fiona dean's holler in, and cartoonist pat baggily, talk about the life and work, of harper's weekly political cartoonist, thomas nast. they talk about the symbols he popularized, like the democratic stomping donkey, santa claus, and the republican debate elephant. the massachusetts historical event hosted this event and provided the video. >> >> the program tonight is very much directly related to our online exhibition and i hope you will all check out and if you've not done so already it's a great show and incredibly relevant these days. this was planned to be a physical show and as a part of

that physical show we had intended to dedicate one room to the father of modern political cartoons that's thomas nast but we did build an online exhibition which explores the life of thomas nast. many of the depictions were done by local artists. i hope you check it out if you're interested in this program. that brings us to this evening's program, which will include fiona deans halloran and pat baggily. they will be speaking on a life of thomas nast. he created or popularized the democratic donkey, and the republic elephant, and the modern depictions of santa

claus. well he helped with culture, he sometimes had certain depictions of african americans. this will help us better understand nast and his legacy. pat baggily he is the longest full-time employed cartoonist in america. she has created over. cartoons he has won dozens of awards and including being a finalist for the culture prize. and was just nominated best kurt cartoons of the year. and we will have q&as at the end of our program but

we encourage everyone to use the function at the bottom of their screen and you can actually type in questions anytime during the program as it's relevant to the topic that we're discussing. so without further ado, i will encourage fiona deans halloran you to join us. >> well what we've asked to do is begin by talking about thomas nast both generally and in specific terms. so we have some images of him, beginning with a picture of himself of and this is my favorite picture of thomas nast. it's because i think he looks particularly handsome in this picture, and he was a person who is very humble in the sense that he was often self deprecating, but he was proud of his talent. and

happy with the celebrity that he earned in the 19th century. and you see that in this picture. how much fun he is having. he was with his friend who was a photographer, and i used to play dress up and take pictures. that's what happened here, he put on this blanket and they took these in the studios in new york. and thomas nast was an immigrant to united states. he arrived in new york at the age of six, and that was an 1846, and he came with his mother and his sister and he left his native bavaria, his father was outspoken politically. and that turned out to be a family trait as it happen. and they had to leave in the anticipation of the revolution. and nast at his mother and sister made a life for themselves in lower manhattan. and he transformed himself, in the course of ten

years or so, after his arrival in the united states. and from really being a lost little boy, to really a talented artist. he did not love school and was not an academic person. he was basically on the streets every day. he stopped going to school and he did things like go to art galleries and talk the owners into letting him a draw when he's on the paintings. collect admissions. eventually at 15 he managed to get a professional position with a very precarious illustrative newspaper, drawing and also working in the engraving room. from there, he want to several different places to work. ultimately landing would be his primary employer harper's weekly. the most widely read, the most popular newspaper of the time. harper's weekly had an incredible circulation. as high as 300,000 copies, because

they were cast from hand to hand and posted in public places like pubs, many many more people saw it. it was really a impressively widely read newspaper slash magazine. he became over the course of a couple of decades an anchor in that institution. the face of that institution in some ways. he didn't write for it, but his cartoons were what everybody knew, and they helped to shape the politics of the newspaper, and the politics of those decades, and beginning during the civil war era but really significantly in its aftermath between about 1868, and the early 1880s. thomas nast was a visual voice if that is not fixing too many modes of communication for republican politics in the united states, and for all kinds of issues, important issues, relating reconstruction, related to electoral politics, social

change, and he pioneered a bunch of things about american political cartooning. not, least the editorial and dependent of political cartoonists which is something that pat and i will talk about later. i will emphasize certain things about him but i think are particularly important for understanding his position relative to voting. but first i want to hand it over to pat because he also wants to make some remarks, because he was the father of american political cartooning. not the first american political cartoonist to be influential in the united states but the first to make a life out of it and to create a world where the consumption of political cartoons as a form of politics. as a form of politics and also as a form of visual entertainment especially of satire so pat has influential, widely read appreciated cartoonist.

