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85-427: Lynd Kendall Ward (June 26, 1905 – June 28, 1985) was an American artist and novelist, known for his series of wordless novels using wood engraving , and his illustrations for juvenile and adult books. His wordless novels have influenced the development of the graphic novel . Although strongly associated with his wood engravings, he also worked in watercolor, oil, brush and ink, lithography and mezzotint . Ward

170-429: A Rutgers University award for Distinguished Contribution to Children's Literature. He also illustrated two Newbery Medal books and six runners-up. In 2011, Ward was listed as a Judges' Choice for The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame . Ward is known for his wordless novels told entirely through dramatic wood engravings . Ward's first work, Gods' Man (1929), uses a blend of Art Deco and Expressionist styles to tell

255-639: A Hungarian cavalryman disillusioned by his World War I experiences. Helena Bochořáková-Dittrichová (1894–1980) was the first woman to produce a wordless novel, Z Mého Dětství (1929); later republished in French as Enfance (1930) and later republished in English as Childhood (1931), . Childhood represented middle-class life, rather than the working-class struggle found in the works of Masereel or Nückel. Bochořáková described her books as "cycles" rather than novels. Surrealist artist Max Ernst made

340-553: A glamorous husband. The book, Eve (1943), also uses "picture balloons" as He Done Her Wrong does. Inspired by mediaeval religious block books and working in an Art Deco style, American illustrator James Reid (1907–1989) produced one wordless novel, The Life of Christ (1930); due to the book's religious content, the Soviet Union barred its importation under its policies on religion . In 1938, Italian-American Giacomo Patri (1898–1978) produced his only wordless novel,

425-399: A hundred children's books, several of which were collaborations with his wife, May. During the 1930s, Ward became well known for the political themes of his graphic work, which often addressed class and labor issues. In 1932 he founded Equinox Cooperative Press as a response to the mechanized routines of the modern publishing business. Each of the sixteen books eventually published by the press

510-438: A living US or Canadian citizen or resident—have been Nick Sousanis , Jillian Tamaki , Mariko Tamaki , Jim Woodring , Chris Ware , Anders Nilsen , Adam Hines , Nora Krug , Travis Dandro, and Emil Ferris . Wordless novel The wordless novel is a narrative genre that uses sequences of captionless pictures to tell a story. As artists have often made such books using woodcut and other relief printing techniques,

595-820: A member of the Society of Illustrators and a member and President of the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA). Ward moved to Leonia, New Jersey , in 1943, where he used a barn as a studio. He and his wife lived in Leonia for the next fifteen years. Beginning in 1958, Ward lived with his wife in a home in Cresskill, New Jersey , to which they added a studio for their work. Ward retired to his home in Reston, Virginia , in 1979. He died on June 28, 1985, of Alzheimer's disease, two days after his 80th birthday. In celebration of

680-580: A number of mannerist structures, and Willem van den Blocke also has sculpted multiple lavishly decorated epitaphs and tombs in Poland. Flemish people also emigrated at the end of the fifteenth century, when Flemish traders conducted intensive trade with Spain and Portugal , and from there moved to colonies in America and Africa . The newly discovered Azores were populated by 2,000 Flemish people from 1460 onwards, making these volcanic islands known as

765-429: A number of editors who showed interest in his portfolio. In 1928, his first commissioned work illustrated Dorothy Rowe 's The Begging Deer: And Other Stories of Japanese Children with eight full-page watercolor and forty-two ink and brush drawings. May have helped with background research for the illustrations, and wrote another book of Japanese folk tales, Prince Bantam (1929), with illustrations by Ward. Other work at

850-616: A number of laws restricting the use of the Dutch language. This policy led to the gradual emergence of the Flemish Movement , that was built on earlier anti-French feelings of injustice, as expressed in writings (for example by the late 18th-century writer, Jan Verlooy ) which criticized the Southern Francophile elites. The efforts of this movement during the following 150 years, have to no small extent facilitated

935-513: A series of striking wood-engraved illustrations for Alec Waugh 's pair of travel books, Hot Countries and Most Women , and in the following year a number of line-cut chapter headings and a provocative dust-jacket image that embodied the homoerotic themes of Myron Brinig 's satirical novel, The Flutter of an Eyelid . In 1934, he executed illustrations and vignettes for a new edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein which were influenced by James Whale ’s famous 1931 film starring Boris Karloff. And in

