The living UK cartoonists

PCOer Bill Stott writes:

We're good at celebrating the work of dead cartoonists in the UK, but less adept at flagging up good living ones. True, some live cartoonists are celebrated, but not many. Only recently, the media fate of visual humour was placed in the hands of the Hayward Gallery on London's South Bank. The curator of the resulting show chose not to feature any cartoonists, living, dead, or even those just a bit off colour. Instead the job of representing visual humour in the UK was given to some other people who turned in deeply unfunny, clunky pieces of preciousness, technically, described as art. We say, Enough! We also say find a joke (sometimes) by going here - or to, yes, you guessed it, Shrewsbury.

Bloghorn notes that you'll probably find Bill Stott there too.

British cartoon talent

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival - The Big Boarders

Kipper Williams of The Guardian is one of this year's PCO Big Boarders at the festival. Above is one of Kipper’s submissions to the "But is it Art?" exhibition, which is already open in the town.

The full list of cartoonist Big Boarders drawing at this year's festival, over the weekend of Friday 18th and Saturday 19th April, is:

Steve Bright, Clive Collins, Bill Stott, Ross Thomson, Martin Honeysett, Alex Hughes, Pete Dredge, John Roberts, Matt Buck (Hack), Royston Robertson, Mike Turner, Noel Ford, Steve Best (Bestie), Dave Brown, Ian Baker, Chris Burke, Andy Davey, Neil Dishington, Paul Hardman, and Andy McKay (NAF).

PCOer Pete Dredge will be blogging tomorrow about how it feels to do a big board at Shrewsbury.

British cartoon talent

Humour exhibition: Where are the cartoons?

The Hayward Gallery on London’s South Bank is hosting an exhibition of art called Laughing in a Foreign Language until April 13. It brings together more than 70 videos, photographs and interactive installation works by more than 30 artists from all around the world. They're all artworks designed to make you laugh, so it's baffling that the show does not include any cartoons.

PCOer Bill Stott nearly choked on his cornflakes when he saw an item about it on breakfast TV today:

“Mainstream TV news is usually out of its depth when dealing with contemporary art, especially the difficult stuff where you can’t tell what it is, or when it's not Constable. Coverage is usually jokey and heads are shaken in disbelief. Emin, Hirst and others have become national treasures through it – not because of the quality of their work but because Joe Public wants to see what they get away with.

"The Hayward's current show, involving funny work by serious artists, featured on TV this morning. No punters were seen laughing. Or smiling. Some were sitting quietly (and seriously) contemplating a video showing a clown struggling through the jungle. Others were failing to don a joke head which the curator giggled at. But then she giggled at all the deeply unfunny exhibits.

"The brief glimpse – and it was brief, so I may be doing the Hayward powers-that-be a disservice here – was depressing. Here, apparently, was serious money being lavished on a well-presented show of distinct, serious failures. Gags were laboured and clunky, and all heads seemed firmly shoved up bottoms. It reeked of that preciousness often found in serious tomes about humour.

"Even more depressing is the suspicion that the giggling curator wouldn’t understand a good cartoon. Is that because cartoons aren’t serious? The show will be well attended by art wannabes and those cocooned in the unreality of an art bubble, people who don’t get jokes, and innocents who think the exhibits will make them laugh. Pity the poor innocents.”

Bloghorn says click S for Stott.

British cartoon talent

PCO Christmas card

May your holidays be bright. Cartoon from Bill Stott.
21st December 2007
British cartoon talent

PCO Procartoonists - Graphic humour and photomontage - a response

PCOer Bill Stott writes in response to our recent guest blogger Neil Hepburn. Matt Buck who edits Bloghorn agrees with very nearly all of it.

In cartooning, whether you use a steel nib and blackberry juice on vellum, or a wall full of Apple Macs, the main thing is to be graphically funny and have something to say. I think terms which divide, like "traditionalist" cartoonist are misleading.

I like jazz. Not, "I like traditional jazz", or "I like modern jazz." I like jazz. I don't like all jazz, traditional or modern.

I like graphic humour. All graphic humour, if it does what it's supposed to do.