this is a person against whom path is in some ways and i look at all times. so pat why don't you errol take it away and talk for a little while and then i will come back? >> thanks fiona. you're absolutely right about his centrally to the american cartooning. you have to kind of understand what the media was like back then. back, then media, magazines, sorry newspapers and magazines were the media. they were everything. and newspapers around the country, every city in the states had three, four, five newspapers. usually they were projecting some political view. all the newspapers also had at least two or three cartoonists. you couldn't do photographs in the paper you

had to have someone illustrate them. so being a cartoonist back then was a viable thing today. today in america, i am competing with the internet, facebook, with twitter, and all the memes going around. back then they owned all of it. he was huge. he was a rock star back. then everyone knew who he was. let's go. this is why he is so influential. this is why the images are so influential. let's go to the first picture. santa claus, you recognize santa claus, before him said clause could be skinny, tall, many versions of such a clause. he came from germany and he brought his own version of

santa claus to america. this is the version of santa claus we recognize today. that and jolly. there's another thing that he did politically so we can recognize things. i could tell from the way that he was cartooning that he was trying to figure it out but he gave us the legacy of the elephant and the donkey. so can we go to the next cartoon? there you see the elephant in the republican boat. there is a donkey wearing a lions mane. that is the democratic party. then there are all of these other animals that represent different things but he's still trying to work out, i can definitely relate to me what he is doing here. how about the next one? there you see. that is not lincoln in the background. fiona, do you

member what that is? sure it's. shirts. a republican. it says on the elephant pretty much let sleeping dogs lie. their economic plan seems to be okay. the guy in the foreground, thomas, he is trying to keep the democrats from doing something really economically dame. pulling it back off from the cliff. let's go to the next one. and here is an election where republicans win, but they get beat up over the process. so he institutionalize is the images of the elephant being the republicans, donkeys been democrats. we still use it today. for instance, next cartoon. this is my cartoon. this is about the amy coney

barrett confirmation. the democrats saying that amy coney barrett, the elephant says, what catholic? listen to this atheist bigot smear a woman for her fate. the donkey says no. now you are calling me a liar? look at me being persecuted. so it is a handy shorthand to use when you are doing cartoons. let's look at the last one. this is kind of personal. i am here in utah. salt lake city, utah. one of the things that you have to know about him is that he was kind of anti catholic. so here you see the

capitol dome. on it is written religious liberty is guaranteed, but can we allow foreign reptiles to crawl all over us? u.s.. on the left you see this crocodile going up the capitol dome. but if you look at it sideways the mouth of the crocodile is kind of like the hoax hat. and on the right side, this is -- is the shell of the turtle. that is the mormon church. this is kind of curious in a few ways. for instance, why are you calling the mormon church a foreign reptile? that is because back in the, day back in the day when he was doing these cartoons, the mormon church was mostly made up of immigrants. i thought about making a turtle a representative of mormon utah

ends but it didn't quite work. we will have more to say about nast and his view of the catholic church later on. that is the last little bit that i've got. like i, said he worked with the images and was developing them all of the time, some of it was stuck, like seneca is stuck. the donkey and elephant are definitely stuck. catholics being represented by a crocodile, and mormons being represented by a turtle did not quite stick. okay back to you. >> one of the things that the nhs is at the moment and given their planning process has clearly been interested in for quite some time is the question of voting. what i am really thankful to them for tonight is the opportunity to talk about

this framework, because people were fascinated by nast, but they are often fascinated by certain components of masks work. i think we are all interested in santa at certain times of the year because that ethnography is all around us in the country and his contribution to it is essential. but voting, especially voting that is heavily fraught with significant consequences, that is something that's more iterative, it's sometimes more important to, us other times we take a breather from thinking of it, that was an essential component of his thinking about american citizenship. about what it meant to be part of a nation. how decisions are made, we are power. lies it's true about nast as a celebrity, he went to washington in the 18 seventies which was a important

time for him. he was amazed himself. he wrote a letters back to his wife him i'm famous. everywhere i go people want to shake my hand. everywhere i go to put me decide i. of course that's what it was. he was in a party, he threatened him saying that if you do not stop drawing me i'm going to call up the harper brothers and they will fire you. mask being who he, was cartoonists tend to be pugnacious, it's not a good idea to start a fight with one of, them he said try me, bring it. sure enough when the question was litigated in a bunch of letters between asked and nasty editor, curtis, who had a lot of coffee dates with

