(John Held Junior was an illustrator during the Jazz Age. ...)
John Held Junior was an illustrator during the Jazz Age. He did covers for many leading magazines. This is a collection of his engravings and wood cuts, some of them "faux woodcuts" as he calls them. They have a similarity to the Russian folk art prints called lyubki.
(Although increasingly appreciated in fine art and stamp c...)
Although increasingly appreciated in fine art and stamp collecting circles, artist postage stamps, or artistamps, are more likely to be traded between the people who create them than they are to be exhibited in commercial art galleries or read about in philatelic journals. Artistamps are part and parcel of the grassroots network known as Mail Art, an alternative art of creative long-distance communication that intuited the demand for cross-cultural exchange long before the Internet. Although seemingly rigid, the postage stamp format allows flexible approaches in painting, watercolor, offset, photography, photocopy, rubber-stamping, engraving, digitization and sculpture.
This comprehensive bibliography lists nearly 2,200 sources (from 36 countries) of information on mail art from books, magazines, newspapers, and catalog essays between 1955 and 1989.
(First edition bound in red cloth with black lettering & d...)
First edition bound in red cloth with black lettering & design on front board. 117 illustrations,38 in color. 4to size, 144pp. A VG copy in dj.Book has some rubbing to the bottom edge of the boards and to the head of the spine.Inside is tight, unmarked. In VG dj that has some tiny edge tears and a small chip on the spine.
John Held Jr. was an American cartoonist, artist and writer. He was a well-known magazine illustrators of the 1920s best known for his uniquely styled cartoons which depicted people dancing, driving, and engaging in other popular activities of the era.
Background
John Held Jr. was born on January 10, 1889 in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, to Annie Evans and John Held, who met at a church social. His father was born in Geneva, Switzerland to Jacques Held, a watchmaker, and was noticed by Mormon educator John R. Park who was scouting Europe for talented young people. He adopted Held Sr. and brought him back to Salt Lake City. He decide not to pursue a career as an educator like his mentor, but instead pursued a diverse career in copperplate engraving, manufacturing fountain pens, and operating a stationary shop. During a period of time, he privately developed his musical abilities on the cornet and organized Held's Band, which performed at all major Utah events for about fifty years. John Held Sr. contributed illustrations to the 1888 The Story of the Book of Mormon. Annie Evans, his mother, acted in the local theater. Held's maternal grandfather, James Evans, was an English convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who traveled to Salt Lake City with the Mormon handcart pioneers.
Education
Thriving in a home where the arts were appreciated and encouraged, Held showed a talent for the arts at a young age. He learned woodcutting and engraving from his father, and sold a drawing to a local newspaper at only nine years old. The wood block was his preferred medium in his youth and he would return to it several times throughout his career.
Career
Held began to draw at an early age: he sold his first cartoon to the old Life magazine in 1904 and was employed as sports cartoonist for the Salt Lake City Tribune a year later. He was largely self-taught except for some art instruction from sculptor Mahonri Young, a grandson of Brigham Young.
In 1912 he left for New York City where he designed display cards for the Collier Street Railway Advertising Company and produced advertisements for Wanamaker's department store. Most of his drawings were made in pen and ink; but he also made linoleum block prints, having used that medium as early as 1905. His early work was free and sketchy, in the manner of the day. By 1915 Held had restricted himself to line, which he used in a mannered and sophisticated fashion, the forms stylized and reduced to simple motifs. For instance, the eyes, nose, and mouth are little more than dots. The drawings were usually heightened and embellished with simple washes of tone. The theme of his works was lighthearted commentary on contemporary manners.
During World War I, Held was a cartographer and artist for U. S. Naval Intelligence. He was sent to Central America to keep track of German submarine activities, and there he had sufficient time to develop his drawing style as well as study Mayan art. After the war Held began to make the drawings that brought him fame. Carl J. Weinhardt describes Held's favorite subject as ". .. the Flapper, alias Betty Co-ed, escorted by Joe College in a coonskin coat to Midwestern U's big game, there to drink moon through straws from a hip flask, and thereafter to wrestle on the Zeke house porch while couples just like them danced to 'Fascinatin' Rhythm' inside. "
Held found a ready market for his commentary on "flaming youth" in the New Yorker, Judge, Life, Smart Set, Liberty, Vanity Fair, College Humor, and Harper's Bazaar. His flapper also was featured in a syndicated cartoon "Margy. " His figures were so characteristically stylized as to be recognized at once. His typical young man had a spherical head, brilliantined patent-leather hair, dots for eyes, a small checklike wedge of a nose, a stick of a neck, and enormous feet and hands. He dressed elegantly. Held's characteristic young lady was given kinder treatment. She usually had a "boyish bob, " a turned-up nose, and often a winsome, if vacant, expression. She was very thin and long-legged, sported perilously high heels, and, like her beau, was very conscious of dress. Held is often compared with F. Scott Fitzgerald, but he had none of Fitzgerald's tragic overtones and melancholy. He did, however, illustrate Fitzgerald's Tales of the Jazz Age and a number of other books.
For Harold Ross, the editor of the New Yorker, Held did a series of drawings on the foibles of the Gay Nineties, and another of satirical maps, such as the United States as it exists in the mind of a proper Bostonian or Manhattan as it is known to a bon vivant. He also made water colors that Weinhardt claims "must have influenced Disney"; landscapes and wash drawings of animals and figures; and several bronzes, mostly of horses. These he did largely for his own satisfaction and in a style that was more conventional than his commercial products. "Serious art, " he told a reporter, "is my vice. "
As a result of the Great Depression, he lost a great deal of money, some of it to Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish match king. Held continued to write and draw, turning out The Saga of Frankie and Johnny (1930), Grim Youth (1930), The Flesh Is Weak (1931), Women Are Necessary (1931), The Works of John Held, Jr. (1932), A Bowl of Cherries (1933), and Crosstown (1934).
Held designed the sets for a comedy revue, Hellzapoppin, in 1937; two years later he exhibited his bronzes at the Bland Gallery in New York City. In 1940 he was artist-in-residence at Harvard in February and then at the University of Georgia in September.
During World War II he was a civilian employee of the Army Signal Corps, working on radar apparatus. Held's Jazz Age cuties disappeared from the American scene during the Great Depression, but in the 1950's they enjoyed a revival. His art has continued to grow in esteem, with major exhibitions in Indianapolis (1967) and at the Rhode Island School of Design (1968), and a touring show set up by the Smithsonian Institution (1969-1972). He had a one-man show at the Graham Gallery in New York City (1976).
In 1943 Held purchased a small farm in Belmar, New Jersey. In 1956 he suffered a mild stroke that slowed the pace of his work, but he completed a series of drawings on the flapper theme before his death in Belmar, New Jersey.
Achievements
John Held has been listed as a notable author, artist by Marquis Who's Who.
In 1926 Held was a Democratic candidate for Congress in Connecticut but failed to campaign and, much to his relief, lost.
Personality
Held was a colorful man. Like the characters he made famous, he dressed well. He was tall, dark, handsome, and lavishly tattooed with anchors, roses, girls, and eagles.
Interests
Held liked to tap-dance, and he raised saddle horses on his Connecticut farm.
Connections
In 1910 Held married Myrtle Jennings, the society editor of the Tribune.
In 1918 he married Ada "Johnny" Johnson. In 1927 he adopted three children.
He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1931 and was divorced.
He married Gladys Moore on November 11, 1931; they had one child but were divorced in 1942.
On January 16, 1942, he married Margaret Schuyler Janes; they had no children.
