Charles Dana Gibson and the Great War
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.”
“When in the course of human events”–you know how it goes from here
Here in the United States, we are celebrating the 4th of July.
It’s a hot day in Chicago, where I live. The city is hosting a NASCAR race and Mensa’s Annual Gathering—two events that may never have been in such close proximity before. There will be official fireworks in suburbs throughout the area, though none in Chicago itself, and unofficial fireworks in the park across the street from my house and the alley behind it. (Well into the early hours. Ms. Whiskey and I will not be happy.) The city’s parks are full of families setting up canopies, lawn chairs, folding tables loaded with food, and charcoal grills.
Personally, I plan to attend my neighborhoods’ “everyone marches” parade.
I also plan to take a few moments to think about why we are celebrating. The promise that has not yet been completely fulfilled but which stands at the core of who we are as a nation:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
It is a promise worth remembering, and worth fighting for.
Charles Dana Gibson and the Gibson Girl
Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) was an important illustrator in the Golden Age of American illustration. He sold his first illustration in 1886 to Life magazine,* where his works appeared every week for thirty years. Soon his drawings appeared in every major American magazine, including Harpers’ Weekly, Scribners and Colliers. He illustrated books, including American editions of Charles Dickens’ novels, The Prisoner of Zenda, and Gallegher and Other Stories by swashbuckling journalists and adventurer Richard Harding Davis.** in 1918, he became first editor and then majority owner of Life.
But his most important impact on American culture was the “Gibson Girl,” whose distinctive silhouette and pompadour hairdo became the ideal for American beauty from the 1890s into the 20th century. (I was amused to see that his Princess Flavia, in The Prisoner of Zenda, had an air of the Gibson Girl about her. Evidently the ideal reigned in Ruritania as well as the United States.)
The Gibson Girl was tall, aloof, stylish, and above all, modern. She was equally at home at balls, on bicycles, and at the beach.*** There is often a satirical, feminist element to the images, most notably the drawing titled “The weaker sex” in which Gibson Girls examine a tiny male figure with a magnifying glass, one of them preparing to poke him with a hat pin as if he were an entomological specimen for collection.
(The feminist element can possibly be attributed to the fact that his wife, Irene Langhorne Gibson, who was one of his models and believed to be the original model for the Gibson Girl, was an active suffragist and progressive activist.)
The Gibson Girl was edged off the page as a beauty icon during World War I, when women’s roles, and fashions, began to change in fundamental ways.
*Founded in 1883, Life was originally a general interest and humor magazine, which featured illustrations from many prominent artists of the time. In 1936, magazine mogul Henry Luce purchased the magazine and took advantage of new printing technology to relaunch it as the iconic photographic news magazine, giving Life a new life as it were. (Sorry. Sometimes I can’t help myself.)
**Who deserves to be the subject of a blog post in his own right, now that I think about it.
*** Her image also appeared on a variety of merchandise, including dishes, pillows, wallpaper, and even shirtwaists. (The idea of wearing a shirtwaist with a picture of a shirtwaist wearing Gibson Girl has a meta quality that amuses me,)