senators, his boss, fletcher, the owner and operator, of -- we are not in the business of making senators happy, if the senators unhappy than that i guess that is his problem so nast was vindicated in this moment, but he said openly, in conversations that he had for a while he engaged in a popular form of lecture, in the circuit, where people who were prominent would tour the country giving talks. and given that there was not a unto in the 19, century in the winter, time the season for these kinds of talks, if those of you who are familiar with a should top a series, folks like nast would go to a lecture circuit, -- in his case he would do chalk talks were there would be a chalkboard and

he would draw while he talked. and he had a prepared set of remarks that he gave which he was extremely anxious about. he wrote all kinds of letters back to his wife where he hated it, he thought was horrible, he would do anything not to do, it could he tell them he was sick and wants to go home? one thing that he said and we have the remarks. they survived. one of the things that he says is that he talks about how an exhibition of characters that he went to and how he went around to people listening on the characters and how unhappy made. people other loved other peoples characters. they

thought it was hilarious. they got to themselves in the set of images and suddenly it was not funny at all and how dare they. this is the world that he lived in in which he produced a artistic product, a political commentary that people loved, that they consumed widely, that they celebrated him for. but he also antagonized a ton of people. and so for every fanny also had a enemy. and it is also true with what pat said, shorthand, images which we are seeing on the screen, one of the things that political cartoonists do which we talked about later is they employ or integrate images that we recognize instantly, one of the benefits -- political language is that you look at the image and -- for instance if we were to go back to the image to

images ago with the republican elephant. this image. the point that nast was making here and he quotes as the caption one more such fight and i will be done the point that he is making is that sometimes a victory is so hard-fought, so hard won that it's not worth it. that you have harmed yourself by what it took to win. that was his view in this case. so one of the things that he is using here is a symbol that everyone who was his fan will recognize, of the republican party, and then he has created an image in which you understand without having to think about. without having to interpret what you're seeing. the party is in trouble. but the party may have won, but that victory is a problem for the future. so the value of shorthand for cartoonists, he's now on was then, that the viewer can get

the joke, just like that. and that is desirable. it is what makes political cartooning entertaining and preferable for some folks, or in some circumstances to reading an editorial. which is a longer, it requires more focused, where cartoons can catch your attention, amuse you and provoke you, much more quickly. it does that in part because it knows, that you will recognize some of these symbols. i want to focus on highlight because of the excellent online exhibit, in which there is a whole section, in the exhibit that talks about how cartoonists work. what they do. and it includes the discussion of the creation of symbols. and the way that symbols are used in cartooning. if you're your used to if you are interested in cartooning, this has a section for you on the line. and things are important to know about

nast when it comes to motive. i do have a couple of images to show you. there are also images that are in the exhibit, that i think are important. i want to start by talking about voting as essential to citizenship. this is a provocative image of nast. so you can have a chance to look at this, where we can look >> no this is good this is good anne at something else. it works. >> i find this image fascinating. but the first thing i want to talk about, is how central nast thought that voting was central to citizenship. so online there is a high quality image, and it's like show i trust these men and not that man. this is a cartoon from after the civil war, in which nast actually says, why are we allowing confederates, particularly confederate leaders, generals and people like jefferson davis, why would we welcome those people back into full citizenship including

voting rights. so he's commenting on policy under johnson. when we have not, welcomed to full citizenship, which means voting rights, black veterans. shall i trust these men? who have confederate leadership, coming and asking for forgiveness, but the companion panel on the other side, showed her gesturing to, standing next to her a black veteran, who had lost a leg. in the image is a ballot box. and that's one of the core components of cartoon representation. and that is a good example of how nast viewed voting. and from his point of view, you could not be equal within the united states, if you are not free to vote. so he repeatedly created cartoons, in which the right to vote, was the right to be american. so the second one, which i think

we see here. and then i'll come back to this in a later one too, is that nast always emphasize that voting was dangerous. he understood that to vote, was to put yourself in the center of the action. because of that, to vote meant that you were vulnerable to the opposition, to other americans, and that opposition might not be a ballot box, that might be deadly. so one of the things you see here, is a portrayal by him, of a man who is ready and able to defend his right to vote. this is part of a series of cartoons, that are about the effort to suppress the vote a black man. particularly black veterans during reconstruction. and you'll see this in the next one, he shows a black man who has been murdered, to prevent his voting. you can see that here. this is called one vote less. and the caption and the materials that are written into

