Alumni

Before He Punctured Pomposity
After a recent Smithsonian exhibit featured the political cartoons of Herbert Block '31, we dug up his drawings from his days at Lake Forest.

Illustrations by Herbert Block '31

Whether it was Richard Nixon leaving a trail of tapes for a bloodhound during the Watergate scandal or Bill Clinton walking through mud to his State of the Union address after perjury charges surfaced, Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herbert Block '31 incisively illustrated the wrongs committed by U.S. presidents until his death in 2001. "The political cartoon is not a news story and not an oil portrait. It's essentially a means for poking fun, for puncturing pomposity," he wrote in 1977.

In honor of the recent presidential campaign, Block's cartoons of 11 presidents — from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton — appeared in the Smithsonian Institution exhibit "Herblock's Presidents: Puncturing Pomposity," which ran May 2 to November 30, 2008 at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

While the world had the chance to look at seven decades of his work, Spectrum visited the College archives to find drawings from his time as a Lake Forest College student.
 
From 1927 to 1929, Block studied English and political science and developed a strong interest in international affairs from Professor David Maynard. But when the Chicago Daily News extended a job offer to become the newspaper's cartoonist, Block couldn't refuse the opportunity of a lifetime. Before he left Lake Forest College for the newspaper, however, Block contributed artwork to the Stentor and Forester yearbooks from 1928 to 1930.

We found his caricatures of faculty, cartoons about alumni, and depictions of campus life. What follows are two full-page drawings that ran in the 1929 Forester, and examples of his legendary wit. Notably, he signed his work "H.L.B.," which preceded the professional signature that he was known for — "Herblock."

His experience here had an impact on his career. In 1968, he told an audience at the College, "A school publication is the greatest place in the world to begin to learn how to draw or write for the public, to see how pictures reproduce in print and how people react to what you have to say."

We couldn't agree more. 

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1929 Forester, page 30

1929 Forester, page 91