Life, 1923-03-22 · page 33 of 36
Life — March 22, 1923 — page 33: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes Western highbrow fascination with "exotic" art from Eastern Europe and Asia. The poem mocks how Americans romanticize foreign cultures—viewing Cossacks, Tartars, Mongols, and Russians as inherently artistic and dramatic precisely *because* they're stereotyped as violent or "uncivilized" when not performing. The satire's point: Western intellectuals value art from "far away" and "gentle-folk" abroad while dismissing homegrown work. The poem suggests this is absurd snobbery—we're importing manufactured "authentic exoticism" for consumption by highbrows. Below, a humorous "Now All Can Be Told" section parodies Freudian psychoanalysis by applying it to Mother Goose's Miss Muffet, diagnosing her spider-fear as a "spider complex." This mocks the era's trendy overuse of psychoanalytic jargon to pathologize ordinary behavior. The General Cord Tire advertisement occupies the center—typical commercial placement in Life magazine.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Art for Export HEN the Cossack isn’t poking folks with lances, When the Tartar isn’t riding on a raid, He is improvising fascinating dances For the cultivated trans-Atlantic trade. When the Czecho-Slav is scowling th through his eyebrows, He is working out a poem or a rol art that captivates our highbrows Is the perfect art that comes from far away. When the Mongol isn’t worshiping his lamas, When the Russian isn’t picking on the Pole, He will meditate those horrifying dramas That are tonics for the Occidental soul. When the kindly phlebotomizing He will ship us lov ely books across the seas; For the only art that’s truly civiliz- ing Is the art that comes from gentle- folk like these. A. G. Turk is through Now All Can Be Told Tue real use of psychoanalysis comes in understanding Mother Goose. We can understand ourselves quite easily—we can ask ourselves as many questions as we wish, type our dreams and go through the whole formula, but to get to the —goes a long way to make friends | € | BurLT IN AKRON HIS year everything looks like Generals OHIO. BY THE —even the doormen. THE GENERAL CORD TIRE CENERAL TIRE & RUBBER CO “With All Good Wishes for ~ a Bright and Happy Easter.” Let a Subscription to ye accompany your good wishes and thus give them tangible form—a pleasant Easter gift, inexpensive but worth while, and one that means pleasure every week to young and old, Children like our paper. Try it and see how they willrevel in LIFE, with its laugh on Every Page, all through the year, or else try our Special Offer Enclosed fad One Dollar (Canadian $1.20, Foreign $1.40). Sexp Lire for the next ten weeks to Open only to new subscribers; no subscription renewed at this rate. LIFE, 598 Madison Avenue, New York Canadian $5.80 One Year $5 Foreign $6.60 depths of the characters of Mother Goose, we have to depend on psy- choanalysis. So far as known, for instance, lit- tle Miss Muffet was a healthy, aver- age child. She liked to engage in the sweet pastimes of youth. Her “libido” was in perfect working order ; she cherished the proper he was free of any -” Yet her actions were abnormal. No ordinary child would have gone to the trouble of selecting a tuffet and seating herself on it, to leap up and run away just because she happened to see a spider. Such a child would have called her nurse, or have chosen another seat. But Miss Muffet was greatly frightened and ran away. That means something. For the first time in two hundred years lit- tle Miss Muffet is now really under- stood. Psychoanalysis makes it clear —little Miss Muffet was suffering from a “spider complex.” And still, some people don’t be- lieve in psychoanalysis. FEC. comicbooks.com