Monday, August 3, 2009 9:42 PM CDT
Turzak's woodcut book on Lincoln has been republished
By Michael Watts, Director, Tarble Arts Center, Eastern Illinois University
In commemoration of the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth, Dover Publications has reprinted Charles Turzak’s 1933 book “Abraham Lincoln: Biography In Woodcuts,” retitled as “An Abraham Lincoln Tribute: Featuring Woodcuts by Charles Turzak.”
Added to Turzak’s images is a new preface by David A. Berona, and from Bob Blaisdell is an introduction, captions for the woodcuts, and an appendix with several of Lincoln’s famous speeches, letters and quotations.
This compact Lincoln volume presents the well-known episodes from Lincoln’s life — birth in a log cabin, the deaths of Nancy Hanks and Ann Rutledge, the trip to New Orleans, the debates with Douglas, election as president, Civil War, the assassination.
What sets these and other familiar tales apart are Turzak’s illustrations, including what Berona calls the “deeper and perplexing psychological side to Lincoln's character.”
In 1933 the Great Depression was in its fifth year, fascism was on the rise in Europe and Japan, and Chicago was the site of the Century of Progress World’s Fair. On the World’s Fair grounds Turzak, a young artist, was carving images into blocks of wood. Turzak used the blocks to print pages for what was to become his first biographical volume, “Abraham Lincoln: Biography In Woodcuts.”
Like today’s graphic novels, Turzak’s Lincoln biography was comprised only of images; Lincoln’s story was told without text. Turzak had the woodcuts hand-printed and assembled as books, and sold them in a limited edition of 1,500 copies.
It is striking to realize how many times Turzak depicted Lincoln with a bowed head, downcast eyes or his face in his hands. Lincoln’s melancholy, caused or exacerbated by loss, civil strife and war, is subtle but unmistakable in Turzak’s imagery.
A marked exception is the illustration of Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address — here Lincoln is stern but heroic, full-faced toward the viewer.
For the Lincoln texts Blaisdell has selected to include the Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address, Second Inaugural Address and Lincoln’s entire speech from his first debate with Stephen A. Douglas. Perhaps more interesting to those less familiar with Lincoln are Blaisdell’s inclusion of letters, both personal and official, and less-known addresses.
Among these is a brief autobiographical sketch Lincoln wrote in 1859, and in which, talking about the scarcity of teachers when he was growing up, he states: “If a straggler supposed to know Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education.”
In a letter to Mary Todd Lincoln from 1846, learning his wife was free of headaches, Lincoln wrote, “I am afraid you will get so well, and fat, and young as to be wanting to marry again.”
Turzak was the son of Czechoslovakian immigrant parents. Born in 1899 in Streator, he grew up in the central Illinois town of Nokomis. Turzak worked his way through the Art Institute of Chicago (1920-1924), and for the first part of his career worked in Chicago as a free-lance and commercial artist. He later moved to Florida, where he continued his work as an artist until his death in 1986.
Turzak sold the reproduction rights of the Lincoln biography to Scholastic Publishing, which for many years used Turzak’s images to illustrate the book “True Stories About Abraham Lincoln,” by Ruth Belov Gross. Dover acquired the illustration reproduction rights for this new publication.
Copies are available for purchase in the Tarble Arts Center Gift Shop, on the campus of Eastern Illinois University. An edition of the original Turzak woodcuts, a copy of the limited edition original publication, and a draft copy of the Turzak publication are all on view as part of the Tarble’s Looking at Lincoln exhibition that continues through Aug. 30.
Berona is a woodcut novel historian and author of “Wordless Books: The Original Graphic Novels”; library director at Plymouth State University, N.H.; and a visiting faculty member at the Center for Cartoon Studies, White River Junction, Vt.
Blaisdell has edited many literary anthologies for Dover Publications, including “The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln” and “The Civil War: A Book of Quotations, Famous Documents and Speeches.” He is an English professor at the City University of New York’s Kingsborough campus.
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
|
|
