The 14th Cartoon Art Trust Awards

The Cartoon Art Trust Awards were presented last night at The Mall Galleries in London. The trust, which runs the Cartoon Museum in London, has presented the awards annually since 1995. Gag cartoonist Grizelda, left, was among the winners.

PCOer and Private Eye regular Will "Wilbur" Dawbarn was there and sent Bloghorn this personal report:

I was fortunate enough to be invited to join the Private Eye table this year, and what a star-studded occasion it seemed to this small-town boy! I even got my suit out of mothballs for the occasion.

After a brief time spent standing around with no-one to talk to, trying to earwig Ken Clarke's conversation (for cartoon research purposes of course), scoffing as many canapés as I could get my hands on, and examining some marvellous Giles originals, I soon fell in with the coterie of Eye cartoonists, particularly the garrulous Simon Pearsall ("First Drafts"), who chatted non-stop in my left ear (most entertainingly) during the meal, leaving me only dimly aware of cartoons being auctioned off for thousands of pounds and awards being dished out to the worthy.

In my right ear at the table was Mark Warren, the writer of the Celeb strip. It turns out it's only Charles Peattie who does both Alex and Celeb – I'd always assumed it was the same writer-artist combo doing both.

I missed a few more awards whilst outside having a fag with Simon P. and Martin Rowson (who was very charming and gracious to the winner of the Under 18 Young Cartoonist of the Year award, telling her to email him for advice and the like – though he bluntly refused me the same courtesy when I enquired ...)

The Award Winners

Joke cartoon award: Grizelda of the New Statesman and others

Strip cartoon award: Stephen Collins of the Times

Pocket cartoon award: Jeremy Banks aka “Banx” of the FT

Caricature award: Nicola Jennings of the Guardian

Political cartoon award: Nicholas Garland of the Daily Telegraph

Young cartoonists of the year: Emilia Franklin (under 18) and James Hood (under 30).

The Pont prize for drawing the British Character: Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor of the Daily Telegraph for Alex. The Pont Award was set up five years ago in memory of Graham "Pont" Laidler, whose drew the brilliant series The British Character in Punch in the 1930s and 40s.

Lifetime achievement award: Raymond Briggs. The creator of the acclaimed books The Snowman and When the Wind Blows was responsible for some of the earliest British “graphic novels” – long before the term or the form was generally known. Previous winners of the award have included, Ronald Searle, Gerald Scarfe, Fluck and Law, and Trog.

PCOer Morten Morland has a first person report here as does Christian Adams of the Telegraph has his take on the events here too and Down the Tubes also has a round up.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent

Making the Giles cartoon exhibition

This cartoon courtesy of the Cartoon Museum, the University of Kent and the trustees of the Giles collection.

Bloghorn interviews Nick Hiley, curator of the exhibition Giles: One of the Family which is now on at the Cartoon Museum in central London.

Who had the original idea for a Giles retrospective?

As soon as the Giles collection arrived at the British Cartoon Archive in 2005 it was clear that we needed to celebrate with a London exhibition, and the Cartoon Museum was the most appropriate place to hold it. We have spent the last eighteen months cataloguing and digitising Giles' enormous collection of artwork, correspondence, and ephemera. This exhibition puts on display some of the things we have found.

How long has it taken to put the Giles exhibition together?

In a sense it has taken five years, as it was in 2003 that we began looking at the possibility of giving the Giles collection a permanent home in Canterbury, and making it accessible to the public and to researchers. The collection was in storage for ten years after Giles' death in 1995, and it was always our aim to make the artwork available for exhibition and display once it reached the British Cartoon Archive. The actual exhibition planning and selection, and the writing of the catalogue, took about six months.

How did the University of Kent get involved?

We've been interested in the Giles collection for a long time. The University's cartoon archive was set up in 1973, and after Giles' death in 1995 the archivist approached the Cartoon Trustees, to whom Giles left his collection, with the suggestion that his artwork should come to Kent. At the time they had hopes that the collection might remain in East Anglia, where Giles lived and worked, but when we approached them again they were happy to donate the collection to us. A second exhibition – "Giles: Drawn to Suffolk" – is opening in Ipswich on November 8, and we do hope that a permanent display of Giles material may one day be established in Ipswich, where he had a studio for many years.

