Soriano: Mussolini

Benito Mussolini dominated the cover of New Masses for the August 9, 1938 number, illustrating the second part of "Inside Fascist Italy" by Margareta West. The illustrator signs only Soriano, which presents us with a bit of a mystery. We could tentatively identify the artist as Rafael Soriano (1920-2015) but he would have been seventeen and living in Cuba in the summer of 1938. Well, it might have been Juan Soriano (1920-2006), who would also still have been seventeen although he was a prodigy. But he resided in Mexico. It seems more than likely there's some other illustrator named Soriano who was, we hope, slightly older and slightly nearer to New York. 

Benito Mussolini
Soriano
New Masses, August 9, 1938

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-MASSES-MAGAZINE-V-28-N-7-AUG-9-1938-VG-COPY-CPUSA-SORIANO-COVER-ART...

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Mischa Richter on the Silk Trade

The Japanese silk boycott of 1937-1940 was a protest against Japan's invasion of China. In the Marxist periodical New Masses of July 11, 1939, Mischa Richter draws a fashionable Western woman aiding Japan through her continued support of the silk trade. The grotesque caricature of Japan is heavily armed with both traditional and modern weapons, his shoes are spiked, and his cloak is patterned in swastikas, just in case you don't get the message. The Japanese figure has more of a skull than a living head. Contrast his depiction with that of the pretty, coiffured white woman in silk stockings.

Tear sheet

Mischa Richter
eBay listing accessed April 29, 2023

https://www.ebay.com/itm/385489825698?hash=item59c0fbefa2:g:oLUAAOSwe-BkF2TJ&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA8P%2BOQ4U1Pwc%2BQIi6%2FmEyQLzK6Y6%2Bz7nW%2FIagae%2BPncoz6Hq0T%2FZDVcJVxL2gUlmhXS%2BCJj9s9P7SYWlDRhhn08NBf7vYVIJ%2FJUauA9FKJPOutzMNrN%2B7X9dBR78M

8AXNlWy24Es9GlgDBOF2PIpjhIxZLQcaQwThqbxGL1tyFcBEWE9AeLCkQsNYGFF04%2FlDamBDZIE%2BBAlxYRs5awO3yHh6PmTpBF%2BwLZbK%2Fw3Bpfek6pdSHhiAYqTzhO9uAh9ElpFGj9y0ogrAw8a86WWtgti9%2FwTvIGz9hdNzJpqzdVphlSvFgLE4vlCwrSFw5KyCEQ%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR_LSzdv5YQ

Mischa Richter
eBay item description

May 8, 2023 Update:  Sold!

Mischa Richter
eBay bid history
Three of the five bids came in the final thirteen seconds.

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Mischa Richter: Dressing for the Monopoly Investigation

The Temporary National Economic Committee (TNEC) was established by a joint resolution of the United States Congress on June 16, 1938 and operated until its defunding on April 3, 1941. The TNEC's function was to study the concentration of economic power and to report to Congress with its findings.

—Wikipedia

The Temporary National Economic Committee's work was popularly known as the monopoly investigation, as the New York Times and the New Masses called it. A cartoon for the latter publication by a young Mischa Richter (1910-2001) dates from the TNEC era. It depicts a wealthy monopolist addressing his manservant as he prepares to appear before the hearings. Richter's family fled the Russian Empire in 1922, so it's unclear how much of a fellow traveler he really was, and in the 1930s this would scarcely have raised on eyebrow anyway. According to Ink Spill, Richter's work first appeared in The New Yorker in 1942. Here for the New Masses of 1938 though, his grotesque capitalist appears to be influenced by the work of George Grosz.

"If anyone calls, Hawkins, I'm appearing before the monopoly investigation."
Mischa Richter
The New Masses, December 20, 1938, page 14

Detail

Detail with Mischa Richter's signature

The cartoon as it appeared in the New Masses

Mischa Richter
eBay listing ended April 1, 2021

https://www.ebay.com/itm/383966164137?hash=item59662ab4a9%3Ag%3Ap48AAOSwlEhgL-Dr&nma=true&si=WEtIFz5%252FkfY9UxP8WWeB%252FCaqeVQ%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Mischa Richter
eBay item description

Mischa Richter
eBay  bid history
Four bidders submit five bids, but it is the two last-minute bidders who are serious. The last bid, submitted with only four seconds remaining in the auction, fails.

https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1938/index.htm

Note:  Mischa Richter may have crossed paths with George Grosz at the Art Students League in New York. His copy of a Grosz monograph is in the blog archives here. He acquired it some six months after the publication of this cartoon, but he may already have been familiar with Grosz's work.

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Mischa Richter's Capitalist Pigs

Does it make sense that cartoonist Mischa Richter, whose family fled the Russian Revolution for the United States, would work as art editor for the New Masses, a leading American Marxist magazine? Was this his true political conviction during the Great Depression, or was it just a good career opportunity? On the basis of a cartoon showing top-hatted capitalist pigs wallowing in the muck of Wall Street, the young Richter would seem to be sincere in his leftism. The gag, with pigs lamenting immutable human nature, is not a great one, but it works well enough in the context of American Communist commentary. The original artwork has been poorly treated, apparently trimmed into the art, the signature, and the caption—still one can hope the full sheet remains intact and just wouldn't fit into a scanner.

"[As I] often say[,] B.K., you can't change human nature."
Published as "I've always said you can't change human nature."
Mischa Richter
Original art
New Masses, May 9, 1939, page 19

"I've always said you can't change human nature."
Mischa Richter
New Masses, May 9, 1939, page 19

Mischa Richter
eBay Listing Ended August 6, 2017

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1939-Mischa-Richter-original-published-illustration-art-Wall-Street-Pigs-/382146059624?hash=item58f9ae1d68%3Ag%3AxRYAAOSwq~tZVpHF&nma=true&si=YQGb25QThn5Fxe78BW8tTy6VzZY%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Mischa Richter
eBay Item Description

Mischa Richter
eBay Bid History
The price doubles in the last 20 seconds and the last bidder wins.

