Block Party

Washington's Corcoran Gallery, which prides itself on showing the best in modern American art, housed a newcomer last week. The debutant, a shy, gentle man with a Pinocchio-sized nose, was the Washington Post's cartoonist, Herbert Lawrence Block, 40. He had won a Pulitzer Prize (1942), but he'd never seen anything like this. Eyeing the 194 cartoons, all signed with the economy-size pen name (Herblock), one dowager gushed to Block: "There's a complete timelessness about your cartoons. They'll last, I think, for at least ten years."

It was not his timelessness but his topicality that had made Herblock one of the most widely syndicated editorial cartoonists in the U.S. His daily cartoons combine impact and ideas, the technical simplicity of the drawing school with the political sophistication of the drawing room.

This month, Herblock will add another laurel to his balding pate when the National Gallery of Art's Rosenwald Collection buys several cartoons from his Corcoran show. He will thus become the first U.S. living cartoonist in the Rosenwald group of prints and etchings. The only other: Britain's David Low (TIME, Dec. 26).

151 Bosses. Herblock has been cartooning for 21 years. A Chicago chemist's son, he won a scholarship to Chicago's Art Institute. In 1929 he quit school to start cartooning on the Chicago Daily News, later moved to Cleveland and the Newspaper Enterprise Association. In 1941, Herblock drew the cartoon for N.E.A. that won him a Pulitzer: a German soldier searching the sky for a British bomber while Parisians look on and grin.

Then Block joined the Army and put out a G.I. information sheet. In 1945, ex-Sergeant Block had lunch with Washington Post Publisher Eugene Meyer. Said Herblock: "I'll send you a batch of my cartoons so you can get a line on me." Replied Publisher Meyer: "And I'll send you some editorials so you can see how you like us." The liking was mutual.

It still is. Now syndicated to 150 other U.S. newspapers plus the European Herald Tribune, the Rome Daily American and the Manila Bulletin, Herblock is also the first cartoonist to appear in the weekly London Economist.

Two Moods. At the Corcoran opening, the gallery favorite was a Taft-faced cat (see cut) that had just swallowed an Administration canary. One runner-up: an unhappy Republican elephant consulting a psychiatrist because of a feeling that he is "not wanted." In more bitter mood, e.g., challenging the Un-American Activities Committee's qualifications for purging textbooks ("Now to find somebody that can read"), Herblock sometimes has the deadly point of a poisoned dart.

At the Post, Herblock works behind the closed door of a cluttered, dusty cubbyhole. After a morning spent reading the papers, pacing, brooding and doodling, he makes rough sketches of three or four ideas. When he shows them to Editor Herbert Elliston, he always puts his own favorite on top. Elliston usually agrees. Block's ideas come hard. Says he: "Cartooning isn't inspirational at all. It's more like laying bricks."

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