To Laugh That We May Not Weep: The Life & Times of Art Young

Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2017. hardcover. Young, Art. With essays by Art Spiegelman, Justin Green et al. Lavishly illustrated with hundreds of examples of drawings by Art Young. 381 pages. 4to, pictorial boards. Seattle: Fantagraphics, (2017). First edition.<br/> <br/> Art Young (1866-1943) was an American political cartoonist best known for his drawings and editorial contributions to the Socialist monthly magazine, The Masses (1911-1917). Young started out drawing for mainstream news and humor publications, earning a position at the Chicago Interocean where he worked with the well-known political cartoonist Thomas Nast. Inspired by Nast's work but suspicious of his Nativist politics, the artist quickly embraced political cartoons as an effective form of political activism, particularly as his disillusionment with contemporary social and artistic conditions grew. In fact, it was Young who coined the term "Ashcan School" in 1915 to disparage the lack of social engagement in the work of his fellow artists. In contrast, Young's drawings for The Masses and other publications starkly and often scathingly criticized the economic injustices and racial and sexual discrimination that, for him and his Socialist peers, characterized the United States' capitalist society. His controversial and often anti-war cartoons got him into legal trouble on several occasions, including a charge of conspiracy to obstruct enlistment filed under the Espionage Act in 1917. Art Young's legacy lies in the influence of his drawings on both his contemporaries and a younger generation of socially- and politically-engaged artists.<br/> <br/>