This Jewish artist fought Nazis with a paintbrush, when art like his still mattered |
I remember being freaked out, and fascinated, by my parents’ copy of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales. It featured these especially lurid illustrations; I can still see a little girl in a red coat, trapped in a spider’s web and tormented by lizards, bats and a huge black spider with a skull and crossbones on its head.
I didn’t know then that this was the work of Arthur Szyk, a Polish-born Jew who was famous for his vivid and grotesque caricatures of Nazi and Japanese leaders and his heroic depictions of American soldiers and the country’s founding fathers. His work appeared in popular magazines, part of a national effort to move hearts and minds in support of the war in Europe and the Pacific.
Szyk’s propaganda is at the center of an exhibit at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, “Art of Freedom: The Life & Work of Arthur Szyk.” It brings together more than 100 works, including cartoons, miniatures, illuminations, and political ephemera.
In its time Szyk’s wartime work was recognized as an effective means of stirring public sentiment. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt praised his contribution to the war effort, saying his art “fights the war against Hitlerism as truly as any of us who cannot actually be on the fighting fronts.”
Viewed through today’s lens, however, the show raises timely questions about how art functions as a political instrument. Can works of art still rally the masses to fight authoritarianism? Or is propaganda more likely to be used as an instrument of tyranny? Szyk drew mocking caricatures; what happens when politicians lean into their caricatures and call it a brand?
Arthur Szyk drew this self-portrait, featuring Hitler and his Axis allies, in 1944. (Gift of Bruce and Elaine Bosworth)
The exhibit also features Szyk’s work on Jewish themes, from idealized paintings of shtetl life to plates from his popular haggadah to the........