David Remnick - Gerry Adams has no right to the comparison with Mandela (1994)

Gerry Adams, by Martin Rowson

David Remnick visited troubled and torn Belfast in the early 1990s. He wrote about his experience and interpretation in the New Yorker, published in April 1994. You can read Remnick's account of his meeting with Gerry Adams in his Sinn Fein office in early 1990s Belfast here. It was an incredibly broad and detailed account of life in Belfast and Northern Ireland at the time. A note on how Belfast was very serene outside of the hotspots, how loyalist and republican paramilitaries are simply base gangs like in any other city; he painted a picture from his trip to Paisley's church, Martyr's Memorial; told us about Gerry Adams's hallowed republican forbears; and retold us about his ramble in the greens of outer Belfast with Michael Longley. One of the aspects of the long essay that most hit me was when David Remnick said that Adams no right to the comparison with Mandela or Arafat:

Laydown liberalism

Cartoon by Martin Rowson

For Andrew Sullivan religion was at the heart of the Charlie Hebdo killing and that religion was Islam. He wrote:

"But Islam has nothing to do with this. There are just a few loonies who are suffering from false consciousness, and their real motivations are economic or personal or secular or just purely violent. You can believe that, if you want. Or you can pretend to believe it because it might be more pragmatic to do so. Or you can open your eyes. This is not to say that most Muslims support this kind of mass murder – and the global Muslim response was particularly encouraging. But it is to say that it is not a coincidence that so much terror and violence all over the world is currently being committed in the name of Islam. Some core parts of it are, quite simply, incompatible with post-Enlightenment thought and practice. And those parts have all the energy right now.

I'm a cartoonist, it's my job to create "brutal" and "bilious" cartoons

A self-portrait by Martin Rowson with a skewered Prime Minister, David Cameron

We artists live under a convention. We have a license to offend. A warrant and a commission to eviscerate people with a pen. Robert G. Ingersoll said:

"The instance we admit that a book is too sacred to be debated or even reasoned about, we are mental serfs."

Martin Rowson on William Hogarth

To celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Hanoverian period, Radio 3 presented a mix of essays on key figures of the Georgian era. Writer and political cartoonist Martin Rowson provided an essay on the satiric genius of William Hogarth and his lasting influence on the development of the political cartoon. His essay wrote:

"In his history of the first Australian penal settlements, "The Fatal Shore", the art critic Robert Hughes described the standard modern perception of Georgian England thus: 

"A passing reference to violence, dirt and gin; a nod in the direction of the scaffold; a highwayman or two, a drunken judge, and some whores for local colour; but the rest is all curricles and fanlights. Modern squalor is squalid but Georgian squalor is ‘Hogarthian’, an art form in itself." 

Note that adjective. By now it’s so well entrenched we instinctively know what it means, though it’s probably not the meaning Hogarth himself would have wanted. He had definite ambitions for his name to be associated with his practice, and yet the paint strokes or engraved lines and slashes aren’t, of themselves, "Hogarthian". 

And however much he wanted - pretty successfully - to found an entirely new school of British art, there’s nothing really "Hogarthian" in his proto-impressionist study "The Shrimp Girl" or in his innovatively realistic portrait of the philanthropic sea-captain Thomas Corum, or his portrait of David Garrick or his murals in the Inns of Court or for Bart’s Hospital. These are all by Hogarth, for sure; they might even be "Hogarthish"; but

Martin Rowson (@MartinRowson) - I'm a cartoonist, it's my job to be offensive

@juliusmandrake @peterkofod @alaindebotton @medialens I'm a freelance cartoonist. It's my job & vocation to be offensive & silly. No room...
— Martin Rowson (@MartinRowson) January 17, 2013

My last post in the series is on The Huffington Post here.

Arm folding and mirror holding, Ctd The power of the political cartoonist

Menzies Campbell said:

"Cartoons are a traditional feature of British political coverage and the cartoonist's pen stroke has often conveyed judgments more deadly than anything journalists would dare to express."

They're called "ink-stained assassins" for a reason, as The News Statesman put it here. As Diane Abbott said:

"The idea of John Major in his underpants: he used that over and over and it became part of the political lexicon. It spoke of his timidity, caution and greyness."

Likewise, of Ed Miliband, Tim Benson wrote in the book 'The Best of Britain's Political Cartoons 2013':

"[Peter] Brooke's believes that [Ed Miliband's] comparison with Wallace has damaged Miliband's chances of ever becoming prime minister. This is because, like Wallace, Miliband's also appears hapless, making the public's perception of him unsuitable prime ministerial material."

Political cartoonists in the digital age

In The New Statesman here Helen Lewis asked: "can political cartoonists can survive in the digital age?" In a piece by the title, "Loss of habitat threatens cartoonist species" Andy Davey wrote on the matter here:

"I am a member of an endangered species; no, not just homo sapiens sapiens but a rarer and more endangered sub-species; the cartoonists. In fact, my small colony is a sub-sub-species – the few who actually (well, as I write) make a living from the practice. The fact is that habitat change is threatening us. I am extremely lucky to have made it through the Darwinian undergrowth to find this sun-dappled glade where I can reflect on how our small herd got here and to muse about the path ahead. If you’ll indulge me, here goes. Like the WWF, I’m aware of you, dear sympathy-fatigued readers, so in the following paragraphs I’m hoping to strike a bold, rakish balance between abject sorrow at the dwindling numbers of a once-majestic species and an uplifting message of feel-good hope about the future [extended conservation metaphor ends]."

He wrote here:

"The ever-eloquent Rowson always likens us to parasites who will find a host even in the most unforgiving of environments. Our forbears were hosted by Georgian coffee shops, pompous, dry Victorian magazines and eventually newspapers."

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.

Martin Rowson on political cartoons

Martin Rowson said of drawing politicians on the BBC One Show:

"The one thing worse for a politician than being drawn in a political cartoon is not being drawn in a political cartoon. Because it means, first of all that nobody has heard of them and also that they're not recognizable." 

In my previous post here, Gerald Scarfe said:

"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 here. And Scarfe's influence, here.