MI – MASSES.

Posted on August 2, 2010
Filed Under 1910s, Archive Road Trip, Graphics

The Masses, a magazine.

With the appearance in America of The Masses in 1911, a new alliance was formed between art and politics. Originally established as an earnest but ultimately dull socialist magazine, The Masses was taken over in 1912 by artists whose commitment to a new artistic age was only equalled by their support of socialist political causes. Modeled after the lavishly illustrated European satiric journals, Simplicissimus and L’Assiette au Beurre, the artists hired Max Eastman as editor who moved the magazine away from socialist “dogma” toward a more far-ranging program condemning racism, supporting women’s rights, and promoting the work of a galaxy of writers and thinkers, including John Dewey, Carl Sandburg, Amy Lowell, John Reed, and Sherwood Anderson.

via Michigan State University