WWII Poster "The Battle-wise Infantryman..."(Schlaikjer 1944, OWI, USGPO) MINT!!

Description: WWII Poster "The Battle-wise Infantryman...is CAREFUL of what he says or writes. HOW ABOUT YOU?'(Schlaikjer, 1944, OWI, USGPO) Absolutely MINT untouched condition!! Still folded just as it left the U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., in 1944!! + PERFECT, museum-grade condition! + ZERO pin holes, tape residue, fold separations, edge tears, fading, toning, stains, markings, or damage of any kind! + Dimensions: 20" x 28" (51 x 71 cm.) + Striking 'homefront poster produced by the Office of War Information (OWI), stressing the need for homefront security and the ever present danger of spies here Stateside.+ The portrait of a grizzled 'battle-wise infantryman' (either Army or Marine) was done arguably by one of the most gifted portrait and commercial artists, commissioned by the War Department: Jes Wilhelm Schlaikjer! The image of the head and shoulders of a seasoned ("battle-wise") infantrymen is rendered with great accuracy in against a ghastly green background. The bold, san-serif text on the bottom quarter of the poster, on a 'blood red' background, warns the viewer to do as the front-line combatant does: to exercise the utmost caution in discussing matters relating to production or the location or deployment of troops and materiel The mature Infantryman in olive drab herringbone utilities is facing the viewer and is wearing an M1 Helmet, Fixed Bail over the early fabric-covered fiber M1 Liner made by Hawley Procucts Co., as evidenced by its thick rim. The steel helmet shell has a bullet hole and shrapnel hole over the right temple area. In hs grimy hands he's gripping his .30 cal. M1 Garand service rifle with the early 16 in. M1 Bayonet fixed for close combat. The battle-wise Infantryman......is CAREFUL of what he says or writesHOW ABOUT YOU? + The poster is artists signed on the lower left corner of the image, SCHLAIKJER, 1944.+ Printer's data on the bottom edge reads, U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1944-O-60-2442 DISTRIBUTED FOR THE ISSUING AGENCY BY O.W.I. + On the reverse is printed the return address and postal regulation, indicating that the poster was intended to be mailed without an envelope to the designated recipients, e.g. factories, businesses, government offices, Post Offices. WAR DEPARTMENT WASHINGTON 25, D.C.---OFFICIAL BUSINESS---Notice to Postmaster: If not delievered return to 33 West Lake St., Chicago, Ill.---PENALTY FOR PRIVATE USETO AVOID PAYMENT OF POSTAGE$300 ***** Jes Wilhelm Schlaikjer American, 1897–1982 Jes Wilhelm Schlaikjer was an American artist, most known for his recruitment and war bonds posters during World War II. Schlaikjer was born during a storm at sea on the maiden voyage of the SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. His parents, Erich Hansen Schlaikjer and Clara Ryser, were emigrating from Germany to New York. Supposedly they, at first, named their son, Wilhelm Parker Schlaikjer, after the ship and the ship's American pilot, William Parker. His father was a successful salesman of drug remedies. Erich and Clara were married in Germany in 1896. The Schlaikjer family lived in Ohio and Johnstown City, Kentucky before settling down on a farm in Carter township, Tripp County, South Dakota in 1907. Jes Wilhelm was the firstborn of five children: Arthur, Oscar, Hugo, and Erich. From an early age, Schlaikjer enjoyed drawing and was known for his talent in school. At first, he enjoyed painting the horses he saw roaming the plains. His cartoons were featured in a local newspaper in Carter, South Dakota when he was 13 years old. Later in his teen years, Schlaikjer worked for a Chicago newspaper as an artist and cartoonist. After graduating from high school, Schlaikjer enlisted in the Army. During World War I, he served in the Signal Corps of the Army 1st Division in France as a telegrapher. After some time he "rose in rank" to Chief Receiving Officer at the Layfayette Radio Station in Paris. This was the "main continental communication link for the Allied forces." When the war was over, Schlaikjer decided to stay in France. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Lyons. On June 3, 1920, he returned to his parents' farm in South Dakota. During this time he worked as a telegrapher for the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincey railroad line. In September, Schlaikjer moved to Chicago and studied at the School of the Art Institute. Here, he met illustrator Dean Cornwell and painter Harvey Dunn. Schlaikjer studied under Robert Henri. Schlaikjer's illustrations appeared in various magazines, including Scribner's, Collier's, American Legion Monthly, Redbook, Woman's Home Companion, and Cosmopolitan. He often painted covers for pulp magazines such as Black Mask, Adventure, Everybody's Magazine, Frontier Stories, and West. Schlaikjer's signature on these covers were always scribbled in a splat that contained his initials and the date. This may have been an intentional cover-up to disguise his work without "jeopardizing" his career with the more "slick" magazines. In 1926, Schlaikjer earned the first Hallgarten Prize at the National Academy of Design Annual Exhibition. He received this award for a portrait of his wife titled "The Pink Cameo." On November 21, 1928, he won the $1000 first prize from the National Academy of Design. This same year he was the winner of the first Altman Prize for the best figure painting by an American-born citizen for "South Dakota Evening." In 1932, Schlaikjer was again awarded the Hallgarten Prize for his painting titled "The Little Ones." In October 1930, Schlaikjer opened an art studio near the Art Students League. In 1932, he began teaching at the National Academy of Design. He was also made