the cartoon, are drawn from statements in southern newspapers. so is the case here with the richmond whig. so he is shocked, not only by the violence against black voters, in the former confederacy, but by the glee in which that violence was grounded in some publications in those states. he often simultaneously, attack the violence itself and defend by extension, the black voter. and also attack the idea that this was desirable. that this was the way that the white population were going to ensure their own right to vote, was by suppressing the black vote. if we return to the previous slide, you can see is there are many cartoons by nast, in which we see black voters, and i found these two who have suffered. so in the online exhibit, there are patients on a monument, which shows a black veteran on the top of the monument, and

the top of the monument itself is vote is his quotes by southern leaders. and this is a very different cartoon. one of the things i find compelling about it, is that nast his placement of this man, right at the center. he has made some artistic choices, that emphasize the potential violence in this image. the man looks directly at us. his eyes are wide open. his finger is on the caulk of the gun. he is ready to use that weapon. and he is surrounded by the results of this racist violence. one of the things he is saying openly here, and he was not always the straightforward, is that there's only so much violence that anyone will tolerate, before they defend themselves. and that white americans, need

to understand that voting was such a central component of american identity, that black men would be moved to defend it. when they did, the fault in that, the source of that violence, would not lie with them, but with what had been done to them. and i want to emphasize, that he believed in the centrality of voting for citizenship, but he knew and he always knew, that voting was something that could come with a price. that voting was something that could put you in the sights of people who don't want you to participate. and thirdly, we have to move on and this image is the complicated part of that, the fact that nast himself he held racist views. one of things about him that is complicated, not only was he anti-catholic, and anti irish, that sometimes went together and sometimes could be separated, but he was also not a believer in black equality.

so he believed deeply, in the right of black americans, black men to vote, but he did not support women voting in general. as and that any of the other things that women were asking for the 19th century. so he would sometimes, he was a passionate defender of the rights of black americans, to be equals in terms of citizenship, and to be equal socially to own land, and to have families, but there are other instances, in which we asked which nast portrayed black voters as easily led by the republican party, and as sometimes people who are not yet fit for full citizenship including voting. so it is a balance. it's a balance in his work, and parts of his work which were groundbreaking for

his time, in their defense of equality and justice, and there's parts of his work, which played to his own and others racism at the time. the last thing i will point out, is that the online exhibit, talks about how voting was vulnerable to corruption. and that was important to nast as well. he was opposed to corruption in general, especially in cities. like new york, where he lived for many years. then he moved to new jersey. but he worked in new york so he was interested in new york politics. he was well aware, of many of the concerns about voting, and that dishonesty which animated political discourse at the time, and continues to be a concern for us today, that was a central part. he knew and not only could you prevent people from voting, a form of corruption in voting, but also you could manipulate systems of voting. and his position was that all corruption in politics was a problem. he was black and white in his thinking in that

regard. and that voting for him had a sacred nature. it was a sacred nature. and voting it was at the top of the sins committed in the course of political correction. those are the four things i think the most important, and they connect meaningfully, to what the mhs has done online. and pat and i were planning for a while to talk with each other, but cartooning in politics, and then to entertain questions. so if i could ask our moderator, if they can take the screen down, and pat and i can be visible, if that's okay with everybody else? >> hi. >> hi. >> so pat, one of the things i wanted to ask you about, is that throughout his career as you know, thomas nast, he was pressured constantly, by people to back off. and he constantly received well suggestions. >>

oh yes. >> yeah so i am curious, since you are such a successful cartoonist and have been for so long, how does that balance work for you? what do you think of thomas nast's efforts? >> nothing has changed. i publisher has you know he is part of the fabric of the community in utah. and he has received a lot of pressure to rein me in. i have to say, he has done this right. he said i can't. i can't rein him in. and he is giving me a lot of liberty to do what you need to do to be successful, to be a cartoonist. when you mentioned that, thomas nast got a lot of suggestions, you know almost every single day somebody says do this cartoon, and you don't

even have to pay me okay. but, usually i respond to it useful cartoons but subject for cartoons. if somebody sends in an email, and says you should address this issue, i will think about it. you know it's like you may have something they're absolutely. as >> i think it's your turn to ask a question? >> okay i have to ask a question? >> okay as thomas nast, moved to new jersey, correct? >> yes. >> this is got to be a good 25 or 30 years ago. and when i went to visit new jersey, they took me to the thomas nast mansion, and it was for sale at the time. and it wasn't that expensive. it was a big house, but it was sort of rundown. and i thought, you

