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Title: Political Drawings Author: Frans Masereel Date: 1920 Language: en Topics: art Source: The Frans Masereel Group, AKA: Masereel Group, http://www.masereelgroup.com/?id=10 Notes: Presented to the Library of the University of Toronto by Professor Hans de Groot
The Masereel Group is devoted to spreading the public domain works of
this great artist. The text was first acquired and then scanned. Then it
was cropped, rotated, balanced, contrasted, saturated, despeckled,
noise-reductioned, and some manually touched up. This was followed by
OCR scanning, manual proofreading, and translating into English.
This book is in the public domain in the United States (because it was
published before 1925), but it is not public domain in Europe (because
its author died in 1972). But the Masereel Group is based in the United
States, so everything within here is released under the Public Domain,
and all content that is not allowed to be licensed under the Public
Domain is released under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 3.0
License.
UprisingEngineer, Masereel Group,
August 30, 2020
By Kasimir Edschmid
The Belgian Masereel, who is a good European, has the fate of having to
draw how someone else screams or dies. He was a good soldier, and his
military service on the idea began earlier and more violently than any
of the satirists of violence, and every day he gave the Geneva Feuille a
leaf that threw itself at the madness of the world. The draftsman had a
platform from which he preached like any of the great monks.
Like them he has only one flag called Faith, a weapon, humanity and his
generals come from other districts than the “iron” commanders, because
his world is staggered from terraces where the warriors are at last and
the laden ones at the top.
It is a coincidence that his sky is designed in drawings, because he
could blow its intensity on horns, weld it into poetry, call it down
from the stage. Because only that he suffers from the horror of war and
revolt makes him accuse and draw. His graphics come from biblical furor,
not from the enthusiasm for lines. In ecstatic anger he makes his
manifestos, not out of the grotesque or love of art. The newspaper
becomes for him the European drum skin on which his proclamations of the
pen drum.
Finally, through Daumier, graphics have re-entered the circle of the
more knowledgeable Middle Ages, which lived with conviction and
expressed ideas with mouth and action and art, and where the time of the
fine arts was also that of poignant seekers and deep insights, for which
to quarrel was an internal crusade and a legendary war.
The little Belgian stands at the end of this chain and creates with a
great deal of courage and a dogged desperation flame. The formal
artistic is not as captivating and taut as his faith muscle, only the
tension of his idea makes him important. There is no weariness over him
when fencing begins again day after day. In the torrential topicality of
the days, its shape is given the firm basic form of the timeless woodcut
proclamations of the spirit of all centuries, which seek the sweet
violence of true life between death and life and, in their furious
flagellation of temporality in the line and the line, flagellantically
demand better faith.
When “connoisseurs” and monkeys think his artistic value is doubtful, he
does not understand it. Because he does not work like shepherds and
lambs in idyllic horizons, but fanaticalizes himself through time with
every heartbeat to the magnetic core of his socialist feeling for the
future. He bursts into the foyer of the assembled contemporary society
and chases the decollated dummy to shreds to the edge of his graphic
manifesto, in the center of which his ethical postulate somehow
trembles. An ingenious and uniquely new journalism of the mind now
emerges in the drawing, which is not illustrated and never told or
amused and deepened, but incites and howls and writhes and bleeds and
lets every vice and every barbarism of war and revolution break open on
its own body.
A breeding of the temporal lie begins in a way that no one has seen for
decades, because it has nothing to do with the irony and grotesque
assertion of Gulbransson, but the red anger of the holy will to work is
evident in every work. The buzzwords are blown into the air, and a great
unmasking begins. The baring human monster emerges from the banners,
where the gloriolos of the national anthems rang out and old men spoiled
the youngsters by preaching to them that it was good to die instead of
calling mankind to faster victories and more violent liberations in a
more loving race of work.
Between the bandwagon of those in power, the skyscrapers in their arms,
“Taylor ... Business” signs above them, the faces placarded with iron
corned beef larvae, storming and the archer, stigmatized in the barbed
wire, between angel and landscape, shell hole and the skeleton train of
the mobilized his stylus moves restlessly ... this is the world through
which his appeal runs hot. Day after day his imagination goes out to new
forms of creation, conquers new bastions and, almost dying from so much
effort, raises the humanitarian standard before each death between
filthy and hideous expulsion. An ingenious contact gives him the
alternating image of the Wolff report, Tittonirede, Stefanim message,
Reuter wiring, discourse of Senator Reed, claim of the Bishop of
Canterbury, the opposite. Says Clemenceau in the chamber, slept well, in
his graphic a soldier dies on the torture stake.
The objective tension becomes tremendous in the excitement, encouraging
in the repetition from day to day, in the concentration of the hourly
still blood and nerve warm event. Every morning he drags the lie by the
hair through his righteous anger. The make-up slips down under the heat
of his violence. In search of the new world, his heart runs accusingly
and screaming through the forests of civilization and the hated cities.
If he has reached a stage, fighting for it for four years, hurling his
little breast at mad Europe for four years, has he achieved peace, that
is a cold alp between him and his efforts. Oh, he had wanted him
differently. The dead died in vain, and the stone slabs in the drawings
and posters already stand up, and the fallen begin their evocative
journey into humanity, which has learned nothing and understands little.
His restlessness is now getting angrier. He struck the poster of
sentiment on the pillar of Europe defiled by many inscriptions of
slander; as none of the most gifted, but the bravest, certainly martyr,
the expression of the soul graphically led to the expression of the
time, serving in the daily work, renouncing a lot in this excitement to
help, to complain, to demand and many. People inflamed. Every drawing a
command, every curve a reminder. His poster knows no nation, no border.
