11
MEET THE CARTOONIST
Q: When did you first discover your
artistic talent?
A: I suppose it was when I was in the
second grade and won a prize for a
clay sculpture of an English
Setter. In high school I was
appointed art editor of the school
paper for which I also produced
many cartoons.
What sparked
cartooning?
your interest in
A: I was probably most strongly
influenced by journalism; both my
father and uncle were in the
newspaper business in Texas. My
Uncle Walter was editor of the Ft.
Worth Press and through him I first
encountered Walt Kelly, creator of
"Pogo", who remains, I think, one
of the finest cartoon artists who
ever lived. I became fascinated
with the idea of becoming a
cartoonist though I never much
pursued it. Now that I think of it,
I did some editorial cartoons for
the Washington and Lee University
newspaper in the 50' s and political
cartoons for the Washington
newsletter, Politics , in the 60'
s
and early 70 s. I have been doing
anthropology cartoons in the
privacy of my study for years. I
guess I have several hundred shoved
in various desk drawers.
Q: Did you pursue your interest in art
in college?
A: I got into fine arts at the
University of Colorado and fancied
myself a painter for a while.
After a couple of semesters I quit
school thinking I'd get into the
art world and applied for a job at
the Guggenheim Museum in New York
City. I started out as a carpenter
(continued on p. 12)
Robert L. Humphrey, Professor of
Anthropology at George Washington
University, was department chairman for
ten years and founded and was first
director of the university's Museum
Studies Program. For several years
Humphrey has conducted a field school
in MesoAmerica, visiting 20 or 30 sites
of different ages in various
environmental zones looking at the
relationships between environment and
art, architecture, culture, and
socio-political systems. Humphrey has
researched and published in the areas
of Arctic archeology, early man,
Pre-Llano cultures of the Americas,
prehistory of Washington, D.C., and the
MesoAmerican ballgame. In addition to
being a fellow of the Explorers Club,
Humphrey, his wife Johanna, and son Rob
enjoy sailing their little sloop,
"Golondrina." (Editor Ann Kaupp
recently interviewed him for
Anthro. Notes. )
12
(continued from p. 11)
and ended up a conservator. It was
a fascinating experience. In those
days it was a smaller institution
and New York seemed smaller too.
The museum brought me in contact
with many artists including Franz
Klein, Jackson Pollock, and Marcel
Duchamp. I met Duchamp when he
came in one day to fix a hole that
I made with a Yankee screwdriver in
his "Nude Descending a Staircase."
I later returned to the University
of Colorado to major in art history
thinking it would be a good idea to
have a college degree, even as a
potential painter. However, my
courses didn't satisfactorily
address all the questions I was
trying to answer about creativity,
the role art plays in society, and
the artist as a social critic.
Q: How did you happen to switch to
anthropology as a career goal?
A: I don't know if I should tell you
this, but a painter friend of mine
and I were sitting in my little
studio apartment in Washington.
Both of us had spent the day
painting and drinking beer, and we
had run out of beer and paint. We
didn't have any money except for a
jar of pennies I had saved. With
this jar we went to what was then
the Lehigh Bar on M Street. We sat
at a booth and ordered a couple of
beers from an unsavory waitress who
usually worked there. She would,
for example, put peeled hard-boiled
eggs in her pocket, and when she
brought them to you they were
covered with lint. When she gave us
the bill I got my pennies out, and
she said, "The hell with you guys,
I'm not counting those pennies."
We were really at a loss. A fellow
at the bar turned around and said,
"I'll buy those boys a beer." He
turned out to be Don Hartle,
anthropology professor at American
University. We spent the evening
drinking beer and talking about
anthropology, and I got to thinking
that perhaps anthropology might
give me the answers I was seeking.
Under Hartle' s influence I enrolled
in more and more anthropology
courses, and I ended up being his
teaching assistant. Although I
graduated magna cum laude in Art
History, I made the decision to
attend graduate school at the
University of New Mexico, since I
missed the Southwest. It was there
that I became more and more
interested in archeology.
Q: Where did your interest in
archeology lead you?
A: After a couple of field sessions ii
Southwest archeology, I reckoned I
had had enough of pot sherds and
became interested in early man. I
was at work on my Masters thesis on
pre-projec tile point cultures in
New Mexico, which were rather
controversial at that time. Jack
Campbell, the new department
chairman, gave me the idea of not
only going straight for my
doctorate, but also of looking for
evidence of early man outside ol
New Mexico in northern Alaska where
no surveys had previously beet
done. In 1965 I took off with a
field assistant and two Eskimos
from the Arctic Research Lab at Pt.
