Herbert Block, who signed his name Herblock, was one of the most influential and widely respected American editorial cartoonists in the 20th Century. His remarkable career, most of which was spent on the staff of the Washington Post, spanned much of the 20th Century and extended into the 21st, from 1929 to 2001.

Herblock did exactly what an editorial cartoonist should do; he pointed out corruption, graft, sleaze, stupidity, and the other dangers inherent in any political system that puts power-hungry people in power; and he did it with wit, style and a flare for holding up the truth like a flag.

He went after dangerous megalomaniacs like Senator Joseph McCarthy, and was, in fact, the one who coined the term “McCarthyism”, which we now use to identify any politician who uses scare-tactic witch-hunting to aggregate power and inflence.

He went after Nixon and his corrupt cronies in the 70’s, earning in the process his third Pulitzer Prize. He also garnered other awards in his career, including the National Cartoonist Society’s Reuben Award and Editorial Cartoon Award (twice). He was elected to the NCS Hall of Fame in 1979 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1944.

Herblock’s drawing style was as straightforward as his writing, quick, to the point, and dead on target. He drew his cartoons in a combination of pencil, pen and crayon, often pasting up bits and dropping out areas with white-out. There was no pretension of the finished piece being a work of art headed for a frame, this was news commentary and was meant to be created quickly, photographed and slapped on the press.

The Library of Congress has assembled an exhibit of Herblock’s cartoons, both physical and virtual. The physical exhibit, Enduring Outrage: Editorial Cartoons by Herblock, at the LOC in Washintgon, D.C. runs from July 17 of this year to January 20, 2007. The online exhibit will probably stay up for an extended period as most of the LOC exhibits do.

The online exhibit (and I presume the physical one) features both the final cartoon as prepared for the camera, and in many cases preliminary sketches, a real treat that we don’t often get to see. There are more cartoons listed in the Checklist of Objects.

It’s worth noting how eerily relevant many of Herblock’s cartoons from the 1960’s and 70’s are to today’s news, particularly in terms of issues like deficit spending, domestic spying, the erosion of civil liberties in the name of “security”, the political influence of religious factions and ethics scandals with their attendant cover-ups. Nice to know we’re making such progress.

Hey you! Yes, you!

Are you an American citizen?
Did you vote yet?
No?
Well, go ahead, I’ll wait.
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Back already?
That was easy enough wasn’t it? Feels good, doesn’t it? Very important too, and not just for the obvious reasons. Things like funding for the arts, federal support for art education programs and the standards for taxes as they relate to contributions for arts related non-profit organizations; all of these things are decided at the congressional level, and are directly influenced by mid-term elections.

So are issues like whether or not we’ll have to re-institute a military draft, if we can’t recruit enough to keep the military all-volunteer. But maybe we should once again call on the power of Uncle Sam to attract recruits with his famous “I want YOU for the U.S. Army!” pointed finger poster.

This image, which is the most famous and enduring image of Uncle Sam, was painted by the great illustrator James Montgomery Flagg. (Sounds too patriotic to be true, doesn’t it?)

Mostly remembered as a recruiting poster for the U.S. Army, used in both World War I and World War II, the image was originally created for a magazine cover published prior the the U.S. entry into WWI, and was accompanied by the heading “What Are YOU Doing for Preparedness?”.

The pose was based on a British Army recruitment poster for WWI (below, left), showing Lord Kitchner, then England’s Secretary of State for War. It was drawn by British illustrator Alfred Leete and was also originally created for a magazine cover.

The origin of the name of Uncle Sam is in a bit of question; suffice it to say that it works well as a name with the abbreviation “U.S.” (which is also the origin of the “$” dollar sign, by the way, an extended letter “S” overlaid with a condensed letter “U”, with the bottom of the “U” eventually removed, leaving two vertical lines).

The concept of Uncle Sam as the personification (gamers, read: “avatar”) of the United States existed for a while before he was first given representation as an image, initially drawn by cartoonist Frank Bellew in the early 1850’s.

It was famous political cartoonist Thomas Nast (who was also responsible for creating the elephant and donkey symbols to represent the Republican and Democratic parties) who gave Uncle Sam the form we now recognize, with his top hat, beard and striped pants (below, middle).

It was Flagg, however, a superb illustrator about whom I will write more in the future, who really put the image in our minds. Flagg did other illustrations of Uncle Sam (above, right), but it is the stern finger-pointing image we always remember (an image for which Flagg used his own face as the model).

It is an image so iconic and powerful that few people, if you ask, will remember that the painting has an unfinished character, leaving Sam minus his left arm. Our attention is drawn inexorably to those piercing eyes and that pointing finger.

Oh, and if you’re reading this on Election Day and you still didn’t vote yet, — go ahead. Tell ’em Sam sent you!

Art and mathematics have a long but somewhat strained history. Well, that’s not quite true. It isn’t the intersection of art and mathematics that’s problematic, but our limited ability to understand and appreciate that relationship.

So images that are the result of mathematical calculations are immediately suspect as “not art”, and I’ll be the first to admit that Photoshop filters and Painter brushes that promise to make “paintings” out of photographs make this a very grey area (colorful, but grey).

But the proof, as they say, is in the putting, and the deciding factor is your response to the images.

Fractals are part of a branch of mathematics that embraces infinity, dealing with infinite recursions, infinite depth and capable of generating images represent edges of infinite length, wrapped within themselves in exquisite crinolations.

The term fractal, and the equations associated with it, are the work of mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, who I wrote about back in June. Others have built on that work and there are a number of variations on the original equations.

One is the algorithm that creates Flame fractals, created by Scott Draves in 1992, graciously made open source and incorporated into Apophysis freeware fractal designing program for Windows, the Corel KPT Collection of commercial filters for Painter and Photoshop and The GIMP open source image editor for Linux and multiple other platforms. There is a central site devoted to Flame Fractals at flam3.com.

So this is a form of mathematically generated images that you, or anyone else, can access and work with. If you view enough images created from this algorithm you’ll begin to see what is inherent in the math and what is the result of the artfulness and vision with which the parameters are manipulated to make images that stand out and are memorable, in somewhat the same manner as photography crossing the line from snapshots into art.

A nice place to start is this gallery of Flame Fractal images created by Roger Johnston on the Tech Republic site. Most of the images are linked to larger versions if you click on them, where you will begin to see the intricate detail of these wispy fantasias.

Images created using this math look as if they are delicately woven from gossamer threads of light, at times astonishingly organic in appearance, suggesting crystaline lettuce leaves, angelic wings or threads of cosmic wool. They are usually isolated into something that might be considered a virtual object or light sculpture composed of delicate lines of color interleaved with sheets of translucent patterns, cascading in not-quite-repetition and leading your eye into whorls of detail.

This kind of computer art invites your imagination to indulge in seeing images within the patterns and textures as readily as Max Ernst’s delerious decoupage, Jackson Pollock’s intricate drip-loop panoramas and, perhaps the best analogy of all, the dreamy “lay on your back on a Summer hillside” fantasies seen in passing clouds.