We spoke with Vice President and general manager hans brulin and political cartoonist matt worker about the artwork on display. The holtz was built in 1928 on the site of the residences of john haye and henry adams. And after the family relinqui relinquished their rights to the site in 1926, wardman, who was then the developer, built this hotel along with the calden told which today is the st. Regis. The hotel has been in existence since 1928. This bar has been in existence somewhere starting in the 60s or 70s. With my arrival in 1999, this bar was already known as off the record, a place to be seen and not hurt. It was not in this color and format and layout but it was pretty well the same bar in the basement of the hotel and its kind of like the speakeasy place and it has become very popular over the years. All the decorations are political cartoons that are displayed from various artists dating back to atwood who at this stage is deceased. We do keep some original artwork in house. From what i know is that the previous ownership in the 80s and 90s decided to bring in some artwork after having a few over the bar and in the bar and thats how it really established. But we have built up on this more so now because were using local artists and Pulitzer Prize winning artists such as matt wuerker and others in order to continue the tradition of rotating political art through the bar. My understanding is this goes back to about 2000. They redid the bar here at the hotel and they went with this classic washington cigar den. Back then you could smoke in bars in washington. So they redid it with the wingback chairs and the velvet booths and dark burgundy walls and somebody had the brainstorm that they wanted to do cartoons for art. And the the original genesis and collection that was on the walls was from art wood who collected cartoons and ended up donating his 30,000 cartoon collection to the library of congress. And he made an arrangement with the hotel to loan them a bunch of classic chair aricatures in collection. I got involved in 2008 thanks to my buddy, richard thompson, when they wanted to update the caricatures to stuff that was more current. The wood collection mostly went back to the 60s, 70s, 80s and then there was a big gap. The thing that started happening in the bar where people would come in and the newer clients didnt recognize the people from the nixon and reagan administration. So, they wanted people from, you know, the clinton and obama administrations. So thats when richard thompson, who, unfortunately, passed away a couple of years ago was brought in. Richard was just an astounding caricaturist. He was really the top flight caricaturist at the time. Did a lot of stuff for u. S. News world report. A new yorker. Richard came in with portfolio drawings and they got some of those and they wanted more. Richard said, check out my friend matt, who works at politico, so i came in with a pile and got to also sort of fill in the more recent political figures. I straddle both worlds. I work as a caricaturist and political cartoonist. Theres a difference. Political cartoonists use words, word bubbles and when im wearing my political cartoonist hat im really a political commentator. Just like somebody whos writing a column in the opeded pages except i have the advantage of i draw my opinion and ideally express it with a certain amount of humor and the poor columnists have to rely on just using their words. I mean, the old saw about a picture is worth a thousand words is actually quite true. I mean, you know, somebody who writes an 800word essay about tax policy has to find a reader to invest in reading those 800 words. The magic about a political cartoon, you glance at a cartoon humans have a visual acuity, we pick up stuff really fast. We recognize a face, a setting, a metaphor, a pun, and you can process a cartoon really quickly. So, we have a certain advantage, i think. Theres some people that think political cartooning is going away as sort of an archaic form of political expression. And i feel just the opposite. I think that political cartoons are the perfect vehicle for our short attention span. And im sticking to that. The power of positive thinking. Caricaturists are a little different in that they dont have the advantage of using word bubbles and captions. Its purely a visual thing. Youre not really expressing a complicated political opinion. Youre basically just trying to capture a character. A good caricaturist can load that up with other stuff. And insert a political opinion or maybe theres some detail or theres some wry commentary in the setting or the clothing of the caricature. I learned this just recently after working as a caricaturist for 40ers years. The word caricature comes from the italian word caricare, im probably mispronouncing which means to load, as in a boat or a cart or a gun. And so a caricature is its not a portrait. Youre not trying to capture the physical attributes of somebody. Youre loading that portrait with a edgy humor, hopefully, a little commentary. If you do it right, you capture more than just the physical attributes of somebody. I was very lucky in that as a young man i grew up in los angeles and when i was in high school and first interested in cartooning, i got to meet paul conrad, who was one of the giants of the field. Threetime Pulitzer Prize winner for the l. A. Times. Most proudly he was most proud of the fact that he was the only cartoonist that made nixons enemy list. So, conrad sort of opened the door to me that this is a viable career path, which is sort of an odd career path, if you think about it. But he was very encouraging and inspiring. And then, you know, you start out in my teens and 20s, i would look around and, you know, i love the work of pat oliphant, herb at tthe Washington Post, dave lavigne is probably whats the right word . He was pivotal in the world of caricature. You still see it in my work somewhat. Some of these other works, like these really wonderful he signed valot but his name was ed vaultman was very similar to leavine. Levine was ate master of the fluid cross hatch, the big bubble head and the wry twist with some other little detail put in there. So he was an early influence of mine. Thats where i fell in love with crosshatching. The bar, its a wonderful collections of cartoons that spans a lot of decades, in fact, a century, and it goes back to another one of the great