surrealism / metamorphic shape-shifting in chalk talks

Chalk talk panel sequence

When I spoke recently at the Hearst Center for the Arts about Salvador Dali’s visit to Iowa in 1952, I noted the resemblance between the Surrealists’ use of metamorphic shape-shifting, in which a familiar form is made to look like something else, and the use of visual puns in cartooning and other popular art.

Long before the Surrealists, visual wit was commonly used by artists, illustrators, cartoonists, and countless others. This may be of particular interest because the faculty committee who arranged for Dali’s visit was headed by a University of Northern Iowa faculty member (theatre and radio) named Herbert (Herb) Hake.

In addition to his well-known work as a theatre set designer and founder of the campus radio station, Hake gave comic cartoon talks on aspects of Iowa history. He did this through “chalk talks,” a traditional stage presentation that used metamorphic picture sequences in which a thing's identity evolves from one panel to the next. An excellent example is reproduced above.

In Hake’s presentations (from A Cartoon History of Iowa) as shown below, he begins by talking about one thing (on the left), then adds to that drawing to make it into something else (on the right). In other contexts, this “trick” of concealing one thing in another is also commonly known as an “embedded figure” or a “camouflaged figure.”

Herb Hake, chalk talk drawings