know i could maybe marshall resources, because it wasn't that much. and the economy at the time was not that great. but i was kind of curious, whatever happened to the mansion? do you know? >> well it's still there, and it's in morristown. i'm looking at my book, for a list of illustrations. because it is still there, and it is a private home. but you can look at it. there is a museum in a home, which contains many objects related to him. but as i understand it, it is not the same house. i have a photograph of the house in my book. good i'm seeing if i could find it. and he loved that house. he and his wife oh there we go, so gotta love technology. there is the house. >> there you go. >> perfectly nice house, he and his wife move there because he

said, he had been threatened which his story was, and it's hard to know how much this story was an exaggeration and how much of it was absolutely true. but his story was that he noticed some big hulking folks lurking outside of their house in harlem. which was the village at the time. and cook, he was aware that that was probably intimidation. and then a lawyer came 40, and offered him a great deal of money, for him to go on vacation to europe, for a year or two. which he declined. then, essentially said to him, if you will not take this offer, to go on vacation, then things will not be good for you. and he was the type of person, to respond to that by working twice as hard.

and hitting twice as hard. but he had a wife, and a small child, and he was not inclined to put them in a position to be afraid. so they moved to morristown. a few months later, they bought that house and then he spent the next couple of decades, fancying it up. i don't mean fixing it up, i mean doing things like going to the centennial in 1876, and buying as far as i can tell everything in sight i mean he thought.. he bought a stair rail. he bought hey fans. i didn't know you could just buy offense, but he did. and you can see what the house would have been like if you can see the backgrounds. the backgrounds were drawn from his own home, so when you see the christmas decorations where there is a mantle and all the stuff that is his house. also there is archival collections in a couple of places. there

are auction lists. when he died, there were auctions. you get a sense of what that would have looked like because there are whole categories for suits of armor, and daggers, and you, know, silver cups. so he filled it with interesting things but he would like. >> he was a shopper. >> yeah. then he used those things as props. >> many people are aware that the women in his cartoons are almost always his wife, sally, who he would draw. then he had various props in the house. so if you go into his house others a suit of armor, it was in his house. he liked to surround himself with interesting looking things. the house is still there. as far as one can tell it looks like it has been

picked up so i think you missed your moment. >> best of all. you're talking about sally. i think i remember it from your book. she was very elegant, and he was kind of short and dumpy. is that right? >> he was. when they first were dating in 1860, 1861, there's a series of letters that survived between them where they referred to him as little piggy. and when they were on honeymoon they went to niagara falls, the hot thing for middle class people to do at the time. at that point her family was gone so they wrote to her mother, she wrote the letter because her handwriting was elegant whereas his handwriting was atrocious and his spelling was terrible. >> he's a cartoonist. >> that is true. but also when he arrived at age six, he spoke german but

didn't read or write because he was too young. he went to school and everyone spoke english and he can understand. he had a couple of bad experiences were for example he got spanked because another kid played a trick on him. he just hated school. and so his education was very rich, in the sense that they read shakespeare and the newspaper every day, it was very shallow in a sense that he had never been in a formal education environment holding a pencil, learning to spell, so she wrote the letters. in the honeymoon letters, she's writing all the, stuff he's drawing all the pictures, this is in the morristown library, you can see it. she is drawing all the pictures and in the pictures she is tall and slender and elegant and he is truly a little troll. if you are familiar with in peanuts, the kid who always has a cloud of dirt around him. that is the

way he drew himself. it feels that self deprecating in that regard, if you look at photographs of him, he was beautifully dressed, beautifully groomed, quite a elegant man. >> the whole self-deprecation thing appeals, >> you inflict on other people but you have to accept that can come back on you as well. i remember doing a cartoon where we have two newspapers in salt lake city. the church paper, and the salt lake tribune which i work for. this was years ago, something happened and i thought if this was the desert news i would do the cartoon, but this happened to us, so what should i do? i go what is fair for the goose is fair for the gander. i did the cartoon. i give it to my editors. we published it. this is one of the things about but career.