What does promoting the work of a cartoonist who has died achieve?

I hope that it brings the enjoyment of his work to new audiences, and gives existing fans a new insight into how he worked, by displaying his original artwork. Giles' correspondence does include letters from other cartoonists and illustrators, expressing admiration for the way that he could arrange complex scenes in a simple visual way, so I hope that present-day cartoonists can learn something from seeing his work. He could draw cartoons of the Family where there is action across the whole frame, or on different floors of the house, but the focus is never lost.

What would Giles have seen if he was watching the last-minute preparations for the show?

He would probably have laughed a lot, and grumbled a lot as well. He would laugh because we reconstructed his studio, using all the easels, paints, pencils, etc. which came with the collection, even down to his glasses and his cardigan on the back of his chair. I'm sure he would tell us we had got it all in the wrong place! He would undoubtedly grumble, because he never liked his original artwork, partly because he was a perfectionist and partly because he regarded the printed cartoon as the finished work. His originals were drawn for reduction, and he thought that by comparison with the printed version they looked as if they had been "drawn with an umbrella"! They don't seem like that to me, but to show that they are part of a reproductive process we have used specially made frames that show the whole artwork, including Giles' notes and the blockmaker's scribbles in the margins.

Visit the Cartoon Museum

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent

Cartoon exhibition: Giles – One of the Family

Original artwork by Carl Giles. Click to enlarge

The exhibition Giles: One of the Family opens today (November 5) at the Cartoon Museum in London. It showcases the work of Carl Giles (1916-1995), the most famous cartoonist of his generation.

Born in Islington, London, during the First World War, Giles joined the Daily Express in 1943 where he would create his quintessentially British "Giles Family". For many people his cartoons capture British life in microcosm. Giles was voted Britain’s Favourite Cartoonist of the 20th century in a 2000 poll.

In 2005 – ten years after his death – the complete Giles collection passed to the British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent. The material in the exhibition is drawn entirely from the 6,000 original drawings (dating from the 1940s to the 1990s), 1,500 prints, tens of thousands of letters, documents, films and ephemera together with the contents of his studio held at the Archive.

For more information on the Giles Collection or the British Cartoon Archive go to: www.cartoons.ac.uk

A catalogue of the exhibition published by the British Cartoon Archive is available for £25.

The Cartoon Museum, Little Russell Street, London, is open: Tues-Sat, 10.30am-5.30pm and Sun 12pm-5.30pm. Admission: Adults £4, Concessions £3, Free to Under 18s and students.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent

Cartoon exhibitions: Giles and more

Giles: One of the Family is at the Cartoon Museum in London from November 5 until February 8, 2009. Click image to enlarge

Whenever there is a show dedicated to a big name in the world of painting, such as Monet or Rothko, the media describes it as a "blockbuster exhibition". Well, this must be the equivalent in the cartooning world, as it features one of the giants of the artform: Carl Giles (1916-1995).

The exhibition of more than 80 works includes wonderful colour covers as well as drawings never reproduced in the annuals. His studio is recreated complete with desk, drawing board and reference material. Also revealed are less familiar aspects of his career including his time as an animator, his propaganda work for the Ministry of Information and his work as cartooning war correspondent.

The Cartoon Museum, Little Russell Street, London, is open: Tues-Sat, 10.30am-5.30pm and Sun 12pm-5.30pm. Admission: Adults £4, Concessions £3, Free to Under 18s and students.

Here are two must-see cartoon exhibitions which are currently running:

Steve Bell's Drawing Politics and Other Animals is a free exhibition at the Lightbox, in Woking. Re-live the political scandals of the 1980s and 1990s through the drawings and original artwork of Britain's most renowned political cartoonist.

Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster is at the Wallace Collection in West London. This free exhibition, which marks the centenary of Lancaster's birth, celebrates his astonishing range as an artist and as a chronicler of style and fashion.

