University Times

'Drawing on Worker Culture' showcases work of 3 cartoonists

Art and labor history intersect in amusing, insightful and sometimes profound ways in "Drawing on Worker Culture: The Labor Cartoons of Fred Wright, Gary Huck and Mike Konopacki," the current exhibition at the Frick Fine Arts Gallery.

The centerpiece of the show, which runs through Oct. 2, is a retrospective of 100 cartoons by Fred Wright, who during a 45-year career with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) established himself as the nation's pre-eminent labor cartoonist.

Pitt was chosen as the first stop for the exhibition, which will move on to New York and then to other cities around the country, to commemorate the University's acquisition of approximately 2,300 of Wright's original cartoons. In addition, the show was planned as part of the festivities surrounding the UE's national convention, which was held in Pittsburgh in August.

Pitt's Labor Archives, currently housed in Hillman Library and the Masonic Temple, have been the repository for the UE's national records since 1975.

"This [the cartoon exhibition] is not out of the blue," says David Rosenberg, archivist for the UE archives. "It is part of an ongoing relationship that the University has had with the UE." Along with to be expected views of life on the shop floor, Wright's work contains commentaries on the Cold War, political witch-hunts, health care, the environment and civil rights.

Combined with the 50 cartoons by Konopacki and Huck, who is a resident of Shadyside, the exhibition also reveals the evolution of the political cartoon style. When Wright began drawing in the 1930s, the "ash can style," a dark, dreary realistic style that frequently included a garbage can, was the predominant style for political cartoons. "Fred Wright was one of the first cartoonists in America to introduce more of a cartoony style to political cartoons and place a big emphasis on humor, keeping in mind that none of the politics are diminished," says Huck, who succeeded Wright as the UE's cartoonist. "Humor doesn't mean stupid." The work of Huck and Konopacki, both of whom were born into working-class families and came of age during the 1960s, show the influence of Mad magazine and the use of technology, such as photo copiers. "There is artistic value to the show," notes Huck. "What you get is a micro education on political cartooning." Curiously for someone who gained such renown in his field, Wright never intended to be a political cartoonist.

Born in Derby, England, in 1907 to a wheelwright father and seamstress mother, Wright was given his first drawing lessons at age 5 by his grandfather, a decorative painter and founding member of Britain's Labour Party.

It was music, though, that first captured the young Wright's imagination. As a teenager, he entered the work force as a messenger for a large New York City utility and taught himself how to play the piano by entertaining the lunch crowd in the company's lunch room. At the age of 17, he struck out on his own, working as a saxophonist in Catskills Mountain resorts and as a pianist in silent screen nickelodeons.

During Prohibition, Wright played his sax in gangster-owned speakeasies and made good money even as the stock market crashed, factories closed and millions of people ended up in soup lines.

Although the speakeasies assured him of a steady income, Wright began to feel that "something was terribly wrong in this country" when a millionaire in a nightclub could fritter away more money in one drunken spree than most working people saw in a lifetime.

With the end of Prohibition in 1933, Wright found work playing his sax on Caribbean cruise ships. On those cruises he saw the poverty of Central America, talked to seamen who belonged to the Maritime Union and began drawing cartoons. He sold his first political cartoon to the Maritime Union's magazine The Pilot in 1939.

"I was surprised to see them in print and even more surprised to be paid for them," he would later say.

Encouraged by the sale, Wright submitted more cartoons to The Pilot and then, in 1940, gave up the saxophone to work as a full-time freelance cartoonist for The Pilot and the Trade Union Service, a supplier of articles and artwork to union newspapers.

During World War II, Wright, along with Washington Post cartoonist Herblock, drew cartoons for the Army. After the war, he went back to drawing for various union publications and then, in 1949, was hired by the UE. He would remain with the UE until his death in 1984, at which time he was the only cartoonist employed full-time by a union.

In order to put the show together, Huck looked at thousands of Wright's cartoons. He says he was "awestruck" by both the amount and quality of Wright's work. "There are cartoons in the show that deal with racism and health care that are 20 and 30 years old and, unfortunately, apply to the situation right now because not much has changed," he says. "If people come to the show, they are going to see a lot more than history. They are going to see living history." Huck believes that the history of the United States can be traced through political cartooning. He says the best political cartooning was probably at times when the country was most politicized, such as during the Great Depression and the Vietnam War. The dark days for political cartooning, according to Huck, was the McCarthy Era of the 1950s, when anybody who criticized the government was likely to be labeled a communist. Huck also feels that political cartooning is an undervalued art form in this country because Americans are not a particularly political people. To support that belief, he points to voter turnouts of less than 50 percent. "Political cartooning should be, like the editorial pages, including letters to the editor, a way for people to honestly express their opinion," says Huck. "And I don't care if they are Nazis or what. The truth can be ugly, but that doesn't alter the fact it exists." Huck calls Konopacki, who lives in Wisconsin, one of the best cartoonists in the country today, "a wonderful, powerful cartoonist." It is an opinion substantiated by Konopacki's powerful cartoons on such subjects as union busting, Third World sweatshops producing goods for the American market, and education.

In his own work, Huck tries to make a "very subjective point" about American politics, whether it's dealing with labor or with social justice issues.

"My goal is to persuade someone else to my point of view," he says. "If I can cajole them with humor, then I use humor. The other part of it is just to contribute to the art form, which is much more personal and abstract. But it's all politics. I think the marketplace of ideas is a much better system than the 'objective journalism' we pretend to use these days." Pitt was chosen to house the UE's records because of the relationship several professors, especially labor historian David Montgomery, had developed with the union. In the early 1980s, the University also became the repository for the UE's district records, as well as the records of a number of union locals.

According to archivist Rosenberg, Wright's drawings are a valuable part of the UE archives because they provide a record of union activity on all levels over a span of almost four decades. His cartoons were not only used in the union's national magazine, but also in district publications and the shop papers of locals.

Rosenberg says Pitt always hoped to acquire Wright original drawings and that honoring Wright with a show to mark the transfer seemed an appropriate thing to do.

"It seemed a good opportunity all around to display Wright's work, the work of the other two cartoonists, an occasion to mark the transfer of the cartoons to the archives and something to interest, and hopefully enlighten, some of the delegates to the convention about the union's past," Rosenberg said.

To date, Pitt has acquired between 1,500 and 1,600 cubic feet of UE records going back to the union's founding in the 1930s.

–Mike Sajna