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1020-560: A single book. The books were designed to be mass-produced for a popular audience, in contrast to similar but shorter portfolios by artists such as Otto Dix , George Grosz , and Käthe Kollwitz , which were produced in limited editions for collectors. These portfolios of typically from eight to ten prints also were meant to be viewed in sequence. Wordless novels were longer, had more complex narratives, and were printed in sizes and dimensions comparable to those of novels. A large influence

1105-800: Is primarily based on the Hollandic dialect (spoken in the northwestern Netherlands) and to a lesser extent on Brabantic, which is the most dominant Dutch dialect of the Southern Netherlands and Flanders . Approximately 75% of the Flemish people are by baptism assumed Roman Catholic , though a still diminishing minority of less than 8% attends Mass on a regular basis and nearly half of the inhabitants of Flanders are agnostic or atheist . A 2006 inquiry in Flanders showed 55% chose to call themselves religious and 36% believe that God created

1190-558: Is the majority language in Belgium, being spoken natively by three-fifths of the population. Its various dialects contain a number of lexical and a few grammatical features which distinguish them from the standard language. As in the Netherlands, the pronunciation of Standard Dutch is affected by the native dialect of the speaker. At the same time East Flemish forms a continuum with both Brabantic and West Flemish . Standard Dutch

1275-532: The Biblia pauperum . These artists used the awkward look of woodcut images to express feelings of anguish. The wordless novel grew out of the Expressionist movement. The Belgian Frans Masereel (1889–1972) created the earliest example, 25 Images of a Man's Passion , in 1918. It was a commercial success and was followed by Passionate Journey , which at 167 images was Masereel's longest book. It

1360-620: The Library of America published Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts , with a new chronology of Ward's life and an introduction by Art Spiegelman . Ward's work had an important influence on the work of later graphic artists such as Art Spiegelman , George Walker , Clifford Harper , Eric Drooker, Jarrett Heckbert, Steven McCabe and Megan Speers. His works have been praised by R. Crumb, filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, and Alan Moore. Since 2011, Ward has been honored and his name has been attached to

1445-635: The Netherlands , but are still host to people of Flemish descent and some continued use of Flemish Dutch. Namely, these are Zeelandic Flanders and the Arrondissement of Dunkirk (historically known as French Westhoek ). The people of North Brabant also share related ancestry. There were migrations of Flemish people to medieval and early modern Poland. The Flemming noble family of Flemish origin first settled in Pomerania and modern Poland in

1530-535: The seal of Philip d'Alsace , count of Flanders of 1162. As of that date the use of the Flemish coat of arms ( or a lion rampant sable ) remained in use throughout the reigns of the d'Alsace, Flanders (2nd) and Dampierre dynasties of counts . The motto "Vlaanderen de Leeuw" (Flanders the lion) was allegedly present on the arms of Pieter de Coninck at the Battle of the Golden Spurs on July 11, 1302. After

1615-548: The "Flemish Islands". For instance, the city of Horta derives its name from Flemish explorer Josse van Huerter . Prior to the 1600s, there were several substantial waves of Flemish migration to the United Kingdom . The first wave fled to England in the early 12th century, escaping damages from a storm across the coast of Flanders, where they were largely resettled in Pembrokeshire by Henry I . They changed

1700-431: The 'cultural extremes' of both Northern and Southern culture. Alongside this overarching political and social affiliation, there also exists a strong tendency towards regionalism , in which individuals greatly identify themselves culturally through their native province , city, region or dialect they speak. Flemings speak Dutch (specifically its southern variant , which is often colloquially called ' Flemish '). It

1785-483: The 13th century with the village of Buk becoming the first estate of the family in the region. The family reached high-ranking political and military posts in Poland in the 18th century, and Polish Princess Izabela Czartoryska and statesman Adam Jerzy Czartoryski were their descendants. There are several preserved historical residences of the family in Poland. Flemish architects Anthonis van Obbergen and Willem van den Blocke migrated to Poland, where they designed

