John Held, Jr.’s “Civilization’s Progress”

John Held, Jr. (1889-1958) really doesn’t need much of an introduction, as he is considered one of the most important illustrators of the 20^th century.  Held, along with fellow illustrator Ralph Barton, were two of the most well-known visual delineators of the Jazz Age.  Both men incorporated elements of Art Deco into their work, bringing a lively angularity combined with contrasting shapes and forms.  If you can picture a sense of visual jazz, you may well think of Held’s and Barton’s work.  Our old friend Bob (R.C.) Harvey wrote of Held in glowing terms:

”John Held, Jr. is arguably the most powerful cartoonist the print medium has ever seen. He co-created, it is often alleged, an entire decade of American history. The period of exuberant decadence that has entered American mythology…“the roaring twenties” was conjured up, according to ample testimony on the matter, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a novelist, and Held, a cartoonist. Fitzgerald’s 1920 novel, This Side of Paradise, captured the spirit of disillusioned ennui and impertinent disregard for convention that infected the joy-riding Younger Generation in post-World War I America. And Held’s drawings of spindle-shanked flappers and bell-bottomed sheiks of a few years later became the iconography of what Fitzgerald had christened the Jazz Age. No novelist, and certainly no cartoonist, had ever done the like before. Or since. Together, they put into words and pictures the feelings and tendencies then bubbling to the surface in American life. They gave to the airy nothings of such insubstantialities the imagery that completed the birth.”

As Bob wrote, the country was coming out of its first world war, and Fitzgerald and Held were there to capture that release from the previous years of death and mayhem.  Even with Prohibition in full swing, nothing would harsh that post-war buzz, at least not until 1929. 

Jack Shuttleworth, an editor for Judge magazine from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s, wrote about meeting Fitzgerald and Held in New York City in fall 1925.  His recollection was published in American Heritage in 1968:

“I didn’t know it then, but there I was smack in the middle of the Jazz Age with its two creators—Fitzgerald and Held. Fitzgerald wrote it, Held drew it. Drew its Hat-chested flappers with their shingled hair, flapping galoshes, and high-riding skirts; drew their saxophone-playing boy friends in coonskin coats, pocket flasks bulging from bell-bottom trousers. In marvelous wash and pen-and-ink sketches, Held caught them making whoopee. The scenes were football games, fraternity houses, speakeasies, cocktail parties, tea dances. The step was the Charleston or the Black Bottom, and the picturesque means of transport the Stutz Bearcat, the Marmon roadster, and the Model T. And at all these places, in any car, stairway, and alcove, one main, almost relentless recreation was necking.”

There are many stories about Held and Barton during this heyday of their careers.  Both men were literally given blank checks at times, since their work was so in demand.  Held was workhorse, bemoaning the fact that he had multiple houses and staff that he had to pay for.  Held met with Al Hirschfeld in 1924, when the latter was getting ready to leave for Paris.  Held told Hirschfeld how much he envied his being able to just up and leave.  Hirschfeld was beyond surprised, with his life savings of five hundred dollars pinned inside his jacket.  But Hirschfeld did not have Held’s obligations.  Held told his friend, “I have a whole crew of people in Connecticut and Florida depending on me”, followed by, “Don’t, for God’s sake, ever earn more than you need to live on. Try not to be too successful.”  When the Great Depression struck in 1929, the party atmosphere portrayed in the Jazz Age felt hollow.  Held worked to reinvent himself, while Barton, who struggled financially and emotionally, especially after his fourth divorce in 1931, shot himself a month later at 39 years old. 

In 1925, Held began a series of woodcut-like images portraying scenes of the “gay nineties”.  This was not an uncommon theme for cartoonists to mine back then.  Gaar Williams had been drawing his Among the Folks in History, portraying the late Victorian era, for some time.  But for Held, it gave him a break from the fine line stylized action.  He had done woodcuts as a kid, and revisited that approach in both linocuts and scratchboard images.  Harold Ross, a high school friend of Held’s in Utah, started a fledgling publication called the New Yorker in 1925, and that’s where Held’s “gay nineties” images first saw print. 

Held’s two approaches to image-making are completely opposite of each other.  While his Jazz Age illustrations are minimal, lyrical, stylized and chic, his woodcut-like cartoons are often awkward, clunky and purposely not chic.  Like the actors on Gilligan’s Island, Held was tired of being typecast of that Jazz Age illustration guy, and sought out a completely different approach. I’m not sure that I’ve ever run across anyone who prefers Held’s woodcut-style approach to his fine line Jazz Age pieces, but he drew these woodcut-style pieces for the New Yorker from 1925 to 1932.  He also used this approach in books and other periodicals.  One of those periodicals was Liberty magazine. 

In the August 8, 1931 issue of Liberty magazine, Held introduced a new series titled “Civilization’s Progress”.  The series gave Held the opportunity to bring his two stylistic approaches together, comparing and contrasting both time periods and subject matter.  His woodcut-style approach still portrayed that late Victorian period, while his ink and ink wash illustrations were full-on Jazz Age.  In the first such installment, both drawings are titled, “Photographing the Baby”, but each piece has a different sub-title, with entirely different meanings.  The contrasts are striking.  The “gay nineties” piece is executed in a purposely awkward manner, resulting in an image that feels like a combo platter of the Michelin Man meeting the famed Seinfeld puffy shirt.  It is unbeautiful, while the Jazz Age piece exudes the stylistic charm that made Held a household name.

I have a run of 33 of these Liberty magazine tearsheets, from August 8, 1931, to April 2, 1932.  There were no installments of “Civilization’s Progress” published in the March 5 and March 19, 1932 issues, so as far as I know, this is the complete series.  I also have two original illustrations from the series, which I will post following their printed counterparts. 

No one really knows why this series ended.  As mentioned earlier, the Jazz Age approach in Held’s work was likely running thin, especially as the Great Depression went on for many more years than expected.  There was little to celebrate for the average citizen during that time, so young adults behaving in a frivolous manner was no longer a joy for a good deal of the population.  Held did branch out later in his career, painting beautiful and delicate watercolors, as well as creating gouache paintings in that round-headed Jazz Age style of his, but with different subject matter.  And a different sort of substance.  There may not have been a full escape from the work that made Held so well-known, but it appears that he was able to find a happy medium later in life.

I hope you enjoy this rare series by John Held, Jr.  Until next time, be well.