The PCO: Great British cartoon talent

Cartoon books coming out

The clocks have fallen back, and subsequently the nights are drawing in, so as we race towards Christmas publishers are putting out books on cartooning. Here's a selection of recent example that may be filling stockings come December.

First up is The History of the Beano: The Story so Far, a comprehensive round-up of the iconic DC Thompson comic from the last 70 years, here reviewed by the Daily Record and by Danny Baker in The Times. This book also ties in with the recent exhibitions in Dundee and the Cartoon Museum in London.

The History Of The Beano - The Story So Far is published by D.C. Thomson and Waverley Books, priced £25. The Beano and Dandy Birthday Bash continues at the The Cartoon Museum, 35 Little Russell Street, London WC1A 2HH until 2nd November 2008.

Next is Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster on the life and times of the late Daily Express pocket cartoonist Osbert Lancaster, which is reviewed in the New Statesman, the Spectator and by cartoonist Nicholas Garland in the Telegraph. This book also ties into an exhibition at the Wallace Collection (reviewed in the Telegraph, the Guardian, and the Independent) .

Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster, edited by James Knox, is published by Frances Lincoln Publishers Ltd, priced £25. The exhibition continues at The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN until 11th January 2009.

And finally we come to The Best of Punch Cartoon, a collection of cartoons from the legendary satirical magazine spanning over 150 years of humour, the launch of which was attended by the PCO's own Pete Dredge. Reviewed here by cartoonist Peter Brookes of the Times, by Michael Heath, cartoon editor of the Spectator, and in the Independent.

The Best of Punch Cartoons, by Helen Walasek, is published by Prion Books, priced £30.



The PCO: Great British cartoon talent

Symbolism in cartoons

Ever wondered why some newspaper cartoons have so many symbols and badges in them? Let PCOer Martin Rowson explain a little about it in this Radio 4 interview about the symbolism of Russia as a giant bear. Clip from the Today programme.

British cartoon talent

Cartoon Exhibition: The Beano in Dundee

Amid the coverage of the London launch of the Beano and Dandy Birthday Bash last week at the Cartoon Museum, we should mention that there's a parallel exhibition in the Beano and Dandy's home town of Dundee. The exhibition is being held at the Lamb Gallery at the University of Dundee until the 20th September, Monday to Friday 9.30-20.30, Sat 9.30-12.00, and best of all, it's free to enter!

More details at the University of Dundee's website. Not being able to attend ourselves, Bloghorn would be keen to hear any reports from the exhibition.

Getting back to the London event, ITN sent a reporter along to cover the event last week, and here's their report.

Thanks to Lew Stringer for his Blimey! It's another blog about comics for the above links.

UPDATED:
PCO member Steve Bright, who worked for the comics for more than twenty years, asks us to point out that ITN have made a clanger in their copy. The current editor of The Beano is Alan Digby, not Rigby. Independent Television News, what can you say ... thanks for pointing that out Steve.

It's British cartoon talent

Cartoon exhibition: Beano and Dandy Birthday Bash

Click the above image to enlarge it, and see how many characters you can name

The Beano and Dandy Birthday Bash exhibition opens today at the Cartoon Museum in London.

PCOer Royston Robertson writes: I attended the preview of the show last night and can report that, as you would expect, it's great fun.

For the cartoonist geeks among us it's a chance to peer up close at original artwork drawn by some of the much-loved masters of comic art, such as Ken Reid and Dudley Watkins.

But there's plenty for the younger comic readers too, including activities and quizzes. Can you name all nine Bash Street Kids?

The exhibition spans eight decades and takes in all the Beano and Dandy characters you'd expect to see, from the iconic figureheads of Dennis the Menace and Desperate Dan to much-loved characters from the past such as Brassneck, Winker Watson and Pansy Potter (The Strongman's Daughter, of course).

A highlight for me was the wartime strip showing Lord Snooty taking on Adolf Hitler. Der Führer is unhappy that the Beano is keeping the British nation cheerful and vows to get rid of it. But Snooty and his pals have other ideas. A classic.

