Word: jerees
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Such was the largest and the most bitter caricature of the Roosevelt Administration. In bright color but indifferent drawing, it appeared on a 4-by-8-ft. canvas last week in the Westchester Institute of Fine Arts at Tarrytown, N. Y. Entitled Nightmare of 1934, the work was signed Jere Miah II. The anonymous artist had great fun with a typewritten explanation of his picture that referred to mythological characters known as The Chief Mogul, Sheik Morgue En Taw, Har Rywa Llace, Sir Huge Onson, and Old Egghead...
Because a person can be more disrespectful in paint than in print, Nightmare of 1934 proceeded at once to make lively news. In the exhibition's catalog Manhattan newshawks discovered that the playful Jere Miah had placed the initials P. W. A. after his name. Everyone wanted to know the identity of the ungrateful artist who could accept the New Deal's relief money with one hand while burlesquing it with the other. Crowds jammed the hall. Pink with excitement, President Charles Arthur Birch-Field of the West-Chester Institute had the Nightmare placed on a separate wall and charged...
...this time Artist Jere Miah II refused to let his name be known, but emitted a series of pronouncements through President Birch-Field of the gallery. Most important was the fact that he had never been on the PWA rolls. The initials after his name, he said, meant "Poor White Artist." The only hint of his identity was a report that the artist was comparatively unknown, 35, tall, blond, separated from his wife and disgusted with the New Deal...
...additional fact came from experts at lampooning the New Deal?artists of a Communist organization known as the John Reed Club. After one glance they decided that, whoever Jere Miah II was, he was no Radical...
...pulled a bottle of paint-remover from his pocket, splashed it over the canvas, yanked the caricature from the wall, touched a match to it. The flames flickered out quickly, but the picture was ruined. Housewives fled screaming. John Smiukse was instantly arrested. While Mr. Birch-Field and Jere Miah II conferred whether to make the charge arson or malicious mischief, reporters found John Smiukse in the Tarrytown police station...