Albuquerque morning journal. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1903-1926, 1921-10-02
HOW DOES JIGGS LOOK IN HIS HOME?
~o- -o- 90 90 90 90 90 90 90
GLANCE AT MMANUS APARTMENT!
90 90 90 % % 90 % %
NO MORE POKER AT DINTY MOORE'S!

he used to draw them anywhere,
mostly in a Park Row newspaper
office, and in a general air of COM
motion and urgency. He says now
tnat that's bad for art--that to ask
man to keep his thoughts free
in a place crowded with editors,
art managers, argument, cigarette
smoke and horse play and anna
teur oratory is like asking man
with ten children to make his will
at a football game.
You've got to be in quiet place
by yourself, he maintains, if you
want to do yourself any sort of
reasonable justice as serious ar
fist. Because what the nOnprofes-
sional mind accepts and describes
as comic art is serious art in the
fullest meaning and extension OF
that term, the most eXacting and
eHhausting and uncompromisingly
difficult art known to the whole
business of being an artist. The
dogma to the effect that he who
laughs last laughs best holds all
the way through the making of
humorous pictures for the dear
public. Let the laughter die down
for the space of gesture in one
of the pictured characters or be
wanting in the roll of an eye or
the twist of a lip, and instead OF
merriment there's melancholy, ana
nobody but the artist is to blame.
And above all the last laugh at the
last point in the last minute of the
last picture in series has got to
be the best laugh and ring absO-
lutely true to life. If it isn't the
whole affair flivvers.
And McManus perched at his
high window comprehends this,
and there are days when he takes
the work of half a day off his
drawing board, tears it carefully
into small pieces and goes out to
a theater or perhaps only for a
walk in the park and devotes him
self to forgetting all about what
he has been at for hours. Just how
he arrives at the compositions
which do please him all the way
through he doesn't know exactly.
lie says there's a right way and a
wrong way to do it, but there isn't
any formula.
"Sometimes," he explains in try
ing to explain at all, "a grand idea
hits you. a friend says something
or a guard on the subway makes
an observation or a notion comes
floating in the window out Of the
park and you say to yourself, this
is It,
'And so you set up your draw
ing board and buckle to work. For
a while it's fine, everything seems
to drop into place. the characters
take on life and walk, the picture
seems to gather momentum as 1t
goes and then
"You stop and wonder what's
up. Suddenly it's become a little
hard to go on and you rest your
mind with something else for
twenty minutes. Then you come
back and have another look at
your work. You don't know what's
the matter with it except that alb
solutely something is. And you
throw that away. And then next
morning you settle down again
with not an idea on earth and
without any preparation at all the
thing that baffled you yesterday
gets into gear and comes out a
thing that balances and justifies
itself like a Swiss watch-or else
something altogether different
axes hold of you and you go
ahead ahead and do that and to
your utter surprise it's good. Yes.
being an artist is like laying
bricks. You've got to know how
to lay them and above all how not
to spill them
Serious artists vary In the
sources from which they draw
their inspiration in the best sense
Of that word. McManus says the
only kind worth having is the one
you're married to.
Mrs. McManus is an artist on
her own account. She has a beau
tiful soprano voice, and is well
known to concert goers.