Friday, 19 September 2008

The Art of the Political Cartoon

The UK has a very long heritage of satire via the 'cartoon', with works by William Hogarth in the mid 18th century perhaps being the best known. His subjects ranged across the spectrum from social commentary to political observations (His name has links to all his works) e.g.

This is an observation of the radical politician John Wilkes, which portrays him as slightly deranged with his eyes crossed.

An explanation, John Wilkes and the North Briton newspaper, won a legal case against the Government in 1763, against the use of 'general warrants' to arrest writers, printers and publishers of 'anonymous works', hence the cap of liberty, and the copy of the North Briton .

This political tradition has been carried on via the newspapers for centuries, and although there are several well known current practitioners such as Steve Bell, the acknowledged 'Master' is Gerald Scarfe.

In this cartoon for example he has Bush and Blair being shown their legacies .....


But, he ranges across the political spectrum, and he attacks either the political left or right with equal savagery, and he discusses some of his *work in this very interesting BBC flash clip (from which this still is extracted).

*For any non UK readers of this blog the people featured in the clip (in order of first appearance) are Margaret Thatcher, Harold Wilson, Edward (Ted) Heath, Robert Mugabe, John Major, Richard Nixon, Gordon Brown , Putin/Medvedev, George Bush, Tony Blair, Barak Obama, David Cameron
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