The art of Art

The thing is, what I am usually looking for I am not quite sure I want to find, and, as such is often the case, I happen to walk away empty handed but with a mind full of new images and thoughts and possibilities of new acquisitions.  This happened to me when I dropped into the Argosy Bookstore, that one perfect bookstore from my memory and my youth (despite the tragic fact that I have only ever purchased one thing from there, and even then it was only a dollar mystery paperback, but one which I needed for my as yet incomplete Lord Peter collection) while I was on the prowl for a complete set of the Anthony Powell books (the twelve volumes, not the collected ones, and in hardback, although the paperback Fontana series with the amusing covers are quite good too) but no luck was to be had (not that I expected it, really, and, quite honestly, plopping down a thousand plus dollars for a set is not the most attractive thing to do for me at the moment with my eye set on many other materialistic conquests).  But, really, I do digress.  The whole point of this claptrap is that in the outside display windows were some rather droll cartoons/illustrations by one Art Young (a name wholly unfamiliar to me) but who I thought I would jot down.  

this "society" picture was the one which caught my eye.

According to his autobiography, he writes:


I am antagonistic to the money-making fetish because it sidetracks our natural selves, leaving us no alternative but to accept the situation and take any kind of work for a weekly wage [...] We are caught and hurt by the system, and the more sensitive we are to life's highest values the harder it is to bear the abuse.


Now, you know that humor is humor, social critique is social critique, but that statement speaks directly to this idle fellow who pens these few lines.