Cubist Influence on Comic Art

Although intended as a standard pretty-girl feature when Cliff Sterrett first drew Positively Polly in 1912, the artist hit his innovative stride in the 1920s, when he began to introduce Cubist-influenced art into his story lines. Here, he focuses on the hat belonging to Polly’s father, Sam’l Perkins—also called Paw. By principally using pantomime, Sterrett tells stories about the character on whom he preferred to feature, rather than the title character Polly. This prompted renaming the strip Polly and Her Pals.