when i say that he fought for editorial independence would i meant was that he did not just fight the external public, people like karl, he had to fight inside of harper's weekly because his editor thought that was the editor wrote about politics and -- should go together. there should be no fight between the two of them. given that the two of them disagreed and were profoundly different men there was no chance of that. as long as harper loved, fletcher protected nast and he was free to do what he wanted. unfortunately, his death coincided with the crisis of the election of 1876, given that the exhibit was about voting, one of the things that happened to nest was that right at the moment when the united states was up to its eyeballs in a controversy about who had won the presidential election, where there had been dishonest

voting, alleged in several states and it seems that there was likely that there was massive fraud in these states, my home state of south carolina being one of them. this unresolved question for months about who should be president next. at that precise moment, thomas nast effectively lost his protector and so he wanted to continue fighting. particularly, he wanted to continue fighting for the rights of black americans in what was now the redemption south. the white democrats had taken back state democrat, ending reconstruction, ending efforts to help freed people, ending efforts to protect voting with federal soldiers, and it looked like that was headed for a total dismantling of the agenda of reconstruction. and nast saw that and he thought it was tragic. he wanted to stop it but george william criticism

editor took the position that was taken by many members of the intellectual elite and social elite of the northeast at that time that they had basically tried to intervene, and it had been a failure, and that it was time to turn their attention to something else. nast didn't want to do it and they forced him to shut up. the reason why they were able to do it is because the person who had been the protective camp for nast was gone. so it was kind of tragic because that was the moment of all of the moment for the united states needed him,. he was famous for bringing down the tweed ring, but the tweet rang was only in new york city. this was a national outlets as . electoral crisis, and in that moment one of the most powerful voices in american politics was basically silenced because an internal dispute at his newspaper over whether or not he should be able to say what he thought did not go his way.

>> so tweed drew for her powers, he drew for other outlets as well. >> nast, yes. he drew for harper's. he had a contract with them annually. it was extremely lucrative. he made a ton of money. but he was allowed to work elsewhere, not only as a cartoonist but in other ways. for example in the chalk talks, he made like eight times as much money in a season doing chalk talks as he got from harper's, even though the contract got with harper's was really lucrative. he also illustrated for lots and lots of almanacs and calendars, christmas calendars, and illustrated books. sometimes satirical political books, sometimes just reading books. sometimes published by the harper's publishing house so it wasn't always outside of the family so to speak. sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn't. but they did not control him. in fact, repeatedly that was his lever, he said you tried to tell me what to do, i will go

somewhere else. ultimately that's what happened. but it did not work out for him. >> a quick history of what happened. >> when he left? yeah, so he rage quit as we call it today. again, being told no we are not quick to publish that. you can't do that. that was it. he was done. the way he did it which will be familiar to anyone who has sent a email is he sent the contract back to new york onsite and this was a signal, going, and for a little while he sort of coasted. i'm famous, i quit, everyone knows it, ha. then he started to work anymore serious way. his dream all along was to have his own paper. he thought if i am my own boss there will be no one to tell me, no good idea, that is true. >> cartoonists are

really bad bosses. >> a bad businessman, yes. and the other problem was that at almost the moment that he rage quit from harper's weekly he lost a huge amount of money that he had invested in a fraudulent investment bank. so the same branch and word, the same company that president grant had put all of his money and because his son was one of the main partners, the other named partner was a crook and he ran away with all have his money. for those who know his story of the memoir, the reason why he wrote in his memoir because if he lost his money. he invested in the same bank because him and grant were acquaintances and he lost office money as well. so he was under capitalized and like you say a terrible businessman. the other problem was that tammy was resurgent and it controlled newspaper distribution. people could want to buy it. but if it can't be on the new, stand now

want to get it you are out of luck. he was also terrible at selling bags. so as a publisher he was no good he didn't realize that until it was too late so he did start a newspaper, nast weekly, it ran for about seven months. the only complete set of it is in the university of minnesota, in their archive. you can go see it there. maybe they digitized, it that be wonderful if it was digitized, one of the sad things about it is that you can track the decline of his talent, because he had developed a problem with his soldier. like some tendonitis probably in the 1880s, by the time he was doing nast weekly you could tell, he couldn't do the fine cross hatching that you could see in some of these. he could not keep a line going so he would start with a nice strong line and it would kind of peter out, the precision of his characters was affected because his hand