I'll certainly be returning with my kids, and I suggest that anyone with a love of British comics puts it on their must-see list for the summer and autumn. The exhibition runs until November 2.

The museum is running Beano and Dandy events for children throughout August, including family fun days, cartooning masterclass sessions, and chances to meet Beano artists. For more, visit the Cartoon Museum website.

The PCO: British cartoon talent

Cartoon exhibition: Beano and Dandy

While we're busy marking 60 years of the NHS this week, let's not forget that another much-cherished British institution has a significant birthday approaching.

On July 30, The Beano will be 70 years old. London's Cartoon Museum will be holding a major Beano and Dandy exhibition to celebrate. It will run until November 2 and will feature Dennis the Menace, the Bash Street Kids, Minnie the Minx, Lord Snooty, and all the gang. More on this nearer the time.

The Cartoon Museum

The PCO: British cartoon talent

Pont events at the Cartoon Museum

The Cartoon Museum has a series of evening events lined up to accompany its exhibition Pont – Observing the British at Home and Abroad, which was reviewed here last week.

Pont – the Making of a Humorous Artist, June 5: Illustrated talk with Anita O’Brien, discussing the evolution of Pont’s style from his drawings of the early 1930s to his wartime work.

Pont of Punch, June 19. Former Punch archivist and Cartoon Museum trustee Amanda-Jane Doran looks at Pont as a Punch artist.

In Praise of Pont – Cartoonists’ Roundtable, June 26: A host of cartoonists join Richard Ingrams to discuss the wit and artistry of Pont. The panel includes Steve Bell, Peter Brookes, Nicholas Garland, John Jensen, Nick Newman and Posy Simmonds.

Graham Laidler, The Man Behind Pont, July 3: Simon Booth reveals more about the short but eventful life of Graham Laidler, aka Pont.

For full details on times and ticket prices, visit the Cartoon Museum website.

The PCO: Today's British cartoon talent

Review: Pont at the Cartoon Museum

PCOer Royston Robertson reviews the exhibition
Pont: Observing the British at Home and Abroad at the
Cartoon Museum It's probably asking for trouble to use the word "important" in relation to a cartoon exhibition, but it seems applicable here as Pont, who was known as Graham Laidler to his mum, is so often overlooked when histories of cartooning are written.

Also, these cartoons from the 1930s were clearly instrumental in helping to creating the magazine cartoon as we know it today. And a tribute to their worth is the fact that so many are laugh-out-loud funny, even now.

Pont's The British Character cartoons, which appeared in Punch and make up a large chunk of the show, still seem to hit the nail on the head. Even the captions in themselves are funny: "Fondness for laughing at our own anecdotes"; "Passion for not forgetting the moderately great"; and, my particular favourite, "A tendency to leave the washing-up till later".

The drawings demand your attention, and repay you with lots of brilliant details. Look at that impatient left foot in the drawing above! In "Life in the Flat Above", part of the Popular Misconceptions series, we see every member of the family jumping up and down on the floor and clanging pots, but look closer and you see that figures in the paintings on the walls, including an elephant, are also jumping.
Laidler died at 32, a tragically short life, but what a groundbreaking legacy he left. The cartoon above looks like a 1930s precursor to the melancholy of Charles Schulz's Peanuts.

So it's an important show, but it's mostly just very, very funny. The exhibition, which includes a comprehensive and reasonably priced catalogue, is at the Cartoon Museum until July 27. Go and see it.

The Cartoon Museum website

The PCO: British cartoon talent

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival and the UK Cartoon Museum

The curator of the UK's national Cartoon Museum Anita O'Brien has contributed an exhibition to the Shrewsbury festival this year. This cartoon from Steve (Bestie) Best is one of the many on show now. You can click the cartoon to see a larger version.

British cartoon talent

Cartoon exhibition: Pont of Punch

Cartoon by Punch cartoonist Pont. (Click to enlarge)

An exhibition entitled Pont: Observing the British at Home and Abroad runs at the Cartoon Museum in London from April 23 until July 27.

It features more than 90 classic cartoons about the quirks of the British by Graham Laidler, better known as the Punch cartoonist Pont.

