The International Day of the Cartoonist 2021

Since 2015, I have here observed the International Day of the Cartoonist in honor and memory of five French cartoonists murdered for their art. They were Wolinski, Cabu, Honoré, Tignous, and Charb, respectively, George David Wolinski (1934-2015), Jean Cabut (1938-2015), Philippe Honoré (1941-2015), Bernard Verlhac (1957-2015), and Stéphane Charbonnier (1967-2015). They were killed on this day in 2015 by Islamist terrorists in the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

The same kind of terrorist infamously killed another Frenchman in 2020 because he showed some cartoons to his students. He was Samuel Paty (1973-2020), and he was a middle school teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburb of Paris. Every year since the Charlie Hebdo massacre, M. Paty showed his students cartoons drawn by its cartoonists depicting a person revered by Muslims. When he did the same thing in October 2020, a young Muslim man took offense, and on October 16, 2020, he killed and beheaded Samuel Paty in the street near his school. A few minutes later, police tried to arrest the killer. When he resisted, they shot him dead. The French government was strong in its response to the murder. Some Western media, including in the United States, were characteristically weak. The French showed strength and resolve. Some Americans, Canadians, and Europeans showed their bellies.

The French president awarded M. Paty the Légion d'honneur posthumously. I think we can honor him, too, for his courage and for his devotion to the principles of freedom of thought and expression and of resistance to tyranny and oppression. There are cartoonists all over the world currently engaged in the same kinds of things. We should honor and remember them, too.

Postdated to January 7, 2021.

Copyright 2021, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Pictures for a Year's End-No. 5

I'll close this series and the year with two illustrations for children's books, plus a magazine gag cartoon.

Kokomo native Norman Bridwell (1928-2014) may be renowned for his many books about Clifford the Big Red Dog, but he also illustrated this one featuring a small brown dog. The book is How to Care for Your Dog (1964), and the author is Jean Bethell. 

Jared Lee (b. 1943) is another well-loved children's book illustrator. He was born in Van Buren, Indiana, and now lives in Ohio. The picture shown here is from Monster Manners by Joanna Cole. It was published in 1985.

Finally, a drawing by Clyde Lamb (1913-1966) from the cartoon collection The Jokeswagon Book (1966), published during the Volkswagon craze of the 1960s. Lamb wasn't born in Indiana, nor did he go to school here or teach here or work here. Instead he was incarcerated in the Hoosier State in the 1930s and '40s. After gaining his freedom, he drew gag cartoons and created full-color illustrations for calendars published by Brown and Bigelow of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Pictures for a Year's End-No. 4

I was happy to find this book recently at a secondhand store in Indianapolis. It's called The Hook Book . . . The ABC's of Drug Abuse (1973), and it's by Tom Floyd. A native of Gary, Thomas W. Floyd, Sr. (1928-2011) was a newspaper cartoonist and commercial artist who ran his own firm called Tom Floyd Visuals. He also contributed cartoons to Jet magazine. I hate drugs and drug use and am happy to have shared those feelings with the late Mr. Floyd, who wrote in his introduction, addressed to young people: "Don't ever start. Don't let anyone, under any circumstances, 'con' you into trying something that is so life destroying as drugs and the abuse of alcohol." By the way, The ABC's of Drug Abuse was printed by Cornelius Printing Company of Indianapolis, at one time the printer of Weird Tales magazine.

Original text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Pictures for a Year's End-No. 3

Rob Day of Indianapolis provided the cover illustration for Maphead By Lesley Howarth (1994). You can find Mr. Day's website by clicking here.

Text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley 

Pictures for a Year's End-No. 2

Born in Mound City, Illinois, William Sandeson (1913-2003) drew editorial cartoons for the Fort Wayne News Sentinel for thirty-seven years before retiring in 1987. Before that he had worked in New Orleans and St. Louis. Sandeson illustrated Voice of the Turtle by John Ankenbruck (1925-2017). The book was published in 1974 with an introduction by Chris Schenkel (1923-2005), a native of Bippus, Indiana.

Text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley 

Pictures for a Year's End-No. 1

Time has run out for me this year. Before I go, I would like to show a few illustrations by fellow Hoosiers. I would also like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year. May the coming year be better than the one now ending. Or as John Lennon sang, it couldn't get much worse.

Denzil Omer "Salty" Seamon (1911-1997) of Gibson County, Evansville, Terre Haute, and Rosedale illustrated Wings Beyond, a book of poetry by C. David Hay, a dentist and poet, also of Rosedale. The book was published in 1995.

Text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

John Laska (1918-2009)

Jon Joseph Laska, later John Laska, was born on November 25, 1918, in Portchester, New York. His parents, Isadore Laska and Marya Wojtanoska, were both Polish natives. John Laska's father died when he was five years old and he became a ward of the state. As a young man, John Laska studied at the Art Students League and the New American Artists School in New York. He was a student of Raphael Soyer (1899-1987). Laska served in the U.S. Army during World War II. His unit, the 104th Infantry Division, nicknamed the Timberwolves, fought in France, Belgium, and Germany and helped to liberate the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp at Nordhausen. After the war, he earned a master of fine arts degree at the Art Institute of Chicago and entered a teaching career that would carry on for the rest of his working life. He taught art at University High School in Champaign, Illinois, for three years. From 1954 until his retirement in 1981, he taught at Indiana State Teachers College, now Indiana State University, and State High School or Laboratory High School in Terre Haute, Indiana. Laska died on April 21, 2009, at the age of ninety.

John Laska is an artist new to me. I found a reproduction of his painting Flood Scene, West Terre Haute in a book called Prize Winning Paintings, Representational and Abstract, published in 1962. The painting won an award at the Hoosier Salon in 1960. Judge Irving Shapiro (1927-1994) said of it:

In regard to Mr. John Laska's prize-winning painting in the 1960 Hoosier Salon show, it not only was the finest work in the show, but it is one of the finest oils that I have ever had the good fortune to pass judgment on. I was particularly impressed with the strength and vigor with which it was handled. [. . .] The power, simplicity and honesty of statement with which it was presented made "Flood Scene, West Terre Haute" a painting I will certainly remember for a long time to come.

Another judge, Paul Strisik (1918-1998), remarked: "This painting conveyed a tense dramatic situation very successfully without falling into mere illustration." I don't think we should take that as a swipe at the field of illustration but rather as an attempt to lay down a line between illustration and fine art. The artist himself wrote: "The flood scene is a descriptive kind of work. I do not always paint this way. Most of my more recent production might well be classified as more abstract."

Laska was something of an activist. He was a charter member of the Eugene V. Debs Foundation and the designer of the Eugene V. Debs Award, a large plaque that has been handed out every year but two since 1965. (Hoosier author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007] won the award in 1981.) Laska's art also adorns the interior walls of the Eugene V. Debs Home in Terre Haute. I won't show any of that art here, as it depicts some of the hateful figures, as well as symbols of, a hateful and murderous system responsible for the deaths of countless millions of people, including compatriots of Laska's parents. Instead I will just show his painting, which is, I think, remarkable for its almost abstract handling and composition of a scene that might otherwise be considered a genre painting.

Flood Scene, West Terre Haute, an oil painting by Indiana artist John Laska (1918-2009), purchased in 1960 by Indiana University for its student union. Dimensions 36 x 26 inches.

Original text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley