Life, 1913-12-25 · page 7 of 41
Life — December 25, 1913 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes modernist "Cubist" art through a Christmas dinner scene. The cartoon above shows a family meal where a child asks why mother doesn't use her "finger bowl" while eating jam—she responds by asking why he can't lick his fingers instead. The accompanying poem parodies Cubist art's fragmented, abstract style by describing Christmas imagery in deliberately disjointed, nonsensical terms: "the herring bone in the pickle jar," candles of "pink yellow and green and blue," and moon imagery in "oilcloth glow." The satire mocks Cubism as incomprehensible and impractical—suggesting modernist art abandons sense and beauty for pretentious abstraction. The comparison to a chaotic, illogical Christmas dinner emphasizes the joke that Cubism makes "living" experiences confusing and unrecognizable.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“ou! ETHEL, WHY DON'T YOU USE YOUR FINGER BOWL?” “ WHAT'S THE USE 0” WASTIN’ THIS GOOD JAM, MOTHER, WHEN I CAN LICK MY FINGERS?” HE snow popped up and rattled like rice In the low, lush mistletoe marsh The chimes swung thick on a sickle of ice And jangled a discord harsh And the herring bone in the pickle jar Why that was a Christmas tree And the glibbering, globular glint was a star But not to you and me. And off to the right where the candles grew Was a goglet that made you glare Pink and yellow and green and blue It was something descending the stair Carrying a slosh of sugar of lead Powdered with spangled ink. You couldn't say if 'twas living or dead But wouldn't it make you think! 2x Cubist Christmas That centipede doing the turkey trot It seems was a Christmas kiss You should keep one eye on the nineteenth leg And the other eye shut, like this And oh—the moon in the oilcloth glow And the bath-spray burst in bloom 'Twas holly and evergreen all in a row If the artist had had more room. Oh, where is the blazing pudding of plum And dear old Santy C— Who skidded over the rooftops some On his annual Christmas spree And where is the trusty Yule log’s flare That we used to read about They are all in that lunatic diagram there The thing is—to find them out! Kate Masterson.