Tuesday, February 6, 2018

William Steig: Get in the Scrap!

William Steig encourages patriotic Americans to collect scrap metal for the war effort with his wartime poster Get in the Scrap! The color poster, which plays on dual meanings of the word scrap, relates thematically to Steig's popular Small Fry cartoons. In some of these, called Dreams of Glory, young children imagine themselves performing impossibly heroic wartime deeds. The Japanese soldier shown here is depicted as an ugly racial caricature, a practice which is not at all uncommon in this time period. The poster will be offered at auction on March 1 at Swann Galleries in New York.

William Steig
Get in the Scrap!
Rubber and Metal Collection Depot poster, c. 1942

William Steig
Swann Galleries, March 1, 2018, Sale 2467, Lot 94






William Steig
Dreams of Glory

The New Yorker, June 24, 1944, page 34
Image added February 8, 2018



Note:  Have you ever seen this poster before? I have not. Imagine how much other forgotten art by William Steig is out there just waiting to be discovered! This is why I ask readers who have access to original art or scarce published works to send me scans and photographs to publicize on this blog. What's in your cartoon library?


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