The manifesto always says: on comrade. Every drawing has a heart:
Colleagues and friends.
Someone picked up the political drawing and walked among the people with
it, and because his hand was pure and his heart was painfully and
passionately moved by beautiful dreams of justice, the drum skin of the
secret Europe gave the individual action the size and depth of the
sound.
Wilson’s message was received in government, commercial and political
circles as conclusive evidence of a long war. All boast the firmness of
the thoughts laid down therein. (Message from Havas from Chile.)
[]
We are all under the command of the conscience of mankind in battle.
(Clemenceau’s speech at the end of the Allied Conference.)
[]
The fight against the cabbage white butterfly with the help of school
children is made a duty of the communities and landowners. (Ordinance of
the Council of State in the Canton of Bern.)
[]
In the course of the tragic events that are now taking place in this
war, a glaring, merciless light falls on every act and every person.
(Wilson.)
[]
This morning the enemy attack began on a very broad front. (French army
report.)
[]
Paris, 6, Havas. — The newspapers have reported from Washington that the
operation of the German submarines against the United States has not
caused any excitement in official circles.
[]
Since the beginning of the war we have pursued a gentle policy towards
neutrality. (Stresemann in the Reichstag.)
[]
... The peoples of America and France ... face with unshakable firmness
and with a clear awareness of their duty the task of liberation which
they have sworn to carry out to the end. (Poincaré.)
And now forward with God, towards new deeds and new victories! (Wilhelm
II. R.)
[]
London. — The British aviators did admirable work on the AĂsne front.
Berlin. — True to its traditions, the season has added new achievements
to the old ones.
Paris. — Eight tons of explosive devices were used in this way and gave
the best results.
[]
Others take advantage and pleasure of it.
[]
I am a warm friend of peace and I am deeply convinced that peace cannot
be achieved without victory and without Germany’s understanding that it
is defeated. (Declaration by Cecil.)
[]
Maurice Barrès writes in the Echo de Paris: It is with overflowing joy
in our hearts that we can see that events are turning more favorable to
France and the freedom of the peoples.
[]
Washington, 9 (S.A.). — The Senate has passed a resolution requesting
the President to make an appeal to the American people to pray for one
minute each day at 12 noon for a victorious end to the war.
[]
Sermon on the Mount
Havas.) — On Sunday, a one-day prayer for the success of the armies took
place in all dioceses of France by ordinance of the French bishops.
Prayers for the same purpose were held in churches and temples in
England on Sunday at the request of the government. Inscription above
the crucifix: You shall not kill.
[]
I do politics. (Hertling’s speech.)
[]
He wants peace, but only through war.
(The Chairman of the Social Democratic Union of America.)
[]
live the war! Echo from the front: Mother!
[]
We at home endure the tension just as our soldiers endured it, with
confidence, courage and hope. (Long applause.) (Speech by Bonar Laws.)
[]
The American people feel in their hearts a great affection for those of
all countries who are suffering and oppressed. It does not save its
blood nor its money so that it, and with it the people of all countries,
can see the dawn of that day when law, justice and peace will triumph.
(Wilson’s speech.)
[]
In my deepest conscience I am convinced that the centuries of peace
could not have cemented the unity of this nation as firmly as this one
year of war did; yes, even better, if this is possible: that this year
of war has cemented the unity of the world. (Address by Wilson.)
[]
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They call themselves delighted by their visit to the American front,
where they find an unparalleled confidence, cheerfulness and zeal. (Le
Matin.)
[]
Nobody expects peace this year. (MP Borlaud in the American Chamber.)
[]
Woe to the people who believed they could extinguish the light of
Christian feeling during the war. (Address by Prince Max von Baden to
the Grand Duke.)
[]
Regarding the imminent meltdown of historical monuments in Germany, the
Norddeutsche Allg. Newspaper that one can easily comfort oneself in the
loss of numerous monuments that are of no value and poorly placed.
[]
P. T. S. — New York. — The white races represent civilization and
education. (Speech by Senator Read.)
[]
Washington (Reuter). — The United States cannot evade its role as a
guide to morality without causing a deep disappointment to humanity.
[]
P. T. S. New York. — At the end of June, a public subscription will be
issued for a major victory memorial in Washington.
[]
The fallen have fallen so that a despicable war does not begin again. We
are not peace dreamers, but peace makers. (Speech by the bourgeois at
the banquet of the peoples’ delegations.)
[]
Paris 16. — In the event that Germany should refuse to sign the treaty,
the four have decided to completely blockade.
[]
Rome. — MEP Monti Guarniero tabled a bill in the Chamber requiring the
Podgora, Mount San Michele and Sabotino, sites of war, to be declared
national monuments.
[]
Ljubljana, 10. — The Czech-Slovak press office announces: The
mobilization of five annual classes began today with great success. The
soldiers presented themselves in large numbers and in a very cheerful
mood.
[]
Petersburg (Wolff) — Cholera has broken out in Petersburg. About 500
cases were reported yesterday.
[]
We must think of the great lessons of this war. (Clemenceau’s speech in
London.)
[]
London (Reuter). — It is reported that the Hungarian government has
declared the Bolshevik war on a number of neighboring countries.
[]
Rome (Stefani). — The second inter-allied conference for the disabled
will take place in Rome from October 12^(th) to 17^(th). The conference
will be complemented by an exhibition.
[]
Rome (P. T. S.). — There is talk of having the names of all 500,000
Italian soldiers and officers who died in the war carved into the giant
monument of Emanuel II in Rome. The monument would thus become an
excellent national monument.
[]
Washington (Havas). — The League of Nations provides for military action
to protect its members.
Everyone should have only one thought: kill as many of them as needed
until there’s enough dead. (General Gouraud.)
[]