grandaddies of political cartooning, kepler, who drew for i think was actually a publisher, one of the joint owners of puck magazine. In is in the golden age of political cartooning. Kepler would do these beautiful color lithographs that would be twopage spreads for puck magazine. If you remember your American History books, you know, theres the wonderful standard oil cartoon of the oil tank with tentacles of the octopus of rockefeller reaching out. To call it a cartoon is almost putting it down because it was a real work of art. I mean, it was like an oil painting. Actually done as a color lithograph. Theres a couple of keplers here from puck magazine. Those are probably the oldest ones in the bar. And then these ed vaultman be and Ron Covington, whos over in this corner, would be sort of the next ones. The vaultman cart tooons are alt all from the reagan era. And i think thats that is when richard and i were brought in, it was when people were failing to recognize Jeane Kirkpatrick and people like that. Ive had the bartenders, when ive come in to have a drink, some bartenders will come in or new help, well go around and will you help us . Because theyre constantly being asked, who are those people . Thats bob dole. Dont you remember bob dole . They shrug, no, i dont remember bob dole. This wall is sort of a mix a mismash of different cartoonists works. Thats richard thompson. Thats me. Another richard thompson. Thats me. These are a couple of color valtmans that are interesting in compare ton to the pure crosshatch that are around the fireplace. These are wourt color images. These are obviously down in the 1970s. Richard thompsons style as a cartooni cartoonist, i just look at this and its such a beautiful combination of loose line. He was influenced a lot by some of the great english cartoonists like arnold surrell and he took it to his own place. I aspire to this kind of looseness, but im still at age 60something, working on it. This is one that i did for politico. This is a caricature of bernie sanders. You can see sort of the difference. I do crosshatch and then add water color. Richards approach was a classic sort of dip pen. He works in a style that would have fit in perfectly in the 19th century in some ways. But hes also very, very modern. This is another richard thompson. You can sort of see the difference in that i rely on lots of little lines, lots of little black and white lines that harken back to the wood engraving of the thomas nast era or something. I guess im trying to richards style here, youll see the rendering is really done with water color and he likes to paint render the shapes. Heres a paul ryan that i did for politico. Heres a dick cheney and a karl rove. Those are both richards up there. Its interesting. This wall gets a lot of attention when i come into the bar and im sitting around. Usually people, as theyre leaving the bar will stop and this wall, maybe its because its right by the door, gets a lot of attention. Heres heres a shameless selfpromotion thing i did for politico way back in the very beginning. One of our reporters did a piece about odd couples in washington. People you wouldnt expect to find, say, getting a drink at a bar. And so, of course, this is when i had started doing stuff with the heyadams. This is rom emanuel and Mitch Mcconnell and i situated them in this bar. This was a cover illustration for politico back when he was chief of staff. I was far too nice to Mitch Mcconnell in this one, but sometimes that happens. And heres a biden. Also one of mine. A couple more of richard thompsons. Laura bush. Again, just this lovely, sophisticated it looks sort of simple, but the sophistication and the color scheme and the painting of richards stuff just sort of is annoying and wonderful. And up in the corner, thats our trump that kevin kelleher, who draws for the economist just did recently with a twitter bird on his shoulder. A fabulous piece of color art. In the bar, the probably 75 of the art on the walls is really straight caricatures. There are a number of real political cartoons here as well. This particular corner has got one by me and one by kevin kelleher. This is something he did for the economist and this is one i did for politico. You can immediately tell the difference in that we have word bubbles, captions. Theres a lot more information and opinion being conveyed in these, of course, which is really what were about. Kevins is a lovely example of good political cartoon sort of built around a clever visual met ametaphor. Its conveyed quickly. Its the boxing ring and israel and palestine going at it and obama is the new ref and its round 3,487,000 and then you see the old refs from the boxing ring, bush, clinton, bush again, reagan, all beat up. And it said its a lovely example of how you can take a very complicated political issue and ideally, if youre doing a good political cartoon, you can distill it down to a nice visual nugget that conveys the complexity but quickly and hopefully with a little bit of bite. This is a cartoon i did that naturally they like at the he hayadams because its about the chamber of commerce which happens to be next door and all the money they spent on the campaign. I should date my cartoons. I believe this one is from 2008. Resistance is futile and theyre blasting the democrats with piles and piles of cash. I understand he actually likes this cartoon which fills me with mixed emotions. These two are the oldest ones in the bar and really represent kind of the golden age of american political cartooning. Which you would have found in puck magazine, which was a cartoon a political cartoon magazine. These were done by keppeler. I wish i knew the exact details of the politics at the time. Here you have a classic political cartoon trope, the big thumb of the big interests being held down on the speaker. And it says the caption down here is very small. The leader of the minority, he cant get the speakers eye because its under the thumb of the big interests. This, of course, is uncle sam. And uncle sam being a creation of political cartoonists. And i believe most people credit thomas nast with really sort of creating the uncle sam that the rest of us recognize and cartoonists utilize all the time. All the time. This is the actual lithographic print and the nice thing about puck in the golden age of cartooning is they gave cartoonists lots of space. These days we get shrunk down to more