THE GRAPHIC SATIRE OF ROBERT MINOR AND ART YOUNG: TEXT AND IMAGE IN POLITICAL CARTOONS

Graphic satire is a key site for the study of text and image in modern periodicals. Political cartoons assemble text and image into one unified form that conveys a message to its audiences in an immediate and powerful way. Often humorous, political cartoons rely on some previous knowledge on the part of the reader-viewer and are highly specific to the moment in which they are published. The graphic satire of two important radical political cartoonists, Robert Minor (1884-1952) and Art Young (1866-1943), is studied in this article. These two artists innovated in the aesthetic and linguistic strategies used in political cartoons, and published dynamic, compelling graphic satire in a range of radical periodicals in the first decades of the twentieth century. Their work for the socialist periodical the Masses is the focus here. The Masses innovated and experimented with graphic form, page layout, and quality of reproduction that made it a singular site for the reproduction of highly inventive graphic satire.