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Chalk talk

{{Short description|Spoken lecture with real-time illustration}}

File:Cartoonschalk33.jpg

A chalk talk is an illustrated performance in which the speaker draws pictures to emphasize lecture points and create a memorable and entertaining experience for listeners. Chalk talks differ from other types of illustrated talks in their use of real-time illustration rather than static images. They achieved great popularity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, appearing in vaudeville shows, Chautauqua assemblies, religious rallies, and smaller venues. Since their inception, chalk talks have been both a popular form of entertainment and a pedagogical tool.

Early history

File:Chalk Lessons or The Blackboard in the Sunday School by Frank Beard 1896.jpg

One of the earliest chalk talk artists was a prohibition illustrator named Frank Beard (1842–1905).{{Cite web|url=https://talesofthecocktail.com/history/man-who-drew-america-dry|title=Frank Beard: The Cartoonist Who Drew America Dry|last=Scutts|first=Joanna|date=October 30, 2015|website=Tales of the Cocktail Foundation|access-date=November 12, 2019}}{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/chalklessonsorbl00bear|title=Chalk Lessons, or The Blackboard in the Sunday School|last=Beard|first=Frank|date=1896|publisher=Excelsior Publishing House|location=New York}} Beard was a professional illustrator and editorial cartoonist who published in The Ram's Horn, an interdenominational social gospel magazine.{{Cite web|url=https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/rams_horn/default|title=The Ram's Horn|website=eHistory. History Department. Ohio State University.|access-date=November 12, 2019}} Beard's wife was a Methodist, and when the women of their church asked Beard to draw some pictures as part of an evening of entertainment they were planning, the chalk talk was born.{{Cite web|url=https://isabellaalden.com/2015/01/11/frank-beards-chalk-talk/|title=Frank Beard's Chalk Talk|date=2015-01-12|website=Isabella Alden|language=en|access-date=2019-11-08}} In 1896, Beard published Chalk Lessons; or, The Black-board in the Sunday School, which he dedicated to the Rev. Albert D. Vail "[t]hrough whose simple Black-board teaching I was first led to search the Scriptures and my own heart."

Public performance

Like magic lantern shows and Lyceum lectures, chalk talks, with their presentation of images changing in real time, could be educational as well as entertaining.{{Cite book|title=Music in the Chautauqua Movement: From 1874 to the 1930s|last=Lush|first=Paige|publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc.|year=2013|isbn=978-0-7864-7315-1|location=Jefferson, NC|pages=106}} They were choreographed performances "where the images would become animate, melding one into another in an orderly and progressive way" to tell a story.{{Cite journal|last=Lindquist|first=Benjamin|date=2019-03-01|title=Slow Time and Sticky Media: Frank Beard's Political Cartoons, Chalk Talks, and Hieroglyphic Bibles, 1860–1905|journal=Winterthur Portfolio|volume=53|issue=1|pages=41–84|doi=10.1086/703977|s2cid=197811853|issn=0084-0416}} Chalk talks began to be used for religious rallies{{Cite news|url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1897-07-13/ed-1/seq-1/|title=Thousands of Working Men Attended the Great Noon Meeting at the Union Iron Works Yesterday|date=July 13, 1897|work=The San Francisco Call|access-date=November 12, 2019|page=1}} and became popular acts in vaudeville and at Chautuaqua assemblies.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sCOWUiCuh6EC&dq=vaudeville+chatauqua+chalk+talks&pg=PA201|chapter=New Mexico Tourist Images|title=Essays in Twentieth-Century New Mexico History|last=Tydeman|first=William|publisher=University of New Mexico Press|year=1994|isbn=9780826314833|location=Albuquerque|pages=201}} Some performers, such as James Stuart Blackton, created acts around "lightning sketches," drawings which were rapidly modified as the audience looked on. "Tricks" or illustrative techniques used by performers were called "stunts."{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/chalktalkcrayonp00bartiala|title=Chalk Talk and Crayon Presentation; A Handbook of Practice and Performance in Pictorial Expression of Ideas|last=Bartholomew|first=Charles L.|date=1922|publisher=Chicago : Frederick J. Drake and co., publishers|others=University of California Libraries|pages=[https://archive.org/details/chalktalkcrayonp00bartiala/page/100 100]–122}} The seemingly magical stunts, and the chalk talk artist's power to transform simple images before their audiences' eyes, appealed to magicians. Cartoonist and magician Harlan Tarbell performed as a chalk-talker and published several chalk talk method books.{{Cite web|url=https://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=harlan+tarbell+chalk|title=Harlan Tarbell, Chalk Talk books|website=WorldCat.org|access-date=November 11, 2019}}

File:John Wilson Bengough - chalk talk.jpg of the cartoonist presenting a chalk talk about woman suffrage.]]

Winsor McCay began doing vaudeville chalk talks in 1906.[http://www.filmreference.com/Writers-and-Production-Artists-Lo-Me/McCay-Winsor.html Winsor McCay at filmreference.com] In his The Seven Ages of Man vaudeville act, he drew two infant faces, a boy and a girl, and progressively aged them.{{Cite book|title=Winsor McCay. His Life and Art|last=Canemaker|first=John|year=2018|publisher=CRC Press, Taylor & Francis |isbn=9781138578869}}[https://books.google.com/books?id=H3USAr6i1e0C&dq=vaudeville+%22chalk+talks%22&pg=PA3 Stabile, Carol A. and Mark Harrison. Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture. Routledge, 2003.] Popular illustrator Vernon Grant was also known for his vaudeville circuit chalk talks. Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist John T. McCutcheon was a popular chalk talk performer. Artist and suffragist Adele Goodman Clark set up her easel on a street corner to convince listeners to support woman suffrage.{{Cite news|title=Personality Profile: Miss Adele Clark|last=Hyde|first=Jo|date=September 16, 1956|work=Richmond Times-Dispatch|page=25}} Canadian cartoonist John Wilson Bengough toured internationally, giving chalk talks both for entertainment and in support of causes including woman suffrage and prohibition.{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/bengoughschalkta00benguoft|title=Bengough's Chalk-Talks: A Series of Platform Addresses on Various Topics, With Reproductions of the Impromptu Drawings With Which They Were Illustrated|last=Bengough|first=J. W.|publisher=Musson|year=1922|location=Toronto|pages=[https://archive.org/details/bengoughschalkta00benguoft/page/39 39]}}

Animation

Chalk talks contributed to the development of early animated films, such as The Enchanted Drawing by James Stuart Blackton and his partner, Alfred E. Smith. Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) was another early animated film with its roots in chalk talks.{{Cite web|url=https://www.brainpickings.org/2010/03/23/the-enchanted-drawing/|title=The Enchanted Drawing: Blackton's Early Animation|last=Popova|first=Maria|date=2010-03-23|website=Brain Pickings|language=en-US|access-date=2019-11-12}} For his early films, Winsor McCay borrowed Blackton's image of the artist standing before drawings that come to life.

References

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External links

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Category:Vaudeville tropes

Category:Illustration

Category:History of animation

Category:Chautauqua