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Fat Uncle by Riddell (© Chris Riddell, The Observer)
Cartoonists Martin Rowson (left) and Steve Bell, curator
Anita O’Brien and trustee Lord Baker (right)
Plum Pudding by James Gillray |
Laugh your head off, or have it lopped
off
Catherine Etoe and Mairi MacDonald
talk to the politicians lampooned at the opening of the Cartoon
Museum
THE Duke of Edinburgh’s man servant walked out of the Cartoon
Museum in Bloomsbury last week with a freshly framed print under
his arm.
It was of a world weary housewife washing up while berating
her slovenly husband: “I knew I should have married that
Prince Philip.”
The Prince had just officially opened the museum in Little Russell
Street and the cartoon, inked by chairman Oliver Preston, was
a gift that the Prince – a patron of the museum –
loved; not surprising really given the good humoured nature
of the skit.
Yet a look at the reactions of both their peers back in the
days when cartoons and caricature were emerging as an art form
reveals a different picture.
“This royal family get off lightly compared to 200 years
ago,” admits Preston.
George Cruikshank was such a thorn in George IV’s side
he was given £100 if he pledged to stop caricaturing the
King in an “immoral situation”.
While the savage satirist James Gillray whose work appears at
the museum was sued for blasphemy over his skit on a drunken
Prince of Wales at the birth of his daughter Charlotte –
drawn in the style of Breugel’s Adoration of the Maji.
But caricaturists were not the only ones packing a punch at
this time; cartoonists were combining humour and satire to damning
effect too.
Punch editor Mark Lemon used funny drawings of the state to
get his message across in 1843 when he published his own quips
alongside images by John Leech, now deemed the first cartoonist
of the modern age.
It is a tradition which remains, with modern day Gillrays such
as Steve Bell, Martin Rowson and Nick Garland hired by newspapers
to comment on the issues of the day.
Guardian cartoonist Bell, who used the Breugel/Gillray idea
of the kings bringing gifts to Christ for his witty skit of
John Major’s ascension to leader of the Tory Party, says
that Britain has a “strong tradition of absorbing dissent”.
He adds: “As Nick (Garland) said, a cartoon doesn’t
have to be funny but it does have to disturb.”
It is a combination Bell, Rowson (appointed ‘cartoonist
laureate’ by mayor Ken Livingstone in 2001) and Garland,
have all used to effect.
Belsize-Park-based Garland’s 1994 portrayals of Tony Blair
as Shakespeare’s Mark Anthony and Iago formed part of the
Cartoon Museum’s ‘Grin and Blair It’ exhibition
in 2004 when it was temporarily housed in the Brunswick Centre
near Russell Square.
According to Mirth of Nations author, Professor Christie Davies,
Garland captured Blair as a threat to the Conservatives “brilliantly”.
“Garland’s readers will no doubt have known the references
but one hopes that they were not too familiar with the intricacies
of the plots,” he says.
Thatcherite politicians seemed to understand very well the nuances
of the cartoons on display at the opening of the new museum
last Wednesday.
Lord Kenneth Baker, who professes an enthusiasm for what he
describes as a “disrespectful art form” even admitted
he is a fan of Gerald Scarfe’s depiction of him on a sinking
ship when he was the chairman of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative
Party. Adding that censorship of cartoonists in 18th-century
France did little to save the monarchy there, he opined: “The
moral is, if you laugh at your leaders, you don’t cut off
their heads.”
It is a line of thought that former Tory leader Edward Heath
appears to have followed – not that it saved him when he
fell foul of the kingmaking of Maggie Thatcher in the 1970s.
“When I was doing the covers for Punch we used to have
these weekly meetings,” says Dartmouth Park resident Wally
‘Trog’ Fawkes whose cartoon of Heath is a Baker favourite.
“Heath came along and he used to sit and shake his shoulders
to show he was getting the mirth. He didn’t want to be
seen to miss the humour, but he didn’t say a lot.”
Given the wealth of material on show at the new museum there
will be plenty of shoulder shaking from visitors there in the
coming months.
As Bell says: “It shows everyone there is some value in
what we do and it’s great that there is now a place to
encompass all kinds of cartoons.”
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