Jacob Burck | |
|---|---|
 Burck circa 1935 by wife Esther Kriger | |
| Born | Yankel Boczkowsky (1907-01-10)January 10, 1907 Wysokie Mazowieckie, Poland |
| Died | May 11, 1982(1982-05-11) (aged 75) Chicago, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Art Students League |
| Known for | painting, sculpture, cartooning |
| Notable work | If I Should Die Before I Wake |
| Style | Proletarian Art |
| Spouse | Esther Kriger |
| Awards | 1941Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning |
Jacob Burck (née Yankel Boczkowsky, January 10, 1907 – May 11, 1982) was a Polish-bornJewish-American painter, sculptor, and award-winningeditorial cartoonist. Active in the Communist movement from 1926 as a political cartoonist and muralist, Burck quit the Communist Party after a visit to theSoviet Union in 1936, deeply offended by political demands there to manipulate his work.
Upon his return to the United States, Burck drew political cartoons for two large mainstream dailies, theSt. Louis Post Dispatch and then, for 44 years, theChicago Daily Times (later as theChicago Sun-Times). Burck was awarded the 1941Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.
Jacob Burck was born Yankel Boczkowsky on January 10, 1907, inWysokie Mazowieckie, Poland (thenRussia),[1] the son of ethnicJewish parents, Abraham Burke, a bricklayer, and Rebecca Lew Burke.[2][3]
Burck emigrated to the United States at age six and lived inCleveland until 1924.[4] He attended theCleveland School of Art on ascholarship after he was discovered on a Cleveland sidewalk sketching instead of attendingelementary school.
When he was seventeen years old, Burck travelled to New York City to study at theArt Students League of New York (ASL) underAlbert Sterner andBoardman Robinson.[4] Burck's circle of friendships with his fellow students there, such asReginald Marsh, and the other artists, intellectuals, and political activists of 1930s New York, were to shape the course of his career. At the ASL he met and later married fellow art student Esther Kriger, in 1930.
Burck first worked professionally as an artist as a portrait painter, an occupation which he pursued full-time for one year.[4] He subsequently worked for a short time as a sign painter, his 1935 official biography claiming this decision was related to Burck's belief that this constituted "a more wholesome means of earning a living [than painting society portraits]."[4] Nevertheless, Burck continued his artistic practice, including portraiture.[5]
Burck joined the revolutionary movement in 1926, while still a teenager.[6] In 1927 or 1928, Burck began to draw occasional editorial cartoons for theCommunist Party's daily newspaper,The Daily Worker, as well as its monthly artistic-literary magazine,The New Masses. He went on staff atThe Daily Worker full-time as cartoonist in 1929.[3][4]
Burck's political cartoons were a regular feature in theDaily Worker's annual collection,Red Cartoons, published each year from 1926 to 1930.[6] His material was also gathered for a full-length book in 1935, a 248-page work entitledHunger and Revolt.[6]
Burck was close friends withAlexander Calder,Whittaker Chambers (husband of ASL classmateEsther Shemitz),[7]Langston Hughes,Meyer Schapiro, and many other figures in the New York art and progressive scene. During this period, he exhibited with other prominent artists, including:George Grosz,José Clemente Orozco,Diego Rivera,Reginald Marsh,Jean Charlot,Thomas Hart Benton,Hugo Gellert,William Gropper,David Alfaro Siqueiros,Julio Castellanos,John Flannagan (sculptor), andLouis Lozowick.[8]
In 1931, Burck was a founding Director of the "New York Suitcase Theater", along with playwright Paul Peters, poet Langston Hughes, and writer Whittaker Chambers.[9] Burck's work was exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art's FirstBiennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture, Watercolors and Prints, which opened in December, 1933.[10]
Evidence presented to theDies Committee lists Burck in May 1933 as a contributing editor (withHenri Barbusse, Cyril Briggs, Whittaker Chambers,Robert W. Dunn,Maxim Gorky,Harry Gannes,Grace Hutchins,Robert Minor among others) ofLabor Defender, the monthly magazine ofInternational Labor Defense, the American Communist Party's legal defense organization.[11] He also contributed work to the official organ of the party's social and fraternal organization, theInternational Workers Order.[11]
In 1934, "The American Scene No. 1: A Comment upon American Life by America's Leading Artists" was published, a portfolio of six lithographs by Burck and his colleagues,George Biddle,Adolf Dehn, George Grosz, Reginald Marsh, and José Clemente Orozco.[12]
Burck was an accomplishedmuralist and exhibited groups of murals along withEdward Laning in the gallery of the Art Students League.[13] Burck was commissioned by the Soviet travel agency,Intourist, to create a five-panel mural for its New York offices, depicting the construction of large-scale industry in the Soviet Union.[13] A New York Times review of studies for the murals stated, "Mr. Burck has arranged his figures with uncommon skill, achieving a pattern of splendidly organized vitality."[14] Plans were changed however and the panels were shipped to Moscow for display at the Museum of Modern Western Art prior to being installed in Intourist's Moscow office.[13] This was a period in which the so-called "Cult of Personality" around Soviet leaderJoseph Stalin was in full swing. While adapting the murals for the new location, Burck took umbrage to the Soviet government's insistence that he modify the content of his work to glorify Stalin. The couple returned without completing the mural.[15] This episode marked the end of Burck's connection with the Communist movement.
