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ENDURING OUTRAGE: Herb Block's decades-old cartoons are still relevant

August 31, 2006 12:52 am

Editor's note: Laura Hutchison serves on the board of the Herb Block Foundation.

By LAURA L. HUTCHISON

War. The Middle East. Privacy.

They're topics that are in the forefront of people's minds today, but they're also the focus of editorial cartoons drawn as many as 60 years ago by Herbert Block.

Better known by his pen name, Herblock, the four-time Pulitzer Prize winner published his first cartoon in the Chicago Daily News in 1929. He was 19. He went on to spend 55 years at The Washington Post.

Block produced thousands of cartoons over his more than 70-year career.

Now, 32 of those cartoons--along with 24 preliminary sketches--appear in "Enduring Outrage: Editorial Cartoons by Herblock." The artwork is the featured display in the Library of Congress' "American Treasures" exhibit.

Though the library has showcased Block's work before, this marks the first time the preliminary sketches have been shown there. All of the cartoons in "Enduring Outrage" are first-time inclusions in an exhibition, as well.

"The sketches are really interesting," said Martha Kennedy, who is from the library's Prints and Photographs Division and is co-curator of the exhibit with Sara Duke. "They give a real sense of the creative process."

Block's preparatory sketches were vital to him. After pondering the day's cartoon possibilities, Block would draw up five or so sketches for two or three proposed cartoons and shop them around the newsroom, asking the reporters who covered the issues for their opinions.

"He'd come down and say, 'You got a minute?' And even if you were on deadline, you stopped," said Frank Swoboda, a former Washington Post reporter and the current president of the Herb Block Foundation. "I probably saw him two to three times a week."

Swoboda and others said that they learned after a while that Block put his favorite sketch on the top of the pile. But that didn't sway the reporters, who respected him enough to still offer honest opinions.

After looking at the range of Block's work, Kennedy said she and Duke decided to assemble the exhibit around seven themes: Get Out the Vote, centered around off-year elections; Environment; Ethics; Extremism, especially political; Middle East; Security and Privacy; and War.

"They are themes he addressed throughout his career," Kennedy said. "And they have special relevance and resonance today."

For example, a 1977 cartoon shows a silhouette labeled "individual privacy" shot through with rifles labeled "bank records," "medical records," "govt. agencies" and "credit agencies."

"It really shows how fragile he felt about the state of individual privacy," Kennedy said. "And that was 30 years ago!"

Another takes aim at the Kennedy administration's backing of wiretapping in cases that involve kidnapping, serious federal crimes and issues of security. It shows two men uncaging a sleek panther labeled "wiretapping evils."

The fact that Block skewered Democratic leaders is important, curator Kennedy said.

"Herblock was definitely an independent," Kennedy said. "He prided himself on not being a member of any political party. Though he certainly was a liberal cartoonist, he took aim at people from both parties."

In the 1970s, when negative campaign ads started running on television, Block made it clear that he didn't like them. A cartoon from October 1970 showed a man shaking his fist at the television and shouting, "Out damned spots!"

Aside from reacting to what was going on around him, Block seemed to have an uncanny gift for looking into the future.

In 1967, Egypt and Syria had come together in their opposition to Israel. Block drew characters labeled Nasser and Syria, throwing matches over their shoulders onto a pile of explosives.

The cartoon ran in newspapers just a few days before the Six-Day War.

"I think what made him so special was he had that way of looking forward, looking ahead and combining everything that had happened," Swoboda said, "when a lot of cartoonists were doing yesterday's news. But there's an enduring quality to his cartoons. They're as timely today as when he drew them, and some of them date back to 1949."

Some themes continued throughout Block's career.

His first cartoon was titled "This is the Forest Primeval," and it showed a vast expanse of tree stumps.

In the '60s, he drew cartoons about air pollution; he was concerned about strip mining in the '70s; and in the '80s he was bothered by the lack of timely information distributed by both government officials and the media about the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Kennedy said that in going through the cartoons, she was struck by Block's drawing, technical virtuosity and inventiveness.

She said she also was surprised by the "timeliness, the ongoing relevance" of his work.

"Editorial cartoonists are, by their very nature, contemplating meaty issues," Kennedy said. "They are looking at the trends of the day and making decisions about what they think is important. So you see it in other cartoonists' work, too, but especially in his."

Block's final cartoon appeared in The Washington Post in August 2001.

Kennedy said the timing of his final cartoon was unfortunate for readers, because Americans would have benefited from a Herblock perspective on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"I think so many of us were thinking, 'We need you to help us make sense of this,'" she said.

Block died on Oct. 7, 2001.

Upon his death, Block asked that much of his considerable estate be used to start the Herb Block Foundation, with a board of 18 people named in his will. The foundation is charged with dispersing grants to organizations working in areas that were important to Block, providing post-secondary scholarships so needy students can continue their education, and promoting editorial cartooning.

In accordance with that last goal, one of the foundation's first acts was to give Herblock's archives--14,000 original drawings, more than 50,000 preparatory sketches, records, correspondence, clippings and photographs--to the Library of Congress. In exchange, the library agreed to preserve the documents and exhibit Block's work at least once every three years. "Enduring Outrage" is part of that commitment.

The next big exhibit is planned for 2009--a retrospective in what would have been Block's 100th birthday year.

To reach LAURA L. HUTCHISON: 540/374-5485
Email: lhutchison@freelancestar.com