Daniel Benshana
Cartoons – briefly described as caricatures of a person to make a political point were trialled in the English civil War (1642-1651) at a time when it didn’t matter the quality of the paper as long as you got your message out every day to the assembled populace and your troops. Thousands of political pamphlets were produced by both sides and, for the illiterate, the pictures produced were as important as the words. And if the words to the images were short, they could be read out for the illiterate to remember. Although, both sides often began their writing on the war with the word ‘true’ – ‘true information’, ‘a true revelation, what was written was not always considered trustworthy, so the post-truth era has been far longer than many suggest. A drawing of Charles 1st with cherubs around him and a godly presence in the clouds above his head tells you he is chosen by God even if you cannot read the words which, under a piece of Hebrew state ‘By Mee Kings Reigne’.
Before this Civil War, printed material was heavily censored in Britain. Those who were rich enough could pay for a handwritten newsletter to be sent to them, but they relied upon the writers to know what they were talking about, and it was often couched as gossip. In 1641, censorship ended and there was an explosion of printed material. Images, which have always been a part of culture, exploded along with the pamphlets, with and without added words. Religion was not far behind in producing its own tracts which reached their height in the 19th century with many clergy putting out their thoughts to sway opinion during the Oxford Movement and the crisis in the Protestant church which almost brought it down. Although English Artist William Hogarth would become the chief artist/social commentator with few ever equalling him, George Townshend, later 1st Marquis Townshend, known as Viscount Townshend, thirty years younger, serving as Brigadier General in Quebec, was among the first to use caricature as a means of political satire in 1760s Canada making instant and important points about wars, the political establishment and individual power brokers. He was described as ‘warm-hearted, sensitive and capable of enthusiasm, but often disgruntled, quarrelsome, lacking in judgment, and burdened with an insuperable urge to ridicule’ in short, a perfect caricaturist. In 1841 with publication of the first issue of the famous Punch magazine, cartoons were no longer for the illiterate and often carried paragraphs of conversation or explanation as some had done in the Civil War. They also became a thing in themselves as famous as the magazine.
In France caricature started in wood cuts in the 14th century. With the invention of the printing press these transferred to papers, but it was after the French revolution that the print cartoon followed the course of the English caricature. The cartoons of Jacques Bonhomme, the French version of Everyman, appeared regularly. The historian Annie Duprat said that 1500 cartoons appeared in the three years from 1789 -1792. So effective were they that Honoré Daumier, a painter of some repute, earned six months suspended prison sentence in 1832 when the king hit back after he portrayed Louis-Philippe as Gargantua. He went on to caricature doctors and lawyers as well as the nobility. Press freedoms guaranteed in 1881 gave the cartoon a shot in the arm and it was unchallenged in the west until Charlie Hebdo and the religious bigotry of Islam so reminiscent of the religious bigotry of the Catholic church and all other suppressions of open forum commentary. Even Benjamin Franklin had pertinent images in his printing in the 1740s as the colonies trod the path toward revolution. In Spain, during the eighteenth century, Names abound in the succeeding decades, John Tenniel (1890s). Thomas Nast (d.1902) Bruce Bairnsfather (WW1), Will Dyson (WW1) Philip Zec (WW2) to name but a few of the hundreds who took to the form and following Hogarth made it into the annals of art. Jules Feiffer, whose dancer interpreted so many moods over the years of the twentieth and twenty-first century and the author of Maus, Art Spiegelman.
While women have come through strongly and many from the 1800s have been rediscovered there are any number of anonymous cartoons right down the centuries that may have been penned by women. One of the most read is Roz Chast, on staff at the New Yorker where she has published over 1000 cartoons, also appearing in Scientific American and other publications. It was in America that the strip cartoon gradually developed a written story with images in sequence rather than the single bold image as in ‘The Katzenjammer Kids’ (started in1897) and ‘Gasoline Alley’ (started in 1918), prominent examples of the genre. Art Spiegelman, author of Maus, possibly invented the graphic novel, used by many artists today, including Iranian woman artist Marjane Satrapi whose Persepolis and Woman, Life, Freedom document her life in Austria and Iran after the Revolution. Variations on the graphic novel, such as William Kentridge’s animated drawings on video about subjects such as miners in South Africa and other issues keep the graphic novel going strong today.
Although the Chinese cartoon existed in ancient times, it did not grow into an independent painting style until the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) when it exhibited the same strong commentary on war and social inequality as the European and American cartoons.
The potency of the cartoon continues to deliver in the Internet age where images are more important than words and memes, as cartoons and short videos, influence thinking in a much deeper way than the traditional cartoon. The humour in the old style may make one nod in agreement and shrug or laugh, but today the Internet enables a thought to be shared and become an action, not simply a biting commentary or a satirical amplification of the day-today. Teachers have used them as tools to invite discussion and even scientists use them to elucidate difficult concepts. What used to be the term for practice pieces by painters and sculptors has become an essential tool in the freedom of speech debate. The cartoon at its best is an irreverent expression of a feeling that the nation can share; a little like the jester at court, or the child watching the parade, it says unequivocally ‘by the way, in this instance you have no clothes’.