Pratique de la Caricature – Suite d’exercices méthodiques pour apprendre la caricature – Practical Exercises in Learning Caricature by Fernand Lienaux and Genly. Published by Labor, Brussels, [1944] – a caricature booklet used in antisemitic propaganda, depicting Jewish faces as analogous to various animals.
Instructional booklet for learning caricature drawing through practical methods, including practice pages, illustrations for copying and analysis, and brief textual explanations on facial structure and expressions. Features hands-on exercises for understanding caricature construction, how to develop character features and emotions. Based on the illustration-teaching method developed by F. Lienaux in 1923, which aimed to provide practical guidance for drawing principles inspired by early artistic sources.
The booklet includes, among other things, a section with practical instructions on how to create caricatures of human portraits based on the outlines of various animal faces – chimpanzee, donkey, horse, and others. Under the heading “Analogies Between Human Physiognomy and That of Animals, ” the author notes that the “doctrine” of drawing human faces resembling those of animals was invented by B. Porta, a 16th-century Neapolitan scholar. He was the first to link human traits to animal instincts based on facial structure. His successors, including Charles Le Brun and Ch. Chack in the 19th century, developed theories connecting male character traits to facial features analogous to those of various animals. Later, Arthur de Gobineau built an entire racial theory based on this analogy. Drawing on their writings, the author transitions into practical instruction on how to create caricatures of human faces that parallel animal physiognomy. He analyzes the facial features of predatory animals (such as a sharp line near the inner corner of the eye) and explains how to transfer that element into the human face. He also demonstrates how to adapt characteristic markers from the faces of dogs and monkeys into human portraits. The examples presented here appeared in various publications in the 1920s and were immediately appropriated by proponents of Nazi racial theory, who used them to illustrate the inferiority of the Jewish race and the superiority of the Aryan race. The human face drawn to resemble that of an eagle, depicted side by side with the animal in this very booklet, as well as the faces resembling a horse, dog, or monkey, were reproduced in the works of Nazi race theorists such as Hans F. K. Günther, and later Julius Streicher in the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, with added “Jewish features” such as a beard and sidecurls, in order to emphasize the similarity between the Jew and the animal, and to provoke a natural revulsion in the viewer toward a creature portrayed as more beast than man. From there, it was only a short step for these illustrations to appear in Nazi propaganda, which aimed to portray the Jew as a Untermensch (“subhuman”), in daily newspapers, antisemitic postcards, and propaganda imagery showing Russian-Polish Jews as parasites, Jews with animal faces displayed in zoo cages, the fictional “Levy family” portrayed as lions, and many others all of which borrowed directly from this analogy.
Booklets of this kind, which found countless expressions in various publications throughout Nazi Germany, were intended to condition hearts and minds to eliminate any sense of compassion toward Jews. Ultimately, they served as a psychological preparation that transformed the idea of the “Final Solution” into reality during the Holocaust of European Jewry.
63, [1] pages. 27 cm. Very good condition.
