Judge, 1913-04-05 · page 6 of 24
Judge — April 5, 1913 — page 6: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satire mocks the early 20th-century Futurist art movement, which was gaining popularity in America and Europe. The author presents himself as a cautionary tale: engaged to a beautiful woman (Exhibit A), he attends a Futurist art exhibition and is so brainwashed by a disciple's rhetoric about buildings being "alive" with "push and pull forces" that his perception becomes distorted. Walking through New York afterward, he literally sees skyscrapers "nodding" to each other and the Woolworth Building leaning toward the post office. The joke is that Futurism's abstract philosophy about dynamic motion and life in modern architecture has made him hallucinate—he's mentally unstable from exposure to the movement. The cartoon suggests Futurism is dangerous nonsense that corrupts rational thought, particularly targeting young, educated men. This reflects widespread American conservative skepticism toward avant-garde European art movements in the 1910s-1920s.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
MEDIEVAL A Tragedy of Art “Futurism” HEREWITH 1 offer myself as a horrible example of a bright and hopeful existence shattered in one fatal moment, sac- rificed to the insidious influences of art ‘‘Futurism,’’ which is now rampant in our midst. There is nothing ‘‘future’’ about this so-called art; its effects are as immediate as they are disastrous. Permit me to lay before you the lamentable facts: On the evening of March 12th I was made the happiest of men by the promise of the most beautiful girl in the world to become my bride early in June. I trust that the inclosed photo, marked ‘‘Exhibit A,’’ will convince you that I do not exaggerate the charms of my promised wife. Alas! Forty-eight hours later I was suddenly dashed from the glittering heights of earthly joy into the deepest chasm of The intervening evening, lured by a false friend, I had woe. spent at an iniquitous exhibition of art‘‘Futurism.’’ I might, Exhibit B—alter “* Futuriam™ stung me. perhaps, have escaped with nothing worse than a severe head- ache, accompanied by nausea, had not my false friend presented me to a fiendish disciple of that heresy, whose eloquence con- vinced me that, as indicated in his pictures of them, the buildings of a great city ‘‘are not dead steel and stone and mortar, but live, live, live!” Accordingly, the following evening, when I walked up Broad- way from my Wall Street office, anticipating the joys of a quiet, soul-satisfying hour or two with my beautiful bride-to-be, I was not surprised to observe that the skyscrapers were nodding affably to each other across the street, and that the ‘‘push and pull forces’’ of the Woolworth Building and the post-office were causing the former to lean over in a listening attitude, while the latter was vis- ibly being stretched upward in a tolerably successful effort to equal- ize their height. They were lean- ing toward each other—indeed, almost touching noses. But what cared I, whose beautiful bride- to-be was waiting with the love- light in her eyes, and that fas- BUNGALOW cinating little brown mole— SOMEONE MUST HAVE TAKEN THE BUNG OUT OF THE comicbooks.com