Silent Struggles: the Graphic Radicalism of the Woodcut Novel
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Silent Struggles: The Graphic Radicalism of the Woodcut Novel Jennifer Camp During the 1930s, radical artists fashioned the woodcut and In October 1929, just days before the infamous stock the wood engraving as a locus of struggle. In the face of mass market crash, Ward published his moody, Faustian tale titled social suffering brought on by the Great Depression, incensed Gods’ Man: A Novel in Woodcuts. Through a sequence of 139 American printmakers found political potential in the graphic prints, Ward’s book delineates the story of a painter’s rapid arts. Responding to Soviet cultural prescriptions denouncing rise and fall within a malevolent universe. A first in the history the “art for art’s sake” mantra of modernist easel painting, of American art and literature, this woodcut novel or “word- communist and other socially-concerned artists championed less novel” condemns the corruption of art and society at the printmaking—both for its ability to reach the masses and hands of capitalism. A communist sympathizer committed for its distinct material and aesthetic qualities.1 The radical to the plight of the working class, Ward looked back on the power of the graphic arts lay implicit in the artistic declara- 1930s and remembered “a never-ending story of strikes, tions published by the American communist periodical New lay-offs, lock-outs, demonstrations, counter-demonstrations, Masses: “We call upon [artists] to align themselves with the and parades.”5 During the stormy years of the Great Depres- working class in its struggle against capitalist oppression and sion, Ward created not one but six wordless novels engaged exploitation….We urge them to join with the literary and with the tempestuous times. His graphic pictorial narratives artistic movement of the working-class in forging a new art told tales of injustice, corruption, and brutality—through that shall be a weapon in the battle for a new and superior images alone.6 world.”2 The strong, clear, and sharp aesthetic of wood Through a critical focus on the story, materiality, and engraving enacted in bold black and white reinforces these aesthetics of Gods’ Man, Lynd Ward’s graphic tour de force, demands for social justice. this paper probes the relationship between Depression-era This paper explores the radical potential of Depression- narrative relief printmaking and broader leftist conversations era wood engraving within a cutting-edge artistic medium: about the role of the artist in society. Work is a crucial touch- the woodcut novel. Though recent years have seen a re- stone for understanding the woodcut novel. Both audience newed scholarly attention to leftist American printmakers, and artist perform a kind of labor that is specific to the me- the woodcut novel remains understudied by art historians, dium—an artistic labor that abstracts, in visceral terms, the perhaps because of its resistance to classification.3 Situated labor of the working classes. Gods’ Man not only questions in a nebulous territory between popular fiction, art, and the purpose of art under the conditions of capitalism, but illustration, the “novel in woodcuts” offered artists a vital it also offers a vital new medium for mobilizing the masses medium for the promotion and support of the working class. and envisioning a form of artistic and political resistance. By focusing on the work of American artist Lynd Ward, a In an essay published in the November 1932 issue of communist sympathizer and early pioneer of the woodcut New Masses, Russian art critic Anatoly Lunacharsky outlined novel, this paper seeks to understand the appeal of the a set of observations on the relationship of art to class ideol- medium for socially-concerned artists like Ward working ogy: “During the period when [a] class is striving to find a during the 1930s.4 political form for its class interests, its art is characterized 1 For more on the influence of Soviet Communist cultural policies on art man, “Reading Pictures: A Few Thousand Words on Six Books Without produced by politically radical American artists, see: Cecile Whiting, Any,” in Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts, ed. Art Spiegelman “Propaganda in Print” in Antifascism in American Art (New Haven, (New York: Library of America, 2010), ix-xxv. For an introduction to CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 8-33. the woodcut novel, see: George A. Walker, Introduction in Graphic Witness: Four Wordless Graphic Novels (Richmond Hill, ON: Firefly 2 “Draft Manifesto of the John Reed Clubs,” New Masses (June 1932): 14. Books, 2007); 9-31 and Martin S. Cohen, “The Novel in Woodcuts: A Handbook,” Journal of Modern Literature 6, no. 2 (1977): 171-195. 3 For recent scholarship on leftist American printmakers, see: Helen Langa, Radical Art: Printmaking and the Left in 1930s New York (Berke- 5 Lynd Ward, “On Prelude to a Million Years,” in Spiegelman, Lynd ley: University of California Press, 2004) and Andrew Hemingway, Ward: Six Novels, 643. Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement 1926-1956 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002). 6 Lynd Ward’s six wordless novels include: Gods’ Man (1929), Madman’s Drum (1930), Wild Pilgrimage (1932), Prelude to a Million Years (1933), 4 For a general introduction to the work of Lynd Ward, see: Art Spiegel- Song Without Words (1936), and Vertigo (1937). ATHANOR XXXIII JENNIFER CAMP by storm and stress, and its forms are restless.”7 Capturing brush from a dark and mysterious stranger, the artist achieves this spirit of restless turbulence and agitation in the opening rapid success and critical acclaim (Figures 2 and 3). The suc- scene of Gods’ Man, a small sailboat tossed at sea emerges cess proves to be hollow, however, and the artist falls into a on the crest of an inky, black wave (Figure 1). Lightning cuts pit of despair when his artworks are sold to benefit greedy across the troubled sky in sharp, white flashes, illuminating entrepreneurs—a not-so-subtle jab at the commercial gal- the relentless rain pummeling the tiny, helpless ship of Ward’s lery system (Figure 4). After becoming romantically involved protagonist. Through this first print the viewer is introduced with a woman whom he later discovers (to his dismay) is a to a world of powerful binaries; of light and darkness, of prostitute, the artist proceeds to wander the streets of the good and evil, of violence and resistance. Wood engraving city in loneliness and isolation (Figure 5). The artist eventu- favors the high drama of bold blacks and vivid highlights; ally finds love after leaving the city, only to have his dreams acute lines and staccato markings. Without caption or textual dashed when the shadowy figure reappears to collect his narration, the reader is left to ponder the identity of Ward’s dues, forcing the artist to fall to his death. In the chilling, distressed sailor. final scene, the shadowy figure is unmasked, revealing the The bold, cutting aesthetic found in Gods’ Man as well face of death itself (Figure 6). The novel reworks the classic as Ward’s subsequent wordless novels provided a fitting German legend Faust, in which a scholar makes a pact with answer to communist calls for an art like a battle-axe that the devil in exchange for fame and earthly pleasures. could cut through capitalism’s injustices. In Lunacharsky’s Ward’s pictorial narrative specifically critiques modern- essay, he advocated a militant art in the service of revolu- ist easel painting as a socially disengaged art form that can tion, asserting, “[Art] is not merely an instrument for appre- quickly succumb to the caprices of the market. Many artists hending reality; it is also a weapon for propagating definite and critics during the 1920s and 1930s lamented that the viewpoints, a definite approach to reality.”8 However, as art arts had drifted precariously far from public life and social historian Andrew Hemingway explains, exactly what form responsibility; as art historian John X. Christ writes, public this revolutionary art should take proved to be a subject for intellectuals like John Dewey saw art as a “profound but also deliberation. New Masses critics like Stephen Alexander ailing” vehicle of communication.13 Ward’s novel in wood- denounced the perceived dishonesty of Regionalist painters cuts offered an alternative medium for social commentary: a like Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, while also decry- medium that denied the perceived authority and autonomy ing the “sterility” of modernist abstraction.9 Meyer Schapiro of painting in favor of an art more fully embedded within the took artists to task in his criticism of a 1933 exhibition by the public sphere. Less than a decade later, the German Marxist John Reed Club; these artists, he declared, failed to produce theorist Walter Benjamin would articulate his vision of the “genuinely militant” works.10 Schapiro’s vision of a truly death of the “aura” of art at the hands of technological re- revolutionary exhibition would include art that “reenact[ed] production (i.e., printmaking, photography, and cinema): “As in a vivid, forceful manner the most important revolutionary soon as the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applied to situations… [in a] series of prints, with a connected content, artistic production, the whole social function of art is revolu- for cheap circulations; cartoons for newspapers and maga- tionized. Instead of being founded on ritual, it is based on a zines; posters; banners; signs; illustrations of slogans.”11 For different practice: politics.”14 Benjamin championed cinema Schapiro, the revolution could be transmitted more appro- as a revolutionary art form, and Ward’s woodcut novels drew priately through paper and ink than canvas and paint. The upon a distinctly cinematic visual language. medium of printmaking, unlike painting, allowed for mass For example, Ward may have been inspired by director distribution and purchase by the populace; as Helen Langa F.W.