trembled. >> i have friends who have experienced the same thing. even today. it's interesting, i was reading, last year i was reading quite a lot about illustrators and istanbul in the 17 and 18th centuries, one of the things that was talked about because i was reading about -- my name is red, this very famous novel and they were talking about the strain on the eyes, illustrators prior to artificial light. i think it's interesting to think of the way that artists engage with this activity and that their body has to cooperate. in his case it stopped cooperating. his mind was going to like, always his arm and hand wouldn't do it >> out of curiosity how old was he? >> he was not even 60. >> oh oh. >> you look at the

quality of the work and the amount of the work and you can see how it wore him out. >> oh yeah, during the height of the campaign, during the controversy over -- he was drawing five, six cartoons per week. >> they're all incredibly detailed. >> yes incredibly detailed. >> you have it is now time for questions. >> it might be good to take, some, although nast's life does come to a dramatic end. >> yes, nast, he was out of money. really out of money. he needed a job. i noticed in your exhibit you talked about how much roosevelt enjoyed his cartoons, nast defended roosevelt, he was the commissioner of police trying

to shut down bars. nast commended him saying shut down all of the drinking on, sunday very immoral that was one of the bases for their tomorrow, so he called the roosevelt administration and said help. he thought that they would give him a diplomatic post and they give that diplomatic post to all kinds of people. i mean brett hurd got, one and scott, which is nice, i don't know if it was because he was too late, right? you've got to get in front of the line, but he got bright hill ecuador which is famous for fever, he shown if he got there in a few, months -- otherwise letters home to sally were sad because they had a really powerful love affair. he was very sad to be separated from her. he was right. he got sick and he literally got into his hammock. the british council wrote to her and by monday he was gone. >> the worst part is that apparently

the department never sent her a condolences telegram and she was very angry. >> i will be right back. talk amongst yourselves. >> we have a couple of questions. we have a good number of questions. gerald wrote i have two questions. this imagery was unique to nast? the online exhibition says in 1873, tweed was convicted and served a year and prison. he fled to spain, where officials put him on trial. could you expand on the circulation of these images throughout the atlantic and his impact outside the u.s.? thank you for a fascinating top. the two questions were, are animals unique and then about

the capture of tweed. >> it is totally not unique. >> one of the things that pat said, and it was true, and also the central figure behind pat's chair is pat. so it's absolutely the case, that nast did not invent the democratic donkey. so if anybody is familiar with the cartoonist joseph keppler or matt morgan, they routinely would use the stuff, and sometimes they would portray nast as a monkey with a pencil in his tail. and the donkey is a much older image. it had been used for democrats for sometime, because of its -- other name because of. and i don't know if there is biological difference between the two but in terms of symbolism it is the same. but the elephant was his invention.

so often when we talk about it, we often say he popularized and invented these images. but the elephant was his creation, but the donkey was not. but he made the donkey this internal symbol. but there are lots of symbol. but there are lots of examples in political cartooning, both before nast and since, where animals become the symbol of some quality. so foxes for being widely, birds you know, and sometimes the symbol is a cultural association with the animal, and sometimes it is a literary reference. like with people. so that will take something where there is some work of literature and, they will trans pulls it into the cartoon. that's common for cartoonists. not everybody is fond of caricature, and not a cartoonist like it. so there's very specific way to do it. >> the other question was the circulation of this cartoon, you know internationally. >> we

don't know much about that, one of the problems with this like newspapers, they disintegrate. one of the stories in which is in the 2007 biography of tweed, which is a great book. this is the story, that tweet actually had them in his luggage. for a reason nobody understands. and when they saw this they were going through his luggage, and they were looking for contraband, and they found these cartoons and they thought who is this guy. that's one of the stories. it's not necessarily the case that he gets caught just because the spaniards have harper's weekly. i don't know if harper was sending copies of his of their additions overseas. >> but he was recognized by the cartoons? >> yes that is the story. it is hard to imagine why they would

have pulled him from the customs line otherwise. so it is you know and he was fleeing because he did not want to be in prison. which was good sense because you know it broke is health and he died relatively young. so one of the things is, we know that some people were reading harpers weekly in europe, probably americans overseas and other people who are interested in american politics. there is very little information that would help us to know how many copies went overseas, who is reading them exactly, and what they got from >> we have a question from -- and just to point out, this was one of the artists that did the biography on the thomas nast website. so since cartoons were made into printable cartoons. one of the graver --? >> some of the images i am referencing, first of all by then they had