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1870-399: The 16th century under artists such as Dürer , Holbein , and Amman , after which engraving techniques superseded woodcuts. Pioneered by Thomas Bewick , wood engraving enjoyed popularity beginning in the 18th century, until the method gave way by the 19th century to more advanced printing methods such as lithography . Post-impressionist artist Paul Gauguin revived woodcut printing in

1955-618: The 1870s, when Saint Boniface proved a popular destination for work in local flour mills, brick yards and railway yards. Similarly, Flemish were drawn to smaller villages in Manitoba , where jobs in farming were available. In the early 20th century, Flemish settled in significant numbers across Ontario , particularly attracted by the tobacco-growing industry, in the towns of Chatham , Leamington , Tillsonburg , Wallaceburg , Simcoe , Sarnia and Port Hope . The original County of Flanders encompassed areas which today belong to France and

2040-498: The 1970s, Ward worked on an ambitious wordless novel, tentatively titled Dance of the Hours , which at his death consisted of 77 woodblocks in various stages of completion. In 2001, Rutgers University Libraries published images from 26 of the most finished blocks as Lynd Ward's Last Unfinished Wordless Novel . In addition to woodcuts, Ward also worked in watercolor , oil, brush and ink, lithography and mezzotint . He illustrated over

2125-543: The American atomic tests in the Bikini Atoll . The work tells of an American evacuation of an island for nuclear tests, where one family is left behind. Polish-American Si Lewen 's (1918– ) first book, The Parade: A Story in 55 Drawings (1957), won praise from Albert Einstein for its anti-war message. Canadian George Kuthan's Aphrodite's Cup (1964) is an erotic book drawn in an ancient Greek style. In

2210-571: The American Negro , by Hildegarde Hoyt Swift (1947). Ward features African American as well as various Native American characters in his book, The Silver Pony . Ward also illustrated Little Baptiste (1954), My Friend Mac (1960) and The Wolf of Lambs Lane (1967), which were all written by his wife, May McNeer. During the 1960s and early 70s, Ward executed nearly forty independent prints which he issued in unlimited editions. These beautifully made engravings focus on rural scenes celebrating

2295-522: The Depression era, becoming an important source of inspiration for Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg . Ward produced six wood engraving novels over the next eight years, including: Ward left two additional fragments, the unpublished Hymn for the Night ( c.  1940 ), and Lynd Ward's Last, Unfinished, Wordless Novel , which was published posthumously in 2001. In 1930 and 1931, Ward created

2380-809: The Graphic Arts Division of the New York Chapter of the Federal Arts Project. He managed 300 artists who made 5,000 prints a year which were distributed for display to libraries, museums, post offices and schools. During World War II, Ward worked for the Bendix Corporation in New Jersey assembling gyroscopes for aircraft. He was named a member of the National Academy of Design in 1947. He was also

2465-811: The Woods (1965), which he wrote and illustrated, and his work on Esther Forbes ' Johnny Tremain (1943). He also produced a wordless story for children, The Silver Pony (1973), which is told entirely in black, white and gray painted illustrations. Ward's work included an awareness of the racial injustice in the United States. This is apparent in scenes representing the slave trade in Madman’s Drum (1930) and in several woodcuts that depict lynchings in Wild Pilgrimage (1932). It appears again in his drawings for North Star Shining: A Pictorial History of

2550-518: The acquisition of Flanders by the Burgundian dukes the lion was only used in escutcheons. It was only after the creation of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands that the coat of arms (surmounted by a chief bearing the Royal Arms of the Netherlands ) once again became the official symbol of the new province East Flanders . The first sizeable wave of Flemish migration to Canada occurred in

2635-561: The area during this era, who would lay their cloths out in the sun to bleach them. These waves of settlement are also evidenced by the common surnames Fleming , Flemings, Flemming and Flemmings. In the United States , the cities of De Pere and Green Bay in Wisconsin attracted many Flemish and Walloon immigrants during the 19th century. The small town of Belgique was settled almost entirely by Flemish immigrants, although

