Case 7
So your father has been to the much-advertised Century of Progress. *
H. P. Lovecraft to Robert Bloch, 1933 July 22
Showcasing Bloch’s larger scale drawings as well as the materials he used, the items in this case point to a specific place and time revealing the tension between poverty and progress. The untitled illustration may be the “hellish sea of faces” that Lovecraft praises in the letter dated July 22, 1922.† Bloch drew these monstrous countenances on the back of an advertisement for Fels-Naptha laundry soap. On the reverse of a poster promoting a Jewish heritage event at the Century of Progress International Exposition, a world’s fair held in Chicago in 1933-34, he composed a representation of a crustacean-like extraterrestrial modeled after Lovecraft’s Mi-go entities. As a child of the Great Depression, costly hobbies were not an option. Thus, much of Bloch’s artwork re-uses found or household materials for drawing surfaces.
As a public forum for the display of technological innovation, the Century of Progress International Exposition, with its motto “Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Adapts,” appalled Lovecraft. Discovering the promotional poster for the event on the back of one of Bloch’s drawings incited him to passionately explain his desire for an alternative future that did not dismantle the past in the name of progress. His antiquarianism surfaces regularly in his correspondence, such as the reference to his Georgian abode in this letter to Bloch or his self portrait as a periwigged man of the eighteenth century in the letter to J. Vernon Shea. Lovecraft’s preservationist mindset poses an interesting counterpart to his cosmic ideology, and this tension between the traditional and the new, the familiar and the unknown is often pronounced in his fiction.
- * “So your father has been to the much-advertised Century of Progress. The wretchedly futuristic architecture of those damned exhibition buildings would be enough to keep me away even if I had the cash to get there! I dissent absolutely from the position of those who welcome a new machine-culture involving a complete break with the past. To me there is nothing really civilised in large-scale organisation + spectacular material development—while the modern worship of more speed + quantity strikes me as being downright decadent. I would prefer a simple, frugal, plain-living society of highly-developed taste + dominantly intellectual + aesthetic activities—a society conscious of its past, + deriving from unbroken traditions a mellow richness not otherwise attainable.”
HPL to Bloch; July 22, 1933 - † “Congratulations on those two drawings! You certainly are crowding Klarkash-Ton for the wreath of upas—+ you really come close to tying Bernard Dwyer so far as fantastic conceptions go. The Yuggoth-entity is a genuine knockout, + that hellish sea of faces is really remarkable—you blend the masses and colors with tremendous skill. I’d like to have several rolls of that for wall-paper—fitting up one of the attic rooms of my new Georgian abode as a shrine of horror (with other appropriate hangings and grisly objects d’art) wherein to receive certain select visitors of macabre tastes.”
Case Contents:
- Robert Bloch (Chicago, Illinois 1917-1994 Los Angeles, California)
Untitled - RARE 3-S PS3523.O82 Z98 L7
- H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft (Providence, Rhode Island 1890-1937 Providence, Rhode Island)
Letter to Robert Bloch
1933 July 22
Autograph letter signed (two pages on one sheet)
John Hay Library. Howard P. Lovecraft Collection, 1894-1971. MS.Lovecraft
First and second page of a two-page letter written from Providence, Rhode Island. Text from page one reproduced. - Poster for Jewish Day at the Century of Progress International Exposition (1933-1934)
1933
Printed poster
John Hay Library. Star Collection. RARE 3-S PS3523.O82 Z98 L7
Promotional poster with crayon drawing titled “Kadath” by Robert Bloch on reverse side. - H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft (Providence, Rhode Island 1890-1937 Providence, Rhode Island)
Letter to J. Vernon Shea
1933 November 8-22
Autograph letter signed (forty-six pages on twenty-three sheets)
John Hay Library. Howard P. Lovecraft Collection, 1894-1971. MS.Lovecraft
Sheets are headed with Roman numerals I-XXIII. Page fourteen (sheet VII) displayed. Lovecraft’s self-portrait as “Grandpa Éch-Pi-El” in lower right with the following image caption: “As a conservative older man, I stick to the periwig styles of the Earlier 18th Century.”