different methods for making images. there has been an improvement in the technology. making it faster and easier. a different way of doing. it secondly they were working for him. so he did not have a lot of money. so as, the available inputs, we're just different. they and there was some embellishment that happened early in his career. and he got in trouble sometimes, during the civil war there were several instances where war correspondents, would send in drawings from the front, and nast would be the engraver. he would do the would cut. and he would put his own name on it. so there is a book about that, in which there is this very as straightforward insult to nest in the book, because they despised him based on the fact that he had plagiarize some of their images. and that's understandable. so there were interested in instances where people change things, token in

things and put out things in, but this time in his career he didn't have that type of resource. >> there is a question from clay, that i'm interested in. it is sort of for me, but it sort of path, because the question is about how we get to the more simple style of modern political cartooning and they were saying it was even by the end of nast lifetime simplicity was in. sheeting was in. pat do you think about this more modern style in the 20th century? >> it's always evolving and changing. whether the cartoonist during the 19 fifties, or now he's hitting his thumb with the hammer in the hammer would be russia, or

soviet union, and the thumb would be hungry. so you could interchange that there are the you know the hammer could be recession. you can interchange those things. then you get -- coming in from australia, and he revolutionized cartooning. it's vertical, it's horizontal, and it's funny. but it's single panel right. and now we've evolved into something that is more popular with the next generation. it's kind of telling stories. multi paddle cartoons, and none of it is right and none of it is wrong, the cartoon is always changing. and it is still popular. >> okay so we have time for maybe one or two more questions. the i don't see the name of the person who wrote this but, the person who wrote it said did he go for more unflattering stereotype of african americans

towards the end of his career, and if i'm right about that why do you think that happened? >> so i don't think that is true. i think, you could find unflattering stereotypes of black americans, and other people that nast did not like, like catholics in general, and irish catholics in particular, throughout his career. in particular there were moments of reconstruction, when he drew images of black americans, which likened them to irish catholic immigrants. we can nests universe, was negative as he would get this is negative he sees get. i would say that actually, i do not think his racism was a function of getting older, i think his racism was a function of accepting lots of ideas that were around him is true, and he would become outraged on behalf of black americans, when nasty

things or terrible violent things were done to them. but it's not because he had a profound belief in their quality. it is because it offended him, for american values, which he idealized to be violated by white people. so he had a particular set of political and cultural commitments around american identity, which he had adopted for himself. i wish he felt which he did feel very strongly about. but it wasn't kind of compassion or justice oriented empathy that you would hope for from a political commentator. neither early in his life or later. some of his cartoons are beautiful in their defense at the black community, but others in the same era or often very negative. as he got older i think he got more radical in some ways. in terms of gender, he got more conservative. but in terms of politics by the time he was in his fifties, he was just buttered all down. he really stopped compromising after a while. >> so we have a

question for pat. this is from bruce. pet, my father was a cartoonist, and one of our dearest family friends with warren king, was a conservative new york daily news cartoonist, did you know him? >> i didn't. i have been doing this for over 40 years, 42 years now, and i started doing cartoons, there were probably 250 almost 300 cartoonists in america, who had no the -- that i did. they did weekly cartoons, and now we are down to 20. so back in the day, we used to be in there was a lot of us, going back to nest. there were law there were lots of cartoonists. but as far as having a daily newspaper, there

aren't a lot of us left. but you can still find us, it's just on the internet. and people are having to do the hustle, and it's out there and is still vibrant, but the cartoons and newspapers is from a past era. it's from the nast era. and it had its day and political cartooning has gone to different venues. it's not to twitter, facebook, and the internet. it has changed. >> i agree with that and people love political cartoons that you go to twitter. it may be challenged, but cartoonist on twitter are deliciously vicious. >> the woman here in salt lake city, was looking for the spartans and saying who is this person? and i click in the bile, and i find out that she is from salt lake city. her name is de el weeks. and her handle is falafel--. she is

younger than i am, which is a stretch. but she's doing great stuff. >> thank you so much for this, i hope everybody you have enticed everybody to go online and see the exhibition. >> absolutely. >> great exhibition. >> thank you for having us, it was a real pleasure.