Martin McGuinness - From unbending hardliner, to the humanised andacceptable face of republicanism

Northern Ireland politicians from the early 1990s, by Gerald Scarfe for the New Yorker

In present Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness is viewed as the more moderate and conciliatory politician compared with the Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams. Yet a quick down historical accounts and observations show that the reality is the inverse. As is often the case in Northern Ireland, perception is incongruent to fact. Northern Ireland poet Nick Laird wrote:

"Growing up in Cookstown in County Tyrone, I would occasionally wonder what it would be like to be Martin McGuinness’s son. He was infamous for being Sinn Féin’s number two, and for being the officer commanding of the Derry brigade of the IRA, a position he assumed, as he recently admitted, in February 1972."

Elaine Sturtevant - Art is theft, Ctd

In an obituary on Elaine Sturtevant, Hans Ulrich Obrist wrote:

"[Elaine Sturtevant] made her controversial artistic debut in 1965 at the Bianchini Gallery, New York, when she repeated Andy Warhol's Flowers, a series of silk-screen prints that he had shown a couple of weeks before. Today it is par for the course for images to be sampled, re-used and edited, but in the early 60s, acts of appropriation were yet to become a staple of the art world."

On the occasion of her 2012 retrospective, Sturtevant: Image Over Image, at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Elaine Sturtevant said:

"What is currently compelling is our pervasive cybernetic mode, which plunks copyright into mythology, makes origins a romantic notion, and pushes creativity outside the self. Remake, reuse, reassemble, recombine – that's the way to go."

According to Alexis Petridis, Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman fell out after Steadman's first wife accused Scarfe of plagiarism.

Oliver Jeffers on art as theft here.

Martin Rowson - Political cartoons are assassinations without the blood

In a presentation by Martin Rowson (@MartinRowson) entitled The Power of the Political Cartoon, the Guardian cartoonist explained why he does political cartoons. The self-professed "Albert Schweitzer of British Cartooning" whose sole aim is to please, said:

"I do them because they are assassination without the blood. They are part of the political establishment in the country. For 300 years we've had this kind of satire tolerated. Extremely vicious, rude, personal attacks on people. So in a way it's ritualised. But it's also meant to do damage. It is voodoo. It's part of the symbiotic relationship cartoonists and politicians have. It's mind over matter. We pretend we matter, they pretend they don't mind. 

And what they do also is buy the originals. And this is where we get back to the voodoo. They buy the originals and they invariably hang them in their toilets. You don't have to be much of a Freudian to work out what's happening there. Thy are in fact flushing away the bad magic."

He continued:

"The purpose of satire somebody once said is to puncture pomposity. In fact the purpose of satire is to tear aside the fine arrangements and ceremonial clothing of the elite to show that they are sweating, stinking, pissing, shitting people just like us. It is an egalitarian purpose in satire."

Watch the full presentation here. My previous blog posts on Martin Rowson here and here. Similar posts on Ian Knox here, and Gerald Scarfe here, here and here.

Gerald Scarfe on drawing politicians

Gerald Scarfe said of drawing politicians:

"The sad final truth is that it doesn’t matter how hard you hit politicians — most are so arrogant, they would rather be drawn as a warthog than not drawn at all."

Gerald Scarfe on live drawing

Gerald Scarfe said of Honoré Daumier and the importance of working with your subject in real-time:

"Drawing was forbidden in the French parliament, so Honoré Daumier would take pieces of clay into the building, sit in the gallery and mould maquettes while watching the characters below. They serve to remind the cartoonist there is no substitute for observing your subject live. I have drawn enough politicians at party conferences to understand that well."

Art is theft, Ctd Gerald Scarfe

Gerald Scarfe said of the French political cartoonist Honoré Daumier:

"At times, his influence on me has been almost palpable. In 1834 he did a drawing called The Legislative Belly: rows of plump and senescent parliamentarians gossiping, sleeping, scribbling on bits of paper, all looking entirely unsuited to governing the country. I used it as the direct inspiration for a large theatre backdrop I painted for a production of Orpheus in the Underworld in 1988." 

And this was a fascinating comment from Scarfe: "I wonder whether Daumier’s portrayal of the pear-shaped king might have been an unconscious influence on me recently when I drew David Cameron as a lightbulb."