Seven days after the United States entered the Great War in April 1917, Woodrow Wilson established the Committee on Public information, a semi-official propaganda agency headed by journalist George Creel. The goal of the committee was to use mass communication to build support for the war effort.

While much of the committee’s work was aimed at placing articles in newspapers and magazines, Creel understood the power of visual arts. He later wrote:

“Even in the rush of the first days … I had the conviction that the poster must play a great role in the fight for public opinion. The printed word might not be read; people might choose not to attend meetings or to watch motion pictures, but the billboard was something that caught even the most indifferent eye …. What we wanted—what we had to have—was posters that represented the best work of the best artists—posters into which the masters of the pen and brush had poured heart and soul as well as genius.”

Creel appointed Charles Dana Gibson, then president of the Society of Illustrators and one of the best known and highest paid artists in the country, as the head of the Division of Pictorial Publicity. Gibson recruited more the 300 of the country’s top illustrators as unpaid volunteers, urging them to “Draw ’til it hurts.”* Over the course of two years, the division created more than 1400 pieces, including 700 posters for 58 government departments, exhorting Americans to enlist, buy liberty bonds, collect books for soldiers, and avoid waste.

In addition to leading the Division of Pictorial Publicity, Gibson also created satirical ant-German political cartoons for Life magazine. One of the most powerful was “And the Fool, He Called her His Lady Fair,”** which was published on May 7, 1917, only weeks after the United States entered the war. In it, Gibson presents war as a skeletal woman being wooed by a male figure who bears a clear resemblance to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Wreathed with cigarette smoke, dripping with jewels, wine dripping in blood-like puddles at her feet, she is long way from the wholesome Gibson Girl.

*Gibson also selected eight artists to travel with the American Expeditionary Force and record scenes from the front lines. The eight, who all were successful commercial illustrators for major magazines. were commissioned as captains in the Army. It was same rank given to accredited war correspondents, and in fact their work can been seen as another type of war reporting. If you want to know more about their story, you can read an article I wrote about it here. But I digress.

**A line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Vampire.”