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2720-581: The art and life of this American printmaker and illustrator, independent filmmaker Michael Maglaras of 217 Films produced a film titled O Brother Man: The Art and Life of Lynd Ward. The documentary features an interview with the artist's daughter Robin Ward Savage, as well as more than 150 works from all periods of Ward's career. The 94-minute documentary, culled from over seven hours of film and narrated by Maglaras, premiered at Penn State University Library 's, Foster Auditorium , on April 20, 2012, where it

2805-400: The commercial comics industry in the early 1950s to do government and educational work. He returned in the 1970s when the atmosphere had changed and his readers and peers seemed more receptive to his ambitions. In 1978, he began a career of creating book-length comics, the first of which was A Contract with God ; the book was marketed as a "graphic novel", a term that became standard towards

2890-754: The creation of the de jure social, political and linguistic equality of Dutch from the end of the 19th century. After the Hundred Years War many Flemings migrated to the Azores . By 1490 there were 2,000 Flemings living in the Azores. Willem van der Haegen was the original sea captain who brought settlers from Flanders to the Azores. Today many Azoreans trace their genealogy from present day Flanders. Many of their customs and traditions are distinctively Flemish in nature such as windmills used for grain, São Jorge cheese and several religious events such as

2975-504: The culture and accent in south Pembrokeshire to such an extent, that it led to the area receiving the name Little England beyond Wales . Haverfordwest and Tenby consequently grew as important settlements for the Flemish settlers. In the 14th century, encouraged by King Edward III and perhaps in part due to his marriage to Philippa of Hainault , another wave of migration to England occurred when skilled cloth weavers from Flanders were granted permission to settle there and contribute to

3060-977: The discussions turned to talk of the Great American Novel being made in comics. These discussions inspired cartoonist Art Spiegelman (b. 1948), who in 1973 made a four-page strip, "Prisoner on the Hell Planet", in an Expressionist style inspired by Ward's work. Spiegelman later incorporated the strip into his graphic novel Maus (1992). While graphic novels generally use captions and dialogue, cartoonists such as Eric Drooker , Peter Kuper , Thomas Ott , Brian Ralph , Masashi Tanaka , Lewis Trondheim , and Billy Simms have made wordless graphic novels. As Gross did in He Done Her Wrong , Hendrik Dorgathen  [ de ] 's wordless oeuvre uses textless word balloons containing symbols, icons, and other images. The influence of

3145-804: The early 21st century, Canadian George Walker made wordless woodcut novels, beginning with Book of Hours (2010), about the lives of those in the World Trade Center complex just before the September 11 attacks . The popularity of wordless novels peaked around 1929 to 1931, when " talkies " were introduced and began to supersede silent films. In the 1930s the Nazis in Germany suppressed and detained many printmakers and banned Masereel's works as " degenerate art ". Following World War II, US censors suppressed books with socialist views, including

3230-680: The elder Ward was a Methodist who moved to the United States in 1891 after reading the progressive Social Aspects of Christianity (1889) by Richard T. Ely . He named his son after the rural town of Lyndhurst , located in the south coastal county of Hampshire , where he had lived for two years as a teenager prior to his emigration. Ward's mother, Harriet May "Daisy" Kendall Ward, was born in Kansas City, Missouri , in 1873. The couple met at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, and were married in 1899. Their first child, Gordon Hugh Ward,

3315-407: The end of the 20th century. Eisner called Ward "perhaps the most provocative graphic storyteller" of the 20th century. He wrote that Ward's Vertigo (1937) required considerable investment from readers in order to fill in the story between images. Interest in the wordless novel revived with the rise of the graphic novel. Comics fans discussed the works of Masereel and others in fanzines, and

3400-490: The example of the wordless novel inspired cartoonists such as Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman to create book-length non-genre comics—" graphic novels ". Cartoonists such as Eric Drooker and Peter Kuper took direct inspiration from wordless novels to create wordless graphic novels. Wordless novels use sequences of expressive images to tell a story. Socialist themes of struggle against capitalism are common; scholar Perry Willett calls these themes "a unifying element of

3485-562: The family moved to Oak Park, Illinois , where his father became a pastor at the Euclid Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church. Ward was early drawn to art and decided to become an artist when his first-grade teacher told him that "Ward" spelled backward is "draw". Having skipped a grade , Ward graduated from grammar school a year early in 1918. The family moved to Englewood, New Jersey , and Ward entered Englewood High School, where he became art editor of