an honorary member of the school. In 1942, he was chosen as the War Department artist during World War II. Schlaikjer painted posters for recruitment, War Bonds, the Red Cross, the Infantry, Signal Corps, Military Police, Army Air Force, Marines, Navy, and Women's Army Corps. He was also the portraitist for military leaders, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, and George S. Patton. At the time, he had a studio in The Pentagon. These portraits were hung in the U.S. Army War College when located in Washington D.C. After the war, Schlaikjer set up a portrait studio in Washington D.C. In 1947, he taught at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts. In 1948, Schlaikjer's membership in the National Academy of Design was elevated from associate member to full membership. Schlaikjer had work exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. His historical portrait of Abraham Lincoln working on the Emancipation Proclamation remains one of the few paintings depicting Lincoln managing this task at the Soldier's Home. He was a member of the National Academy of Design, the Grand Central Art Gallery, the Artists Guild, the American Legion, the Armor and Arms Club, the First Division Society, and the Salamagundi Club. Schlaikjer met his wife, Gladys de Groot, while studying at the Art Institute. They married on September 14, 1922, and moved to New York City soon after. They lived in the Bronx as well. The couple had two children: Jes Erich (born in 1924) and Helen Jean (born in 1926). His son became an electronic engineer and engineering writer, and his daughter was an artist. Schlaikjer began blacksmithing in the early 1930s. He first learned how to make horseshoes, and it turned into a hobby. He forged iron and made medieval armor, swords, shields, cutlery, and guns. During this time, the tools to make armor could not be bought, so Schlaikjer had to make all of his own tools. On August 21, 1982, Schlaikjer died of Parkinson's disease at the age of 84. *****Every Citizen a Soldier: World War II Posters on the American Home FrontThe Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History William L. Bird Jr., Curator, Division of Politcal History, and Harry R. Rubenstein, Chair and Curator, Division of Political History, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian, curated the exhibition Produce for Victory: Posters on the American Home Front and published Design for Victory: World War II Posters on the American Home Front (1998).World War II posters helped to mobilize a nation. Inexpensive, accessible, and ever-present, the poster was an ideal agent for making victory the personal mission of every citizen. Government agencies, businesses, and private organizations issued an array of poster images, linking the military front with the home front and calling upon every American to boost production at work and at home. Deriving their appearance from the fine and commercial arts and expressing the needs and goals of the people who created them, posters conveyed more than simple slogans. Wartime posters, which addressed every citizen as a combatant in a war of production, united the power of art with the power of advertising. Their message was that the factory and the home were also battlefields. Poster campaigns aimed not only to increase productivity in factories, but to enlarge people’s views of their responsibilities in a time of Total War. Government officials incorporated the poster medium into their plans to convert the American economy to all-out war production during the defense emergency of 1941. Plant managers, company artists, paper manufacturers, and others quickly followed suit, creating and posting incentive images that eventually dwarfed the efforts of the government in variety and number. Those who advocated the use of posters believed they directly reflected the spirit of a community. As one government official put it, “We want to see posters on fences, on the walls of buildings, on village greens, on boards in front of the City Hall and the Post Office, in hotel lobbies, in the windows of vacant stores—not limited to the present neat conventional frames which make them look like advertising, but shouting at people from unexpected places with all the urgency which this war demands.” “Ideally,” another confirmed, “it should be possible to post [all over] America every night. People should wake up to find a visual message everywhere.” However, officials also expressed a growing uneasiness with the large number of posters emerging from non-governmental sources and the resulting lack of control over content and distribution. As one government official privately explained, “You just can’t let all the painters in the country paint their heads off and make a lot of posters and then slap them up somewhere.” After Japan’s December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, complaints about government poster design intensified. To control the content and imagery of war messages, the government created the Office of War Information (OWI) in June 1942. Among its responsibilities, the OWI sought to review and approve the design and distribution of government posters. Eventually, contending groups within the OWI clashed over poster design. While some embraced the poster to demonstrate the practical value and utility of art, others hoped to use the poster to demonstrate the power of advertising. The OWI established systems of distribution modeled upon the elaborate volunteer organizations set up during the First World War. National distribution utilized organizations and trades such as post offices, railroad stations, schools, restaurants, and retail store groups. At the local level, OWI arranged distribution through volunteer defense councils, whose members selected appropriate