Bloghorn is packing bags

The Bloghorn will be moving home next week.
The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
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The cartoonist in 2009

Preparations for the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival 2009 are well under way.

This year's festival theme is The Science of Nature to coincide with the town's year-long celebration of Shropshire lad Charles Darwin’s birth. This year also coincides with the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book On the Origin of Species.

The Guardian’s Steve Bell will be exhibiting his unique take on “Anthropomorphism”; expect monkeys, Dubya, penguins, Blair, Brown and more.

There will be an exhibition of historical science cartoons from the nineteenth century that Darwin himself is likely to have have seen. These have been borrowed from collections at the University of Kent at Canterbury, the British Museum print room and the National Cartoon Museum. Curation is by Adrian Plant at the Shrewsbury Museum and is underway now.

And there will be a visiting exhibition from internationally regarded Czech cartoonist Miroslav Bartak who draws jokes from the miracles of modern science.

A spokescartoonist for the organising committee offered Bloghorn this quote:

"The funding is, as ever, as tight as grandma on the absinthe, but the all-hands-to-the-wheel attitude of the stout yeomanry on the ground will bring a fat ray of sunshine into next April’s showers. The festival weekend is the 24th-26th April 2009 although the exhibitions will run through April."

Bloghorn would like to urge any commercial enterprise interested in associating their name with the potent mixture of large crowds, extreme levity and high seriousness to contact the organisers from here.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
Subscribe to The Foghorn - our print cartoon magazine

Bloghorn's cartoon reviews of 2008 – and looking forward to 2009

Tayo Fatunla for the BBC World Service (Also, including Zapiro from South Africa).
Kipper Williams at the Guardian. The paper also offers a wide selection of art for the new year including Martin Rowson and Steve Bell.
Political cartoonist of the Year Morten Morland at the Times.
Pat Blower draws for The Daily Telegraph.
Matt Buck Hack cartoons for Channel 4.
And, Christian Adams of the Telegraph revisits the classic old and new year image.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
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2008 - a look back at St Just

PCOer Alex Noel-Watson reports on last year's version of one of the drawing things we have to look forward to in 2009:

Deep in the heart of the French countryside of the Limousin, in the department of Haute Vienne where characteristic tan-coloured cattle roam the lush meadows, nestles the village of Saint-Just-Le-Martel, near Limoges.

Saint-Just-Le-Martel could be described as the unofficial world capital of cartoons, thanks to the vision and energy of its mayor, Gérard Vandenbroucke, who 26 years ago started the annual Salon International de la Caricature, du Dessin de Presse et d'Humour.

The Salon runs for ten days at the end of September and beginning of October, and approximately 200 cartoonists converge upon the village from all over the world, 100 for the first weekend and the remainder for the second. A small number of cartoonists stays for the whole ten days. All the cartoonists who attend the Salon are happily billeted with local families.

The Salon is the biggest exhibition of cartoons in Europe, probably the world. The vast main exhibition, displaying cartoons from every imaginable country, is supplemented throughout the Salon site and beyond (in Limoges) by numerous others.

This year these included the historic works of Daumier, a presentation revealing the astonishing versatility of the veteran French cartoonist, Roger Mofrey, exhibitions by Brito, Avoine, Tignons, Kerleroux, Cambon, Puig-Rosado and others; caricatures by Nalair, a large display of caricatures by Sterpone, Moine and others in the main area; the Cartooning for Peace exhibition, conceived by Plantu and already shown at the United Nations in New York and around the world, most recently in Jerusalem, Hollon, Bethlehem and Ramallah; cartoons from Québec, Cuba, Turkey, Portugal and Germany.

Saint-Just, however, is not resting on its laurels. For a long time Gérard Vandenbroucke has nursed the ambition to build a permanent world centre of cartoons. This dream is nearing fruition. Two years ago, the first symbolic bricks were laid, and Gérard told me that construction will begin at the end of this year.

"There will be 18 months of building works and the centre will be officially opened in 2010," he said.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
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Bloghorn Artist of the Month - Denis Dowland

Reflecting on the future of cartooning in the digital age in our last entry for 2008, PCO Artist of the Month, Denis Dowland, writes:

Technological advances give with one hand and take with the other just like chancellors. I certainly do not miss the good old days of dragging heavy portfolios round studios, at or soon after lunch-time, to baffle brain-addled, red-braced juvenile yuppie editors, I'd better stop now, it's all coming back to me. I simply couldn't wait for the internet.

Now that video has virtually taken over the medium, however, the internet is swamped by infantile trash, taking us back to square one, if not further. This only requires an upgrading of our working methods, like the telephone once did. The threat I see as more insidious is the unstoppable drive toward the cretinisation of society as perhaps its only means of holding together, its naturally enthusiastic adoption by the mediocre and its resigned and guilty acceptance by those who do know better. Grumpy old git, moi? I love it.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
Subscribe to The Foghorn - our print cartoon magazine

Season's greetings from the Bloghorn and the PCO

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
Subscribe to The Foghorn - our print cartoon magazine

The spirit of Christmas

PCOer Clive Collins writes:

Some years ago I received a letter from the USA, from a lad of 14, who loved cartoons. He said he admired my cartoons (sic) and that he would dearly love to be a cartoonist, but that seemed an impossible dream, so might I oblige him with a small drawing, or signature, so he could compile a book of his heroes. I duly obliged and despatched a small signed self-caricature.

A couple of years later, and another letter arrived, from this same boy – who had remained miraculously 14 - with the same request. I ignored this one, and thought no more about it until, a while later, a package arrived containing 100 sheets of C5 blank paper, and a note stating that as I was obviously too busy, could I please pass round the sheets among my fellow cartoonists for them to do a drawing and/or signature for the book of cartoon heroes.

At this point I contacted cartoonist Mell Lazarus in the USA and asked him if he had ever heard of this boy. I could almost hear the acid laughter floating upon the water between us, when he replied that the ‘boy’ was well-known to American cartoonists, and in fact was a middle-aged lawyer who made quite a living, buying and selling original sketches and signatures at specialist auctions held all over the States. The Americans had given this guy the bum’s rush, and he guessed that now it was our turn. There was a son but he had grown up.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent
Subscribe to The Foghorn - our print cartoon magazine