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3570-522: The fertility of nature, the joy of children as they explore the outdoors, and political allegories like Two Men Waiting (1966), Mars, Venus and Snare (1968) and Victim (1970). Engravings that treat the freedom of exploration, such as Man Climbing (1959) and Pathfinder (1971), are counterbalanced by those that portray human beings surrounded by dense woods or imprisoned in cages, as in Net (1962), Caged Uncaged (1965) and Prisoner (1974). Perhaps sensing

3655-705: The first female undergraduate at the University of Georgia in her freshman year. The two married on June 11, 1926, shortly after their graduation, and immediately left for Europe on their honeymoon. After four months in eastern Europe, the couple settled in Leipzig , Germany for a year, where Ward studied as a special one-year student at the National Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookmaking  [ de ] . He learned etching from Alois Kolb , lithography from Georg Alexander Mathéy  [ de ] , and wood engraving from Hans Alexander "Theodore" Mueller; Ward

3740-517: The genre waned in the face of competition from sound films and anti-socialist censorship in Nazi Germany and the US. Following World War II, new examples of wordless novels became increasingly rare, and early works went out of print. Interest began to revive in the 1960s when the American comics fandom subculture came to see wordless novels as prototypical book-length comics. In the 1970s,

3825-407: The genre's aesthetic". In both formal and moral aspects, they draw from Expressionist graphics, theatre , and film . Wordless novelists such as Frans Masereel appropriated the awkward aesthetic of mediaeval woodcuts to express their anguish and revolutionary political ideas and used simple, traditional iconography. Text is restricted to title and chapter pages, except where text is a part of

3910-473: The genre; themes of oppression under capitalism were prominent, a pattern set early by Masereel. At age thirteen, Polish-French artist Balthus drew a wordless story about his cat; it was published in 1921 with an introduction by poet Rainer Maria Rilke . In Destiny (1926), Otto Nückel (1888–1955) produced a work with greater nuance and atmosphere than Masereel's bombastic works; where Masereel told tales of Man's struggle against Society, Nückel told of

3995-414: The graphic novel. Flemish people Flemish was historically a geographical term, as all inhabitants of the medieval County of Flanders in modern-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands were referred to as "Flemings" irrespective of their ethnicity or language. The contemporary region of Flanders comprises a part of this historical county, as well as parts of the medieval duchy of Brabant and

4080-468: The hypnotic spell cast by the increasingly precise and textured line-work of his prints, Ward returned to his earlier sequential art in his last, unfinished novel. In 1974, Harry N. Abrams published Storyteller Without Words , a book that included Ward's six novels, selections of his illustrations from other books and a number of his independent prints. In this edition, Ward broke his silence and wrote brief introductions for each of his six novels. In 2010,

4165-612: The imperios and the feast of the Cult of the Holy Spirit . Within Belgium, Flemings form a clearly distinguishable group set apart by their language and customs. Various cultural and linguistic customs are similar to those of the Southern part of the Netherlands. Generally, Flemings do not identify themselves as being Dutch and vice versa. There are popular stereotypes in the Netherlands as well as Flanders which are mostly based on

4250-612: The late thirties and early forties, he produced color illustrations for three classic novels brought out by the Heritage Press: Les Misérables (1938), Beowulf (1939) and The Count of Monte Cristo (1941). In 1942, Ward illustrated the children's book The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge , with text by Hildegarde Swift . His work on children's books also included his 1953 Caldecott Medal winning book The Biggest Bear , Nic of

4335-530: The late-19th century, favouring it for its primitivist effect. Early in the 20th century, woodcut artists such as Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) and Max Klinger (1857–1920) published portfolios of woodcuts, thematically linked by themes of social injustice. Expressionist graphic artists such as Max Beckmann (1884–1950), Otto Dix (1891–1969), Kollwitz, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976) were inspired by an early-20th-century revival of interest in medieval graphic arts—in particular Biblical woodcut prints such as

