Word: flagg
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...worlds of art coexist side by side, each with its own standards, its own heroes. Measured by the canons of high art, James Montgomery Flagg was a mere illustrator. He refused even to call him self an "artist/' But measured by his impact on the senses and sensibilities of his contemporaries-a valid standard of popular art, however irrelevant to high art-Illustrator Flagg was the greatest U.S. artist of his time. When he died in Manhattan last week at 82. his niche in U.S. cultural history was secure...
...Flagg's best-known work of all was a World War I recruiting poster-perhaps the only one in history that actually drove large numbers of young men into wartime recruiting offices. Using his own lean, darkly handsome face as a model, he depicted a stern, black-browed Uncle Sam pointing an inescapable, slacker-accusing finger, demanding: I WANT YOU. The Government printed 4.000.-000 copies, shipped them to every city, town and hamlet in the nation...
During the peaceable 19203. reproductions of James Montgomery Flagg paintings and drawings were as ubiquitous as his wartime Uncle Sam. His full-lipped Flagg Girls looked out from the pages of every big-circulation magazine. He earned $75.000 a year from Flagg Girls and celebrity portraits, spent it freely in hard-drinking high life. Besides being the country's most famous illustrator and most conspicuous bohemian. he was its gruffest voicer of strong opinions. "I know why there are so many pretty gals in New York," he once said, "all the ugly ones are in college." He dismissed Picasso...
...Flagg fitted the Roaring Twenties just right, and after the Great Crash he gradually faded into comparative obscurity. Into his last years, though he was sick and nearly blind, he retained his zest for life. At 80, asked the inevitable questions put to famous octogenarians, he said that he had only one regret: "I miss seeing the new beauties...
Died. James Montgomery Flagg, 82, illustrator, portraitist, writer and actor, who used himself as model for the famed Uncle Sam I WANT YOU military recruiting poster; after long illness; in Manhattan (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS...