Young & Grosz

Last fortnight was an important one for parlor Communists and students of caricature. Two of the ablest satirists in the U. S. published books.* Apart from the artists' hatred of war and fascism, and unswerving devotion to socialism, neither books nor authors had anything in common.

Tall, sober, handsome and immaculately dressed Satirist Grosz was born in Berlin in 1893, has been a resident of Long Island since 1934, expects to become a U. S. citizen. Condemned to death as a pacifist during the War, he was let off with front-line service on the Western Front through pressure from Berlin liberals. At the age of 23 he was already a potent figure. He was spared to live through the bitter years of Germany's civil war and inflation, to draw with biting irregular line the gross Prussian junker, the rise of the Nazis, the swinish profiteer and his fat mistresses. He escaped Nazi concentration camps by going to the U. S. in 1932 to teach at the Art Students' League. Nazis did the best they could by burning his books, persistently referring to him as a Jew. Actually George Grosz is as "Aryan" as Hitler. In the U. S. he has continued his biting attack against war and fascism, is proud of his suburban house, his two sons, Peter, 10, and six-year-old Martin who expects to be a comic-strip artist (see cut), his little coupe, his U. S. clothes, proudest of all of his electric icebox.

Sixty-four Grosz drawings and a hand-colored lithograph were presented to a very select public by svelte Publisher Caresse Crosby's Black Sun Press in an edition of 280 numbered copies, printed on hand-moulded paper, bound in a loose box, introduced by a little essay by myopic Novelist John Dos Passos, and priced at $50. Among the best drawings:

No Echo Here, a clearing in a German pine forest at which a single automobile has stopped. A bandy-legged Nazi with whip dangling from his wrist, canteen and dirk at his belt, is driving a file of political prisoners off to political execution.

Silence! An emaciated Christ on a crucifix. On his legs German army boots through which the nails have been driven, on his face a gas mask.

Just Half a Pound. View of a German butcher's shop with a thick-legged German hausfrau ordering from a heavily mustached butcher. A female torso hangs from the hooks beside a loin of beef, a trayful of human feet is behind the counter among the sausages.

The satire of rotund Art Young is gentler, his humor more pointed, and his following is a generation older and more devoted than Grosz's, but he too was tried for sedition during the War when the editors of the Masses (Art Young, John Reed, Floyd Dell, Max Eastman) went on trial for "obstructing the draft." Art Young fell asleep at the trial, did a self-caricature entitled Art Young on Trial for His Life which was later bid for by the prosecuting attorney. Born in Monroe, Wis. 70 years ago, Satirist Art Young has been sensitive to but never suffered from the things which have made George Grosz hail with delight his bourgeois cottage and his refrigerator. Still hale & hearty. Artist Young's private life is consciously bohemian and irregular and he is devoid of real hatred. Typical of his line, his satire and his personality is his drawing of himself lecturing before a woefully empty hall. One bored listener is getting up to walk out. Caption: The Uprising of the Proletariat.

* 01NTERREGNUM--George Grosz, Introduction by John Dos Passos--Black Sun Press ($50).

THE BEST OF ART YOUNG--Introduction by Hcywood Broun--Vanguard ($3).

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