Jacob Burck (1907 - 1982) was an American painter, sculptor, and Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
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Biography
Early years
Jacob Burck was born January 10, 1907,[1] near Białystok, Poland, the son of ethnic Jewish parents, Abraham Burck and Rebecca Lev Burck.[2] The family emigrated from Poland, then part of the Russian empire, to the United States when Jacob was 7 years old.[3]
Burck lived in Cleveland until 1924.[4] He attended at the Cleveland School of Art on a scholarship after he was discovered making chalk drawings on a Cleveland sidewalk instead of attending elementary school.
Thereafter, Burck moved to New York City where he studied at the Art Students League of New York with Albert Sterner and Boardman Robinson.[4] It was there that he met fellow art student Esther Kriger, whom he married in 1933.[2]
Career
Burck first worked professionally as an artist as a portrait painter, an occupation which he pursued for one year.[4] He subsequently gave up portraiture and 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."[4]
In 1927 Burck began to draw occasional editorial cartoons for the Communist Party's daily newspaper, The Daily Worker, as well as its monthly artistic-literary magazine, The New Masses.[4] He was added to the staff of The Daily Worker as a full-time cartoonist in 1929.[4]
Burck was close friends with Alexander Calder, Whittaker Chambers, Langston Hughes, and many other figures in the New York art and progressive scene.
During the middle 1930s, Burck was a contributing editor of Labor Defender, the monthly magazine of the Communist Party's legal defense organization, International Labor Defense.[5] He also contributed work to the official organ of the party's social and fraternal organization, the International Workers Order.[6]
Burck joined the Communist Party in 1934 and remained a member at least through 1936.[3] Nearly two decades later, when threatened with deportation over his previous party membership by the US Department of Labor, Burck stoutly denied he was ever a Communist in spirit, claiming that he joined the party only as a matter of expediency at the direction of his employer.[3]
In 1935, Burck traveled to Moscow with Kriger and their young son to complete and install a mural commissioned by the Soviet government. This was a period in which the so-called "Cult of Personality" around Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was in full swing and Burck took umbrage on the Soviet government's insistence that he modify the content of his work so as to glorify Stalin. The couple returned without completing the mural.[3] This episode seems to have marked an end of Burck's connection with the Communist movement.
After returning from the USSR, Burck went to work as an editorial cartoonist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, before moving to the Chicago Times in 1938. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1941 for a cartoon titled, If I Should Die Before I Wake. Burck's incisive and biting style led to his daily cartoons being syndicated in over 200 newspapers across the United States. In 1942 Burck received the inaugural Society of Professional Journalists prize for editorial cartooning, the Sigma Delta Chi Award.[2]
Burck's criticism through his cartooning of politicians, hypocrisy, and social injustice, as well as his early radical associations drew the attention of anti-communists during the Second Red Scare of the 1950s. An investigation by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee led to an attempt in 1953 to have Burck, who had neglected to formalize his US citizenship, deported.[3] Charges were eventually dropped after a sustained legal defense funded personally by the publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, Marshall Field III.[7] Burck's deportation to communist Poland was ultimately staved off when the defense was able to satisfactorily demonstrate what Time magazine characterized as "a long record of anti-communism...exemplified in his political cartoons."[7] The deportation order was formally vacated by an act of the United States Congress in April 1957.[8]
While Burck's syndications were largely dropped during the McCarthy period, he nevertheless continued to produce daily editorial cartoons for the Chicago Sun-Times, successor to the Chicago Times, over a 44 year career.
Burck was also a prominent painter and sculptor throughout the 1960s and 1970s.[9] Burck's original works were collected by Richard Nixon and are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art[10] and the University of Michigan Museum of Art[11]. His evocative portrait of Hugh Hefner, the smoke from his pipe forming a group of writhing bodies, hung in the Playboy mansion in Chicago.[12]
Burck's final published editorial cartoon appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times on February 23, 1982.[13] Over the course of his career he was responsible for drawing over 10,000 editorial cartoons.[2]
Death and legacy
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.[13] He was preceded in death by his wife, Esther, who died in 1975, and survived by his children, Joseph and Conrad.[2]
Works
- Red Cartoons from the Daily Worker. With Fred Ellis. Sender Garlin, editor. New York: The Daily Worker, 1926.
- Hunger and Revolt: Cartoons. New York: The Daily Worker, 1935.
- Our 34th President: Ike's Campaign, Election and Inauguration in Historic Cartoons. Chicago: Chicago Sun-Times, 1953.
Footnotes
- ^ The book Who's Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners, by Elizabeth A. Brennan and Elizabeth C. Clarage, lists Burck's year of birth as 1904. His official biography in the 1935 collection, presumably proofread by Burck himself, specifically states he was born in 1907, however. This will be the date used here.
- ^ a b c d e Elizabeth A. Brennan and Elizabeth C. Clarage, Who's Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners. Westport, CT: Oryx Press, 1998; pg. 141.
- ^ a b c d e "Deportation Order," Time magazine, July 20, 1953.
- ^ a b c d e f Jacob Burck, Hunger and Revolt: Cartoons. New York: The Daily Worker, 1935; pg. 247.
- ^ US House of Representatives, Special Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Appendix — Part IX: Communist Front Organizations. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1944; pp. 842, 960.
- ^ HUAC, Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Appendix — Part IX: Communist Front Organizations, pg. 852.
- ^ a b "Friends and Elations," Time magazine, April 19, 1954.
- ^ Luther A. Huston, "Cartoonist Wins Deportation Bar: Congress Suspends Order Against Jacob Burck and 130 Others," New York Times, April 17, 1957, page 17.
- ^ List of 1970 Sculpture Exhibitions, Art Institute of Chicago.
- ^ "Jacob Burck," Cleveland Museum of Art.
- ^ Jacob Burck, "The Lord Provides," University of Michigan.
- ^ Jacob Burck, "Hef," Christie's, Sale 1325, Lot 52.
- ^ a b "Obituary: Jacob Burck, New York Times, May 13, 1982.
External links
- "If I Should Die Before I Wake." 1941 Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoon, accompanied by biographical information pulled from an earlier incarnation of this Wikipedia biography. Retrieved October 18, 2009.
- Index to Jacob Burck's Work on the Internet, Art Cyclopedia. Retrieved October 18, 2009.
- Jacob Burck Internet Archive at Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved October 19, 2009.
| Preceded by Edmund Duffy |
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning 1941 |
Succeeded by Herblock |
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