The Indignant Eye

The Indignant Eye is a 1969 book by Ralph E. Shikes that illustrates and explains political cartoons and sketches over a five hundred year period in Europe and the U.S.  The 400 illustrations are a wonderful narrative filter for history telling because it focuses on the concerns of people living in those times at those places.

Shikes commentary contains many insights.  Here's one on page 200 of the Beacon Press edition in regards to the century of revolt that began with the French Revolution: "the Rousseauist concept of political equality - the belief that power in a democracy stems from the people - was still ranged against the conviction of the church, the army, the higher bureaucracy, the aristocrats, and the wealthier bourgeoisie that authority must come from above and that special privilege was justifiable."

This theme of class, a stratification of human society that is pre-ordained by God, or genetics, continues to this day. It was at the heart of the eugenics movement in the U.S. where 60,000 people were sterilized over a fifty year period from 1909 to 1960.  The idea of the saved and the unsaved remains a key feature of some Christian churches.

Included in the book are sketches by prominent artists Van Gogh, Miro, and Picasso and leading printmakers and caricaturists Honore Daumier and Jacques Callot.  The book is an entertaining and informative journey through half a millenium of folly, outrage and misery.