspaper cartoonists are working in the United States (Hess and Northrop). It is a tough business requiring not only a sharp wit but a prolific pen. The graphics of the genre have been greatly simplified since their beginnings. Text and captions have seen a similar shift to the ever more direct and immediately intelligible; but the lineage of their acerbic tradition is clear. As always, the cartoonist combines artistic skill—the ability to render with equal clarity the famous character and the everyman, a particular event and the general human condition or frame of mind—and complete familiarity with contemporary political, social, and cultural issues (which have, in our ever-closer world, become more and more inclusive). Strength of conviction is also a must; unlike their word-slinging colleagues in journalism, political cartoonists always take sides.

We are exceptionally lucky that such a rich—and barbed—tradition in the City of Brotherly Love has been crowned with the work of Tony Auth of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Signe Wilkinson of the Philadelphia Daily News. An extraordinary coup, not one, but two Pulitzer Prize winners offer their daily insights, criticisms, and musings on all aspects of local, national, and international culture and politics. Each has developed a distinct graphic, as well as comic, style. Both have produced enormous bodies of work that cut across the partisan fence. These two are both masters at distilling the complicated issues behind the headlines into “deceptively simple pictographs“ (Amy Baker Sandback).

Ending their destructive dependence on the federal government, endangered species go to work
Signe Wilkinson

Wilkinson’s eye was sharpened as a reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, PA. She realized her interest in cartooning as she began drawing the subjects she was supposed to be covering. After freelancing and working for the San Jose Mercury News, she returned to Philadelphia as the editorial cartoonist for the Daily News. Wilkinson is one of contemporary America’s few women cartoonists and the first woman (in 1992) to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning. Her style is sharp, her line halting—a perfect fit for her dry vision. Wilkinson often draws double or multiple vignettes on the same sheet, and she draws in a number of formats and sizes. Though she examines a wide range of subjects, she often focuses on family and women’s issues. Her work on abortion, education, and women’s health are deft, insightful additions to cartooning’s canon.

Gladiator
Tony Auth

Tony Auth became a cartoonist after beginning a career as a medical illustrator. By 1968, however, he was drawing three cartoons a week for the UCLA Daily Bruin; in 1971 he joined the staff of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Auth won a Pulitzer Prize for his work in 1976. He serves on the Editorial Board of the Inquirer and participates in their daily meetings to glean divergent points of view as fodder for his point or, more often, counterpoint. Auth’s cartoons present a wealth of comment with an economy of line and text. They are tight and incisive—always on 11 x 14 paper, always contained within a thin black frame—but his vision is far-reaching.

This exhibition offers an opportunity to contemplate the nature and history of graphic wit from a perspective unique to Philadelphia. We examine some selections from its origin, evolution, and exceptional current expression in Auth’s and Wilkinson’s work. Though, for today’s newspaper subscriber—unlike Boss Tweed’s constituents—literacy may no longer be the problem, most will agree that the vitality and effectiveness of the political cartoon still holds sway.

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