like that and when were in print. Back to my optimistic wrap on editorial cartooning this was perhaps some of the best Color Printing especially at the time to display a political cartoon but in 2018 cartoonists are working in a digital realm and the biggest audience for our cartoons are now on smart phones and ipads and retina displays actually let us do all sorts of elegant water color and other kind of nuance that begins to rival the kind you could do on a big scale like kepler got to do. In some ways were getting back to this kind of cartooning. These two are by ann tillness who draws for the Washington Post on the digital side. Ann does political cartoons that are often animated gifts. She won the Pulitzer Prize back i think it was in 2000 for her static political cartoons. It has moved on to animation. And these, i think, were studies that ann did for an animation she created around the inauguration of obama. Anns got a different style. She is not a cross hatcher. She actually went to cal arts and is a trained animator. You can see it in her very strong lines style that really stands out. She now works also in water color as well. The hay adams has a special place in washington and this bar in particular. The first time i came in the bar was probably 17 years ago and a friend of mine brought me down here and you could still smoke in bars in washington. This was a smoking bar. This was a cigar bar. We came in on a cold winter night. I had just moved to washington from the west coast and was fascinated by the culture of the city. You walked in here and there was an inversion layer of cigar smoke and all of these people dressed up in suits or whatever sitting around having conversations in wing back chairs. It was right out of a cartoon like oh, my god this is the den of iniquity you sort of imagined being in the basement right around the white house or something. And within that this is the cave, there is one booth in the back they can close off and its there is really no place like it in washington. Then a few years ago besides providing cartoons to decorate the walls, hans had the idea of doing coasters and so they commissioned original art for these and cal and ann and myself every six months or so will design little caricature cartoons of people in the news that are then used for coasters and handed out to people here. It is an interesting exercise in american politics because certain caricatures like this is a Hillary Clinton you know are going to be somewhat evergreen. Shes not going anywhere. Some of the other characters we draw youre not sure if theyre going to be in the news. For instance sean spicer was an obvious one we were thinking of doing when trump came to town. Fortunately we didnt because he came and went like scaramucci and the like. These are always really fun assignments and we situate the politicos in the bar doing various things and usually add if you can Little Details like this is cals pence caricature drinking with a beer stein that looks remarkably like donald trump. Little touches like that. This is my hillary one. Hillary leaving the hotel and she has bill carrying all the luggage, baggage. Anyway. You get the joke. These are more cartoons from the art wood collection done by Ron Covington back mostly in the 80s i think and covington has a distinctive style. He is a little bit related to the david Levine School of caricature but took it his own direction. There is very light cross hatching in here with a lot of gray scale and beautifully done. Caricature is a very strange thing when youre trying to caricature somebody you exaggerate features and then there are limits to the exaggeration. Some are very good at going right to the very edge of taking it away from something that you recognize as that individual. Covingtons stuff is kind of like that. This Boris Yeltsin is a wonderful, extremely exaggerated pushing of the forms. Just wonderful. Heres a bird, senator bird from west virginia. Jerry brown. Sometimes i talk to art students and do work shops with caricature. You dont always have to be so rendered and detailed. A president ial caricature in particular but true of probably all political figures can become a simple, iconic thing. George bush or broem i could draw six lines and people would go, thats george bush or theres barack obama. Once youve done the outline of the face and say the ears with obama even before you completed it people can tell what youre drawing. It is a mystical thing. Facial Recognition Software in our brains is very acute and one of the things a caricaturist can use to their advantage. It takes a little effort to be nonpartson when your a he doing things for the coasters and stuff. My instinct and what i am paid for at politico is to have a political opinion and express it strongly and same with ann and same with cal. We have to dial that back. Which i also understand is not just that we dont want to unnecessarily rile people when they come in for a drink at the bar or Something Like that. But one of the nice things about the bar and frankly ive learned about the culture of washington is there is this lovely word members of congress use called comedy where you get along. You figure out a way to get along with people you may disagree with politically but you can sit down and have a drink with them. That is sort of the spirit of the bar and the spirit we all bring to the coasters. So well suspend our political opinions and save that for our political cartoons and in this case well just have maybe light hearted fun with the caricatures and the coasters. Were faech youring American History tv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend on cspan 3. Tonight we show you remarks from the annual Lincoln Forum symposium, which takes place every november in gettysburg, pennsylvania. Historians answer the question, what caused the civil war . American history tv tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan 3. Tlae former white house Staff Members examine the work of political cartoonist pat oliphant and focus on the presidencies of george h. W. Bush, bill clinton, and george w. Bush and include Barack Obamas 2008 election. The university of virginias Miller Center hosted the event. Were going to get started here with round two of president s on whom olyphant was able o bestow his gifts and a country on which he was able to bestow his gifts by commenting visually and with words on those