Dark laughter : satiric art of Oliver W. Harrington : from the Walter O. Evans collection of African-American art / edited with an introduction by M. Thomas Inge.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harrington, Oliver W. (Oliver Wendell), 1912-1995, author, illustrator.

Contributor:

Inge, M. Thomas, editor, author of introduction.

University Press of Mississippi, publisher.

Joanna Banks Collection of African American Books (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Harrington, Oliver W. (Oliver Wendell), 1912-1995--Themes, motives.

Harrington, Oliver W.

Evans, Walter O.

Harrington, Oliver W. (Oliver Wendell), 1912-1995.

African Americans--Caricatures and cartoons.

African Americans.

Evans, Walter O--Art collections.

Caricatures and cartoons--Private collections--United States.

Caricatures and cartoons.

Caricatures and cartoons--Private collections.

Art museums.

Themes, motives.

United States.

Penn Provenance:

Banks, Joanna (donor) (Banks Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xliii, 116 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 1993.

Summary:

It was none other than Langston Hughes who called Oliver Wendell Harrington America's greatest black cartoonist. Yet largely because he chose to live as an expatriate far from the American mainstream, he has been almost entirely overlooked by contemporary historians and scholars of African-American culture. Born in 1912 and a graduate of the Yale School of Fine Arts, he was a prolific contributor of humorous and editorial cartoons to the black press in the 1930s and 1940s, but he achieved fame for his creation of a cartoon panel called Dark Laughter, a satire of Harlem society and featuring Bootsie, a character in the tradition of the wise fool. Bootsie became widely known and loved wherever black newspapers appeared. For airing strong antiracist views Harrington was targeted during the McCarthy era, and in 1951 he was self-exiled in Paris. In 1961 he found himself trapped behind the Berlin Wall, but he chose to remain in East Germany. His powerful political cartoons were published in East German magazines and in the American Communist newspaper The Daily World. He became a favorite among students and intellectuals in the Eastern Bloc. In America he was mainly forgotten. Here, selected from the Walter O. Evans Collection of African-American Art, is an omnibus of Harrington's best cartoons from the past four decades. It highlights his exceptional talent, his potent impact with editorial comment and social criticism, and his deserving of acclaim in his native land.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages xli-xliii).

Local Notes:

Kislak Center Banks Collection copy presented to the Penn Libraries in 2018 by Joanna Banks.

Banks Collection copy retains dust jacket. Article from Ebony on racially aware black Cartoonists laid in.

ISBN:

0878056564

OCLC:

28148161