The Cartoon Museum is at 35 Little Russell Street, London. It is open Tue-Sat, 10.30am-5.30pm; Sun 12pm-5.30pm. Admission: £4, £3, free to students and under-18s. Visit the Cartoon Museum website.

British cartoon talent

Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival: Six exhibitions open to the public

Six exhibitions of high-quality cartoon and comic art opened at the Shrewsbury festival yesterday evening. All free to enter and available to all, are the But is it Art? cartoon show and a one man show for Dave Brown of The Independent. The national UK Cartoon Museum has lent a collection for display and there is also a caricature show and contributions from cartoonists and artists from both Belgium and America.

British cartoon talent

Cartoon exhibition: Robert Dighton

An exhibition entitled Robert Dighton: Georgian Caricaturist, Actor and Thief is at The Cartoon Museum in London from January 23 to April 20.


Dighton (1751-1814) was a colourful character who for a time combined a career as an actor in the West End with that of artist and printseller, producing caricatures of the London celebrities of the day.

This exhibition of 80 of his original caricatures of celebrities and nonentities, the rich and the poor, provides an insight into the life of Georgian London. They range from Bill Richmond the famous black boxer, sportsman, innkeeper and promoter, to Martha Gunn who supplied bathing machines and prostitutes to the upper classes on their visits to fashionable Brighton. Dighton also drew the tailors, actors, academics and down-at-heel types who could be found on any street.

At the turn of the century he achieved notoriety for stealing and selling prints which he had quietly stolen from the British Museum.

The exhibition will also include some examples by his sons and grandsons who carried on the tradition of caricature.

The museum is at at 35 Little Russell Street, London WC1A 2HH and is open Tue-Sat, 10.30am-5.30pm, Sun 12pm-5.30. Admission £4/ £3. Free to Students and under 18s.

British cartoon talent

PCO Procartoonists - What we do

The profession and craft of cartooning (from gag drawings and pocket-sized newspaper jokes to comics strips and magazines, from editorial drawings and commercial advertising to digital monitors and billboards) has suffered some economic blows over the past decade. These have often been connected to the decline in the fortunes of the print industry.
But, despite this, the PCO is sure that - though undervalued by some in the UK - intelligent drawing remains an art-form which people continue to love to see and read. The map below, bears this knowledge out, as it shows you the locations of some of our many digital visitors this week.

We want to put our art in front of those people in a more direct way than we have previously done and we are, as an organisation, set up to promote and advertise the best of the active UK cartoon art world.
We seek to reach the three major constituencies which support our art form - editors of media outlets, both traditional and digital, art buyers in commercial companies and the reading public. We are doing this through three channels - the internet, our own printed magazine, The Foghorn, and at large public events like the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival and The Big Draw. We also help to make and run bespoke, or single-issue, cartoon exhibitions like this one, which are often on tour and shown in major cities in the UK and Europe.
As you'd expect, we have excellent connections in the world of art and business and work closely with the national Cartoon Museum, the Cartoon Hub at the University of Kent, the Political Cartoon Gallery and other interested galleries and arts bodies, including the cartoonists’ social clubs, the British Cartoonists’ Association and the Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain. We,in our own way, cover the UK. We also have excellent links abroad through our collaboration with European cartooning organisations inside Feco. If you are curious about our work and what it can do for you, you can contact us from our main portfolio site which lives here.

Andy Davey – Chairman of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

British cartoon talent

PCO Procartoonists - Heath Robinson’s Helpful Solutions

So nice to see that the Cartoon Museum has put on an exhibition of William Heath Robinson cartoons. There aren’t many cartoonists who achieve their own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary AND get mentioned on the Today programme, so hat’s off to CM head honchos Anita O’Brien and Oliver Preston and indeed the very late Mr Heath Robinson himself. “Heath Robinson’s Helpful Solutions” (until 7 October 2007) is the largest exhibition of William Heath Robinson’s (1872-1944) humorous drawings for 15 years. It includes over 100 original drawings and sketches. Also included in the exhibition are two three dimensional ‘Heath Robinson’ machines.