After returning from the USSR in 1937, Burck went to work as an editorial cartoonist for theSt. Louis Post Dispatch, before moving to theChicago Daily Times in 1938. Burck's incisive and biting style led to his daily cartoons beingsyndicated byField Newspaper Syndicate ofField Enterprises in more than 200 newspapers across the United States. Burck's signature style, with India ink with brush, grease pencil, or lithograph crayon, was soon adopted byBill Mauldin and most other editorial cartoonists of the 1940s and 1950s.[16]
Burck won thePulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning while at theChicago Daily Times in 1941 for a cartoon titled,If I Should Die Before I Wake.[5] In 1942, he received the inauguralSociety of Professional Journalists prize for editorial cartooning, theSigma Delta Chi Award.[2]
Burck's continued style and criticism through cartooning of politicians, hypocrisy, and social injustice left him an open target during theSecond Red Scare of the 1950s. SenatorJoseph McCarthy and theHouse Un-American Activities Committee investigated his early, radical associations. In 1953, they attempted to have the bohemian Burck (who had neglected to formalize his US citizenship)deported.[15] The Government claimed that Burck had joined the Communist Party in 1934 and remained a member at least through 1936.[15] Burck denied ever joining the Party, claiming membership had been pressed on him by his employer, theDaily Worker.[15] Further, witness for the government,Paul Crouch, testified in Burck's deportation hearing that he had often seen him at Communist Party meetings, yet Crouch failed to correctly identify Burck at that hearing[17] and was subsequently revealed to be a serial perjurer.[18]
Burck's defense was able to demonstrate "a long record of anti-communism... [was] exemplified in his political cartoons."[19] Charges were eventually dropped after a sustained legal defense funded personally by the publisher of theChicago Sun-Times,Marshall Field III.[19] The deportation order was formally vacated by an act of theUnited States Congress in April 1957.[20]
Burck's syndications dropped drastically because of the government case, but he continued to produce daily editorial cartoons for theChicago Sun-Times, successor to theChicago Daily Times, over a 44-year career.
A long-time member of theCliff Dwellers Club in Chicago, Burck received the 1971 Merit Award "for distinguished service to the arts in Chicago."
Burck's final published editorial cartoon appeared in theChicago Sun-Times on February 23, 1982.[21] Over the course of his career he was responsible for drawing over 10,000 editorial cartoons.[2]
In 1930, Burck married Esther Kriger, a fellow artist; they had two children.[2]
Jacob Burck died on May 11, 1982, at the age of 75, of injuries sustained in a fire in his home caused by a smoldering cigarette.[21] He was preceded in death by his wife (1975) and survived by children[2]Joseph M. Burck (senior designer atMarvin Glass and Associates) and Conrad Burck, an art dealer who showed, among others,Egon Weiner,[22]William Christoffersen[23] andFrancisco Farreras.[citation needed]
Burck was a prominent painter and sculptor through the 1960s and 1970s.[24]
Burck's original works were collected by several presidents of the United States includingHarry S Truman andRichard Nixon. Burck's work is also in the permanent collections of theMuseum of Modern Art,[25] TheSmithsonian Institution, TheNational Gallery of Art,[26]The Art Institute of Chicago, theWhitney Museum of American Art,[27] thePhiladelphia Museum of Art,[28] theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston,[29] theCleveland Museum of Art,[30] theBaltimore Museum of Art, and theUniversity of Michigan Museum of Art.[31]
His evocative portrait ofHugh Hefner, the smoke from Hef's pipe forming a group of writhing bodies, hung in thePlayboy mansion in Chicago.[32][33]
His work is part of the "Capital and Labor" portion of theLibrary of Congress online exhibitLife of the People: Realist Prints and Drawings from the Ben and Beatrice Goldstein Collection, 1912–1948.[34]
According to art historian Andrew Hemingway, "Burck was singled out for special treatment in 1935 when theDaily Worker published a 250-page volume of his cartoons under the titleHunger and Revolt. The book also contained 11 essays by prominent people includingJohn Strachey andHenri Barbusse.[3][4]
(In addition, Hemingway notes, "Within the John Reed Club Burck had a reputation as a formidable polemicist who was widely read in the 'history and theory of art.' His occasional pieces in theDaily Worker certainly show him as a capable writer, and in 1935 he published an article "For Proletarian Art" as part of a debate in theAmerican Mercury."[3])
Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning (1922–1950) | ||
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