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4420-433: The life of an individual woman. Destiny appeared in a US edition in 1930 and sold well there. Clément Moreau (1903–1988) first tried his hand at the genre with the six-plate Youth Without Means in 1928. István Szegedi-Szüts (1892–1959), a Hungarian immigrant to England, made a wordless book in brush and ink called My War (1931). In simple artwork reminiscent of Japanese brush painting , Szegedi-Szüts told of

4505-425: The linocut White Collar . It chronicles the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash and was intended to motivate white-collar workers to unionize. It also deals with controversial topics such as abortion, accessibility of health care for the poor, and loss of Christian faith. From 1948 to 1951, Canadian Laurence Hyde (1914–1987) produced his single wordless novel, the woodcut Southern Cross , in response to

4590-498: The medieval county of Loon , where the modern national identity and culture gradually formed. The sense of "Flemish" identity increased significantly after the Belgian Revolution . Prior to this, the term " Vlamingen " in the Dutch language was in first place used for the inhabitants of the former County of Flanders. Flemish, however, had been used since the 14th century to refer to the language and dialects of both

4675-409: The next four years, it sold more than 20,000 copies in six editions. Ward published five more such works: Madman's Drum (1930), Wild Pilgrimage (1932), Prelude to a Million Years (1933), Song Without Words (1936), and Vertigo (1937). Around 1940, he produced roughly twenty wood engravings for another woodcut narrative, titled Hymn for the Night , but never finished the project. During

4760-409: The panel borders and "dialogue balloons" show in images what the characters are saying. Cartoonist and illustrator William Gropper 's Alay-oop (1930) tells of three entertainers' disappointed dreams. In Abraham Lincoln: Biography in Woodcuts (1933) Charles Turzak documented the American president . Animator Myron Waldman (1908–2006) wrote a wordless tale of a plump young woman looking for

4845-543: The peoples of Flanders and the Duchy of Brabant . In 1830, the southern provinces of the United Netherlands proclaimed their independence. French-dialect speaking population, as well as the administration and elites, feared the loss of their status and autonomy under Dutch rule while the rapid industrialization in the south highlighted economic differences between the two. Under French rule (1794–1815), French

4930-704: The prestigious annual Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, which is sponsored by Penn State University Libraries and administered by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Center for the Book at the US Library of Congress . Previous winners of the Lynd Ward Prize—given in recognition of the best graphic novel or comic book, fiction or nonfiction, published in the previous calendar year by

5015-574: The rise of the graphic novel revived interest amongst readers and publishers in the early 21st century. "... Ward's roots were not in comics, though his work is part of the same large family tree ..." There have been sporadic examples of textless comics (see Pantomime comics ) throughout the medium's history. In the US, there were comic strips such as Otto Soglow 's The Little King , begun in 1931, and Carl Anderson 's Henry , begun in 1932. German cartoonist E. O. Plauen 's wordless domestic comic strip Father and Son (1934–37)

5100-479: The scene, such as in signs. The storytelling tends to be melodramatic, and the stories tend to focus on struggles against social oppression in which characters are silenced by economic, political, and other social forces. The characters are clearly delineated as good or evil—the good drawn sympathetically and the evil with the contempt of the artist's moral indignation. Most wordless novelists were not prolific; few besides Masereel and Lynd Ward produced more than

5185-512: The school newspaper and yearbook, and learned linoleum-block printing . In 1922, he graduated with honors in art, mathematics, and debate. Ward studied fine arts at Columbia Teachers College in New York. He edited the Jester of Columbia , to which he contributed arts and crafts how-to articles. His roommate arranged a blind date for Ward and May Yonge McNeer (1902–1994) in 1923; May had been

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5270-725: The silent collage novel Une semaine de bonté in 1934. Following World War II, Werner Gothein  [ de ] (1890–1968), a member of the German Expressionist group Die Brücke , produced The Tightrope Walker and the Clown (1949). In 1926, the American Lynd Ward (1905–1985) moved to Leipzig to study graphic arts; while there, he discovered the works of Masereel and Otto Nückel. He produced six such works of his own; he preferred to call them "pictorial narratives". The first, Gods' Man (1929),