Barrow and surveyed the Utukok
River Valley [in the northwest
corner of Alaska] , where a
geologist had found a fluted point.
We found about 25 archeological
sites and turned up a lot of
material that looked like European
Upper Paleolithic along with sites
containing later Eskimo artifacts.
The next summer, with Dennis
Stanford as my field assistant, we
found fluted points which looked
like Llano complex further south,
and that formed the basis of my
doctoral dissertation. I continue
to believe that Clovis did not
develop and originate in the
13
interior of North America, but that
it came in as a discrete culture at
some point around 15,000 B.C. and
diffused south from there.
Does your interest in early man
explain your frequent depiction of
cavemen in your cartoons for
Anthro. Notes ?
I suppose it came naturally with
the field. I started drawing
cavemen years ago when I was
teaching an introductory course in
anthropology. These absurd
statements in the introductory
texts sprang out at me, and I could
immediately see a picture in my
mind. The caveman, of course, is
me. What would I do in that
circumstance? How do you flute a
projectile point—using a
rhinoceros horn connected to a
rhinoceros seemed like a perfectly
plausible idea to me. How do human
beings get the ideas to do some of
the things they do? It was
thinking about that in the intro-
ductory course that began getting
me off on that track.
Do you think about your
Anthro. Notes readers' reaction to
your work?
Yes, I think about it. I have
tried to come up with something
that would be humorous without
being intentionally controversial
or offensive, and almost inevitably
I offend somebody. The whole basis
of satire is exaggerating some
distinctive characteristic that the
owner would just as soon forget. I
think I would be drawing different
things if I were submitting them to
the New Yorker , for instance,
because there would be a little
more latitude. One of the things I
think is a problem with the field
of anthropology is that we often
take ourselves too seriously. I do
like to poke fun at anthropolo-
gists, obviously, and Lord knows we
need some fun poked at us. When we
lose our sense of humor I think we
lose our complete perspective on
any culture we are looking at, and
we begin to believe we are near the
TRUTH and that begins to approach
something like paranoia to me.
Has anyone else influenced your
work or your interest in cartoons
besides Walt Kelly?
Oh yes ... Ronald Searle, Robert
Osborne, Al Capp ... dozens of
others. Virgil Partch pen name VIP,
creator of "Big George," was an
important early influence.
Trudeau's ("Doonesbury") ideas are
extraordinary, but I am not crazy
about his drawings. I am an
assiduous reader of cartoon books.
I have subscribed to the New Yorker
for years, and I suppose I have a
complete set of Kelly's books. I
like Larson very much, have one
hanging on my wall—wish I had done
it. I met Gary Larson three years
ago. and he gave me great
encouragement. He told me about
going down to the San Francisco
Chronicle one day with six
drawings, and they immediately
bought them and he was on his way.
It wasn' t the 20 years of grinding
away that you often hear from
people such as George Booth, who is
another favorite of mine. I think
cartooning is the thing I enjoy
most in life right now.
Do you think there is room for more
artistic expression in the field of
anthropology?
Anthropology has provided an
enormous wealth of subject matter
for cartoons. I don't understand
why there are not more novels,
plays, etc. This is one reason why
Colin Turnbull, who has introduced
drama to the field, and I have
become such close friends. I'd like
(continued on p. 15)
15
"
(continued from p. 13)
to see anthropologists become more
creative, to use the stuff of the
discipline in new ways. Cartoons
are a very immediate way of
influencing people's ideas. If we
can publish a book with some good
credible information and illustrate
it with cartoons, it might be a
real boon. For some reason, the
idea of popularizing the field has
always been frightening to
anthropologists. It is a shame
because it's such an interesting
field and enables you to encompass
anything—be it psychology,
medicine, bones and stones, or art.
Q: Has anthropology answered your
questions concerning art?
A: Anthropology has expanded my
perception about art and has
enabled me to begin, at least, to
ask the right questions, but I am
not sure if I am going to find the
answers any time soon. I hope not!
I don' t think anthropologists have
yet explored creativity in art in
the depth it deserves. Present
studies are so specific and narrow,
and yet here is a society that is
producing art all around us all the
time. Why do we call it art? What
is art? Why this impulse to do art
anyway?