Life, 1913-03-13 · page 19 of 44
Life — March 13, 1913 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three satirical pieces mocking contemporary art and social trends: **"Some Cubist Verses"** parodies Cubism and Futurism—avant-garde art movements fragmenting subjects into geometric shapes. The poem deliberately breaks words into scattered syllables, visually mimicking Cubist distortion. It's mockery of modernist art as incomprehensible nonsense. **"The Future Department Store"** shows a massive, impossibly long corridor with tiny figures and suns. The joke: department stores have grown so vast and bewildering that customers get lost en route to basic sections like the glove counter. It satirizes American consumer culture's expansion and complexity. **"Churches and Jails"** argues against a *Leslie's Weekly* editor's claim that more churches than jails proves societal progress. Life's counterargument: jails operate 24/7 with committed inmates, while churches lack similar engagement. The piece sardonically suggests society needs "exactly the right number" of both institutions—deadpan commentary on American morality and social inequality. All three pieces reflect early 20th-century anxieties about modernism, commercialism, and social order.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Some Cubist Verses INCE the new French school of Cubists, or Futurists, is depicting everything in art as grotesquely cube shaped, why not a school of Cubist poetry, something after the style of the following? B oth menan dwomenw alkingups idedown dot hrongthebusyd izzystreetsintown, ors esand cabsand sundryoth erthingsdof lyaroundasife ndowedwithwings. L owh enshe isportr ayedbyCub istartmylov liestladyseems tofallapart. A ln ature isaharl equinicee reamorjuggl edsegmentofa rarebitdream. Frank H. Meloon. STOCK REPORT DURING THE TRADING A SPECTACULAR GAIN WAS NOTED IN CERTAIN QUARTERS, AND THE MARKET BECAME VERY ACTIVE. EL SEEEELT a sulle el SS JHE FUTURE DEPARTMENT STORE “ JOHN, YOU'D BETTER GO INTO TEMPORARY QUARTERS HERE WHILE 1 PUSH ON TO THE GLOVE COUNTER.” Churches and Jails HE editor of Lestie’s Weekly declares it to be a cause for optimism that the churches outnumber the jails. But is he right? Can we decide anything so important merely by offsetting the number of one against the number of the other? Must we not also take into account the relative fullness of each; and also the fact that jails are occupied day and night throughout the entire week; and also the fact that the inmates of jails take their affiliations much more se- riously than do the inmates of the churches? Even then, is it fair to consider these two institutions as antagonists? Don't they both exist because they are influences for good? Don't the jails reach a class that the church cannot touch, and some, indced, upon whom the church has placed its stamp? Wouldn't it be better to say that there is room for both and that society could hest progress by having exactly the right number of each? We should then be committed to nothing at all. comicbooks.com