5355-541: The sovereign, the Protestant William I , with suspicion and were heavily stirred by the Roman Catholic Church which suspected William of wanting to enforce Protestantism . Lastly, Belgian liberals were dissatisfied with William for his allegedly despotic behaviour. Following the revolt, the language reforms of 1823 were the first Dutch laws to be abolished and the subsequent years would see

5440-479: The story of an artist's struggle with his craft, his seduction and subsequent abuse by money and power, his escape to innocence, and his unavoidable doom. Ward, in employing the concept of the wordless pictorial narrative, acknowledged as his predecessors the European artists Frans Masereel and Otto Nückel . Released the week of the 1929 stock market crash , Gods' Man would continue to exert influence well beyond

5525-516: The terms woodcut novel or novel in woodcuts are also used. The genre flourished primarily in the 1920s and 1930s and was most popular in Germany. The wordless novel has its origin in the German Expressionist movement of the early 20th century. The typically socialist work drew inspiration from medieval woodcuts and used the awkward look of that medium to express angst and frustration at social injustice . The first such book

5610-596: The then booming cloth and woollen industries. These migrants particularly settled in the growing Lancashire and Yorkshire textile towns of Manchester , Bolton , Blackburn , Liversedge , Bury , Halifax and Wakefield . Demand for Flemish weavers in England occurred again in both the 15th and 16th centuries, but this time particularly focused on towns close to the coastline of East Anglia and South East England . Many from this generation of weavers went to Colchester , Sandwich and Braintree . In 1582, it

5695-486: The time included illustrations for the children's book Little Blacknose by Hildegarde Swift , and an illustrated edition of Oscar Wilde 's poem " The Ballad of Reading Gaol ". In 1929, Ward was inspired to create a woodcut novel of his own. The first American wordless novel, Gods' Man , was published by Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith that October, the week before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ; over

5780-557: The universe. The official flag and coat of arms of the Flemish Community represents a black lion with red claws and tongue on a yellow field ( or a lion rampant sable armed and langued gules ). A flag with a completely black lion had been in wide use before 1991 when the current version was officially adopted by the Flemish Community. That older flag was at times recognized by government sources (alongside

5865-405: The version with red claws and tongue). Today, only the flag bearing a lion with red claws and tongue is recognized by Belgian law, while the flag with the all-black lion is mostly used by Flemish separatist movements. The Flemish authorities also use two logos of a highly stylized black lion which show the claws and tongue in either red or black. The first documented use of the Flemish lion was on

5950-635: The wordless novel is prominent in Drooker's Flood (1992) and Kuper's The System (1997), both metaphorical stories that focus on social themes. Since 2011, the Pennsylvania State University Libraries and the Pennsylvania Center for the Book have awarded the annual Lynd Ward Prize for Graphic Novel, a cash prize established by Ward's daughters to highlight their father's influence on the development of

6035-459: The works of Lynd Ward, on whom the FBI kept files over his socialist sympathies; this censorship has made early editions of wordless novels scarce collectors' items in the US. By the 1940s, most artists had given up on the genre. The most devoted practitioners, Masereel and Ward, moved on to other work for which they became better known; Masereel's obituary did not even mention his wordless novels. Many wordless novels remained out of print until

6120-613: Was a son of Methodist minister, political organizer and radical social activist Harry F. Ward , the first chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union on its founding in 1920. His best-known books are Gods' Man and his Caldecott -winning children's story, The Biggest Bear . Ward was born on June 26, 1905, in Chicago, Illinois . His father, Harry F. Ward , was born in Chiswick , England, in 1873;

6205-453: Was accessible to socially conscious artists who wanted to tell wordless stories of the working classes. In 15th-century medieval Europe, woodcut block books were printed as religious guides; particularly popular was the Ars moriendi . The early 16th century saw block books disappear in favour of books printed with the movable type of Gutenberg 's presses. Woodcut printing persisted into

6290-470: Was also the most commercially successful, particularly in Germany, where copies of his books sold in the hundreds of thousands throughout the 1920s and had introductions by writers such as Max Brod , Hermann Hesse , and Thomas Mann . Masereel's books drew strongly on Expressionist theatre and film in their exaggerated but representational artwork with strong contrasts of black and white. Masereel's commercial success led other artists to try their hands at