Note:  Attempted Bloggery seeks scans and photographs of original cartoon art by Mischa Richter and other New Yorker artists. Workers of the world, submit!

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May Day for Tintin

The first collected Adventures of Tintin book, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets from 1929 is scarce and it remained out of print for many years. The phenomenal price achieved for this volume at auction is a testament to the importance of Tintin, particularly in the French and Belgian markets. (I'm an American and my first and only encounter with Tintin was the Spielberg movie. I liked it, by the way.)

The book may be anticommunist propaganda and no doubt is historically inaccurate, but, hey, it's a comic book. While I haven't read it, it's flaws seem trivial, especially given the ubiquitous falsehoods of Soviet propaganda and the Communist Party's systematic denial of the awful realities of life under the brutal Joseph Stalin. And this book did get the whole Tintin thing started, after all.

Oh, yeah. Happy May Day, Comrades.


Hergé, Les Aventures de Tintin au pays des Soviets, No. 477/500, 1929

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2012/bande-dessine-comics/lot.12.lotnum.html

Hergé, Les Aventures de Tintin au pays des Soviets, No. 477/500, 1929

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From Hegel to Harvey: A Dialectical Materialist Critique of Richie Rich

It is painfully obvious that this blog isn't being used as a resource in the ivy-covered halls of academia. In fact, there isn't a single college course anywhere that regularly assigns readings from here despite Attempted Bloggery's veritable trove of vital information. The result, if no corrective action is taken, will be a nation of college graduates woefully ill-informed on just about all the critical subjects covered herein.

The problem is largely one of language. College professors require a certain degree of academic jargon to reassure themselves that the material at hand has sufficient scholarly merit. Anything written with a folksy lilt or jocular tone is automatically suspect, whatever the content. So please note that today's remaining posts have been carefully provided with serious academic titles so that our dedicated college and university instructors will finally feel comfortable assigning lengthy portions of this blog to the eager young minds they're charged with educating. For example, this post's title should appeal to those many academics with Marxist leanings, prompting them to assign extensive readings from this blog to their students. These students, in turn, will receive a more informative education here than they ever would in the classroom having the workers' paradise continually rammed down their throats. Better they should stay in their dorms reading this blog and Richie Rich.

http://webheadcomics.com/images/rr_millions_78.jpg

http://www.newkadia.com/?Richie_Rich_Comic-Book-Covers=3041|11

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The Great Leap Forward

Is it possible for my blog statistics to provide insights into global political shifts? For more than a year and a half, this blog has scarcely been viewed by anyone inside China. While there could be many cultural and linguistic reasons for this, I have always assumed the government has been blocking free access to the internet. Now that may be changing in a small but significant way. Last month, for the first time, China made it into the top ten of countries from which this blog is viewed. This month it is in the top eight. What's going on?

Attempted Bloggery Page Views by Countries for this Past Month

It's not really a big deal that from a country with over 1.3 billion people, I'm getting just over 100 page views per month, but it is a very significant change. Now why would China have been blocking access to my blog? I've never criticized the Chinese government except for its tacit acceptance of female infanticide; its refusal to permit free speech, a free press, or freedom to practice religion; its horrendous human rights record including widespread intolerable working conditions for many factory and farm workers; worldwide theft of intellectual property including tolerance of widespread counterfeiting of luxury items and unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted books; coordinated hacking of sensitive institutions in the United States and around the globe; a ghastly domestic environmental record; unconscionable support for a psychopathic tyrant in North Korea; and an unwillingness to use its international political clout to rein in any other despotic governments. Aside from those things, and the lack of democratic institutions and free elections, I have very little to say against the Chinese government.

I'm not sure what's going on now. Either the Chinese government has loosened the reins on internet access, or these page views are all the work of government hackers trying to bring my blog down. I don't believe opinions voiced here in my little corner of cyberspace are of any strategic importance to the Chinese, and it would be foolish of them to waste their energy on someone as peripheral as I am. Still, I suspect that if they wanted to hack my blog, they most probably could.

More likely though, the Chinese are relaxing their strictures on internet access just a bit, perhaps only on a trial basis. Who would have thought that even a few dozen of those 1.3 billion souls would have chosen to come here and view my little blog? I'd be delighted to learn that the Chinese people have gained the right to visit any website in the world as a guaranteed freedom. Only then will I personally really feel the magnitude of the more than 1.3 billion Chinese who stay away from this site. But then it will be by choice. Their choice.

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Mao by Miguel Covarrubias

Miguel Covarrubias's Portrait of Mao Tse-Tung is expected to sell for about $300,000 in Hong Kong on April 2, about twice what the oil painting fetched in 2006 in Singapore. No doubt the art collectors in Hong Kong living under authoritarian Chinese Communist rule will bid aggressively on this piece, eager to express their gratitude to Mao for their current inability to vote or to have a direct say in their future. Or perhaps they can simply appreciate Mr. Covarrubias's iconic image of Mao for the fine portrait it is, making a clear distinction between the artwork and its subject's awful political legacy.

Miguel Covarrubias, Portrait of Mao Tse-Tung

http://www.sothebys.com/en/catalogues/ecatalogue.html/2012/sea-modern-ctmp-paintings-hk0383#/r=/en/ecat.fhtml.HK0383.html+r.m=/en/ecat.lot.HK0383.html/340/

Added April 2, 2012

Miguel Covarrubias, Portrait of Mao Tse-Tung, 2006 sale

http://www.artvalue.com/auctionresult.aspx?PK_Resultat=1933557

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