I don't like graphic humour which isn't funny or is badly drawn or made. I know the subjectivity argument is impossible to avoid here.


Phenomenally successful pap like Scooby Doo left me bored stiff, whilst Fat Freddy's Cat I could die laughing at, but, this doesn't make Scooby Doo a bad cartoon.

Take Fat Freddy's Cat. What makes it original, and for me, very funny, is a combination of the traditional and the new. Traditional is the panel story format which Gilbert Shelton used. New is (was, really, its 1970s) the bad language. And the cat's constant camera mugging, usually with a morsel of feline philosophy. FFC reflected the age it sprang from - US West Coast drug use, sex and rock and roll - all neatly observed by an ugly tomcat who sported a decent pair of balls.

In talking about what Neil Hepburn has written for Bloghorn, 'I'm going to use the term "photomontage" because its traditional. Ha! Its more or less what Photoshop is anyway, and is no more or less acceptable than stuff drawn with a pen on 220gsm paper, if it is good. How the art was produced doesn't dictate its funniness. Photographs, manipulated or not, can be very funny. "Have I Got News for You" uses stills with an inappropriate voice - over to great effect.

However - I love that word - my real argument is with the fickle media; the bandwagon leapers who are so very easily seduced by newness; by iPods which are puffed by ads recommending them if you want to record BBC news and listen to/watch it later. Come on ! Get real. Technerds like them not for what they can do, but for the mere fact that they CAN. Once, "Turbo" written on the back of a Saab meant something. Now, my vacuum cleaner's a turbo.

Editors tend to think they discovered photomontage, because getting a PC let them. What that PC didn't do was invest them with visual discrimination. They've always had eyes, and it has always been a struggle being a freelance traditional cartoonist. Then, along came Photoshop, and Hey ! Look what I can do ! Who needs Steve Bell, Martin Rowson, Dave Brown? Bill Tidy, Mike Williams, where are you?

It matters not a jot how the gag was, or is, made. What matters, economically, is who judges it in the first place. Can the editor tell a good gag from a dying wildebeeste? Is the editor so narrow that he/she sees only Photoshop? The PCO has tried to make a start by searching for a level of quality work, judged by a jury of their peers. Applicants get vetted. They are accepted on a majority vote. Photomontage has (as yet - Bloghorn) no such system. Neil Hepburn is good. He makes me laugh; take notice. Lots of other manipulators aren't and don't. Just like some 'traditional' cartoonists.

Maybe, years down the line (that's a thing you draw with a pen), when all the traditionalists are dead and gone and heirless, editors will suddenly discover hologramtoons - eye activated - all singing, all dancing little bods in 3D - right there on the page, and Mr Hepburn will feel the same sense of ignorant waste PCO founder members felt a short while ago.

Before then though, PCO could, and in my opinion should, keep this debate going. What matters most is the quality of graphic humour, not the manner of its making.

And to move Bill's thoughts on, there will be one further piece from Neil coming up on Bloghorn early next week.
British cartoon talent

PCO Procartoonists - cartoon art

Brian Sewell, the really quite grown up enfant terrible of the whacky, zany world of art criticism, when asked if cartooning was an art, replied “Oh no. It’s a facility.“ A polysyllabic reply, if nothing else.

But more than that, he and others in his profession or trade or art or facility are regularly put on the spot by a label-hungry media and public, and asked to bestow names; to make things tidy.

Therefore we get; that’s art, that’s not, that’s Jack Vettriano. (I suspect Mr Sewell wouldn’t be so kind).

I also suspect that he doesn’t know much about cartooning. He’s not alone in that.

Has he really looked at Mike Williams, Ray Lowry, Martin Honeysett, Heath Robinson, Ralph Steadman...[that’s enough - Ed] because good cartooning is so obviously an art. It shoots itself in the foot because it is also funny.

Mr Sewell and his friends say that real art is, and must be, serious.

We are not all in the class of the cartoonists mentioned above, I’ll bet that whilst Peter Paul Rubens was whacking out paintings of his big ladies being harassed by variously-hued male abusers, down the street and around the corner, were many other lesser lights striving towards the exactly the same end.

And yet, when one “In the School of Titian” turns up at Sotheby’s, it is still “art”.