6375-508: Was born in June 1903, and a third, Muriel Ward, was born February 18, 1907. Soon after birth, Ward developed tuberculosis ; his parents took him north of Sault Ste. Marie in Canada for several months to recover. He partly recovered, and continued to suffer from symptoms of the disease throughout his childhood, as well as from inner ear and mastoid infections. In the hope of improving his health,

6460-681: Was custom designed and printed. Every facet of the book, such as the paper, type fonts and vignettes, grew out of the collaborative decisions of a small group of writers, artists and editors, and represented an affirmation of handwork. While running Equinox, Ward also took on leadership roles in the Artists Union , the American Artists Congress and the Federal Arts Project of the Works Project Administration (WPA). In 1939, Ward became Supervisor of

6545-482: Was enforced as the only official language in public life, resulting in a Francization of the elites and, to a lesser extent, the middle classes. The Dutch king allowed the use of both Dutch and French dialects as administrative languages in the Flemish provinces. He also enacted laws to reestablish Dutch in schools. The language policy was not the only cause of the secession; the Roman Catholic majority viewed

6630-558: Was estimated that there could have been around 1,600 Flemish in Sandwich, today almost half of its total population. London , Norwich and North Walsham , however, were the most popular destinations, and the nickname for Norwich City F.C. fans, Canaries, is derived from the fact that many of the Norfolk weavers kept pet canaries. The town of Whitefield , near Bury, also claims to owe its name to Flemish cloth weavers that settled in

6715-436: Was his most popular. Ward used wood engraving rather than woodcutting and varied image sizes from page to page. Gods' Man sold 20,000 copies, and other American artists followed up on this success with their own wordless novels in the 1930s. Cartoonist Milt Gross 's He Done Her Wrong (1930) was a parody of the genre; the book uses varying panel designs akin to those of comics: the action sometimes takes place outside

6800-437: Was introduced to Europe in the 15th century. It requires an artist to draw or transfer an image to a printing block; the areas not to be printed (the white areas) are cut away, leaving raised areas to which ink is applied to make prints. The monochrome prints were usually in black ink, and occasionally in a different colour such as sienna or orange. Relief printing is an inexpensive but labour-intensive printing technique; it

6885-530: Was particularly influenced by Mueller. While browsing a bookstall in Leipzig, Ward chanced across two important wordless novels: Flemish artist Frans Masereel 's The Sun (1919), a story told in sixty-three woodcuts without captions, and Otto Nückel's Destiny (1926), a lead-cut narrative that is much darker and more naturalistic than Masereel's novel. Ward returned to New York in September 1927 and met

6970-588: Was popular in Germany, and was collected in three volumes. Antonio Prohías 's textless Mad magazine feature Spy vs. Spy began in 1961. Cartoonist Will Eisner (1917–2005) first came upon the work of Lynd Ward in 1938. Eisner was an early pioneer in the American comic book industry and saw in Ward's work a greater potential for comics. Eisner's ambitions were rebuffed by his peers, who saw comics as no more than low-status entertainment. Eisner withdrew from

7055-510: Was the Belgian Frans Masereel 's 25 Images of a Man's Passion , published in 1918. The German Otto Nückel and other artists followed Masereel's example. Lynd Ward brought the genre to the United States in 1929 when he produced Gods' Man , which inspired other American wordless novels and a parody in 1930 by cartoonist Milt Gross with He Done Her Wrong . Following an early-1930s peak in production and popularity,

7140-483: Was the most popular silent visual medium of the time: silent films . Panning, zooming, slapstick, and other filmic techniques are found in the books; Ward said that in creating a wordless novel, he first had to visualize it in his head as a silent film. Typically, wordless novels used relief printing techniques such as woodcuts , wood engraving , metalcuts , or linocuts . One of the oldest printing techniques, relief printing has its origins in 8th-century China and

7225-611: Was warmly received. Penn State's Special Collections Library has also become the repository for much Lynd Ward material, and may continue to receive material from Ward family collections. He won a number of awards, including the Joseph Pennel Award at the Library of Congress in 1948 for wood engraving, the Caldecott Medal for The Biggest Bear in 1953 (with a runner-up for America's Ethan Allen in 1950), and

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