posting places, established posting routes, ordered posters from supply catalogs, and took the “Poster Pledge.” The “Poster Pledge” urged volunteers to “avoid waste,” treat posters “as real war ammunition,” “never let a poster lie idle,” and “make every one count to the fullest extent.” Over time the OWI developed six war information themes for major producers of mass media entertainment: The Nature of the Enemy—general or detailed descriptions of this enemy, such as, he hates religion, persecutes labor, kills Jews and other minorities, smashes home life, debases women, etc.The Nature of our Allies—the United Nations theme, our close ties with Britain, Russia, and China, Mexicans and Americans fighting side by side on Bataan and on the battlefronts.The Need to Work—the countless ways in which Americans must work if we are to win the war, in factories, on ships, in mines, in fields, etc.The Need to Fight—the need for fearless waging of war on land, sea, and skies, with bullets, bombs, bare hands, if we are to win.The Need to Sacrifice—the need for Americans to give up all luxuries and devote all spare time to help win the war. The Americans—what we are fighting for: the four freedoms, the principles of the Atlantic Charter, democracy, and an end to discrimination against races and religionsAs the war progressed, the government’s desire to promote expertise in poster design and distribution coexisted uneasily with the democratic rhetoric that embellished the medium’s war contribution. For many, the idea of posters made-by-all and seen-by-all better fit the democratic message the government hoped to convey. Yet advertising professionals succeeded in shaping the appearance of the posters after 1943. Gone was the esthetic of “war art” and in its place stood the conventions of commercial illustration. In an attempt to speak to the lower third of the American population, commercial illustration rejected symbolism and abstract images for literal representation and emotional pull. If, as critics charged, the turning over of poster design to Madison Avenue art directors made government posters as bland and inoffensive as advertising, in most instances this was in fact what the OWI’s poster clients desired: a selective reality of sacrifice and struggle without troublesome detail. Across Washington, officials of the US Office of Emergency Management’s War Production Board (WPB) specialized in production-incentive images for factories. The WPB led the way in contracting for posters with commercial illustrators and designers. Distributing posters and streamers free for the asking, the WPB only asked in return that factory managers “select your posting spots with care, and stick to these posting spots . . . use your imagination in displaying posters and in building up exhibits composed of two, three, or a dozen different kinds of posters.” Series after series of posters directed employees to get to work, anything less was tantamount to treason. Employers did not necessarily expect their workforce to take all poster slogans literally. Rather, businesses placed these displays at the scene of production to create an atmosphere of unity and urgency. Posters called upon workers to conserve, keep their breaks short, and follow their supervisors’ instructions. The main thrust was to convince workers, many of whom participated in the violent labor conflicts of the 1930s, that they were no longer just employees of GM or US Steel, but rather they were Uncle Sam’s “production soldiers” on the industrial front line of the war. The posters did not carry the message that hard work would result in personal or company gain. The motivation was purely patriotic duty. Many posters also played directly on the guilt of those who were not in the military by reminding workers that, if they were not risking their lives on the battlefield, the least they could do was keep their bathroom breaks short. Posters castigated workers for punching in late, taking long breaks, damaging the company’s equipment, and even drinking after work. Artists turned what had been considered common infractions against a company into acts of betrayal, murder, and disloyalty against the nation! The posters of J. Howard Miller for the labor-management committee at the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company are good examples of how companies blended traditional themes of workplace discipline with the imagery of sacrifice and patriotism. Patriotic workers were expected to respect their superiors in the factory. While the now-famous image of a woman with raised arm proclaimed “We Can Do It!,” another Westinghouse poster clarified what “It” meant—“Any Questions About Your Work? . . . Ask Your Supervisor.” US Office of War InformationThe posters also served to help reconstruct a positive image of business and American capitalism that had been badly shaken during the 1930s. Through aggressive advertising campaigns public relation specialists during the war turned this image around. Yet even the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) found this bragging about America’s industrial might excessive at times. Toward the end of the war the NAM vice president noted that, “if this trend kept up, the boys in the foxholes would, on their return, be forced to employ a press agent to convince the public that soldiers, too, had something to do with our victory.” With the war’s successful conclusion in sight, posters turned toward idealized images of the comforts and conveniences of life far from the factory scene of production. At war’s end the poster returned to the familiar confines of political campaigns and bulletin boards.

Price: 247.5 USD

Location: Little Rock, Arkansas

End Time: 2025-02-06T19:58:23.000Z

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