Life — December 1, 1927 — page 51: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page from *Life* magazine presents a humorous survey of contemporary illustration styles, credited to James Montgomery Flagg. Rather than a political cartoon, it's a satirical critique of popular illustrators' distinctive techniques. Each panel showcases a named artist's recognizable style: Henry Raleigh's dramatic ghostly scenes, Dean Cornwell's shiny hardware, John LaGatta's dynamic falling figures, Arthur William Brown's fashionable collegians, Frederic R. Gruger's shadowgraphs, and R.F. Schabelitz's shiny-skinned subjects. The subtitle's "(with all due apologies)" signals tongue-in-cheek mockery of these artists' mannerisms and their prevalence in contemporary magazine illustration. This is primarily *Life*'s in-house commentary on the illustration industry—gently roasting fellow professionals' recurring stylistic tropes that readers would recognize from the magazine's own pages and competitors'.