Commie Pinko Comics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was doing some research On Burne Hogarth for the Illustration class and found out all this. I never owned his anatomy books but I have used them for sculpture reference because of the way he masses muscle form very cleanly, regardless of lighting direction, so it seems. His book Dynamic Anatomy is linked through Amazon and I would recommend it to art students interested in a serious study of human form.

What I also found out was that after his successful run in comics as the illustrator for Tarzan, he was instrumental in founding the School of Visual Arts in NYC with Silas Rhodes in 1947. SVA was set up as a trade school for returning veterans after WWII who were interested in entering the Advertising industry as artists and was budgeted largely by the G I Bill.

Just as the school was beginning, it ran into trouble that threatened its existence. In 1956 Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Hogarth were called before a Senate investigations subcommittee and asked whether they were members of the Communist Party. The committee was trying to determine whether Communist influence had tainted vocational schools that were supported largely by federal money.

The SVA is a very legit and accredited art school today largely because of the efforts of Hogarth and Silas. That whole story is at the NY Times obit of Mr. Rhodes here.

Hogarth enjoyed a long and successful career as a teacher and an artist who legitimized the comics trade as sequential art, at least in the eyes of the French. His website, with bio and a lot of images is here.