Life, 1925-03-26 · page 10 of 37
Life — March 26, 1925 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes wealthy art collectors through J. Garner Guff, a millionaire who takes mail-order art lessons. The top cartoon shows Guff with children, illustrating his newfound artistic pretensions. The main article by Don Herold mocks Guff's assumption that spending money automatically grants cultural sophistication. Herold describes how Guff, after accumulating wealth, decides to become an art connoisseur—despite admitting he knows nothing about art. The satire targets the common wealthy stereotype: that money can purchase taste and refinement. The bottom cartoon captioned "Pretty soft for us, eh, Bill?" shows unemployed men watching well-dressed figures, likely referencing economic disparity during Depression-era struggles—a sharp contrast to Guff's frivolous art-collecting aspirations.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
= DRAWN BY J. GARNER GUFF, MILLIONAIRE ARTIST, ar PUPIL OF THE AJAX SCHOOL OF ART AND CARTOONING, AFTER TWENTY-FIVE LESSOD A Millionaire Art Collector Takes Up Ar: By Don Herold TIMONIAL to the Ajax School of Art and Cartooning: All of my fellow millionaires ought to take your mail course in drawing, illustrating. cartooning, and chalk talk- I am glad, therefore, to give you my testimonial. Your lessons by mail have cost me fifty dollars, and they will save me millions, Until I was fifty-five years old T could not draw a straight line. Yes, I was interested in art. (Was I? Hadn't I started at fifty to spend a million a year, with the determination athering the greatest collection of old masters in America?) Yes, 1 was interested in art. Then I saw your ad in a magazine. “Copy this picture.” I read about your wonderful course. I copied the picture and you sent me your glowing literature and you wrote me that it was clearly evident that I had latent talent. That was bunk, but no matter. I was beginning to realize that I, J Garner Guff, millionaire art collector. had been and was a plain, simpering idiot. I didn't know: enough about art to appreciate Mutt and Jeff in the funny paper. Why was I spending millions for art? As I rode home in the street car that night, or some night, saving a nickel to put with another half-million for an- other boat-load of masterpieces, I asked mysclf what was cating on us art-deluded millionaires. I decided we realize at the age of fifty that we have amassed mil- lions and have failed. We gradually, or with a jolt, find ourselves crushed by the most expensive form of inferiority com- human being. We set about to stamp ourselves as persons who are capable of com; the fine things of li really can't even understand billboards. We set about it in the only way we know by the brute force of millions. I decided it was all—blah! plex possible to z hending some of and we “LT will at least be honestly fine enough to be humble,” I said, after I read your ad. “I will approach art from the bottom, and with genuine humility I will take ten dollars’ worth of draw- ing lessons, I may even shoot fifty dollars and take the entire twenty-five lessons. I will at least prepare my- seli for a sincere assimilation of Spark Plug and Barney Google. By the time I am seventy, I may work up to the honest right to the unaffected ownership of a few Maxwell (or is it Maxfield?) Parrish prints, bought for a few dol- lars at the art shop around the corner.” I expect to persevere at my drawing, and you may one day be proud of me. I am proud of my alma mater, the Ajax School of Art and Cartooning. may use my name. abuse it. In fact, you may I am perhaps the only millionaire in America who knows enough about art not to draw all four legs of a horse on the same side of the horse. Sincerely, J. Garner Gurr. Accommodation IRST CRAPSHOOTER dice furiously); Shoots a Fade me, somebody, fade me! SecoNp SportsMaN (producing a roll that would strangle a shark): Fade Black boy, you's bleached! (rattling dollah! you? ee" “PRETTY SOFT FOR US, EH comicbooks.com