Bush political cartoon ad

The NRDC Action Fund paid for a full-page caricature/political cartoon ad in today's Washington Post showing George W bush as a snake-oil salesman. It's a lovely piece and they've put a pdf online - I can't recall anything similar since Pat Oliphant did a series of full page ads about airlines at least a decade ago.

Beeler's caricatures

I saw Nate Beeler today, and he says that he's doing caricatures for the Examiner chain. Three caricatures a week, one each for the Washington, Baltimore and San Francisco editions, published on the new Sunday paper. You can see the first ones on his blog now - the one I've lifted is DC Mayor Fenty.

Obituary for Arlington caricaturist

See "Scott A. Fertig, 41; Arlington Artist," By Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, May 6, 2008; B08.

John Kascht caricature videos on Wash Post site?

Did anyone know about these? I certainly didn't until the Journalista blog from Seattle pointed them out. There's seven up now - Obama, Clinton, Edwards, McCain, Guliani, Huckabee and Romney - each is slightly over 3 minutes.

Risko covers Post's Weekend

Noted caricaturist Robert Risko did the cover caricature of Woody Allen for Friday's Weekend section. Risko's usually seen more often in the New Yorker -- perhaps his illustrations is where the whole year's budge for Tom the Dancing Bug went. Apparently they didn't pay him for web rights though.

Writings on comics by American U professor

I was introduced to American U professor Erik Dussere last night at the PEN/Faulkner talk. He's written a couple of articles on comics:

"Subversion in the Swamp: Pogo and the Folk in the McCarthy Era," Journal of American Culture 26 (1; March 2003): 134-141

"The queer world of the X-Men; OK, Wolverine never built a shrine to Judy Garland, but 'the strangest teens' were obviously homo superior -- emphasis on the homo," Salon (July 12, 2000)

Another finger puppet!!!!

SPX meant I couldn't get this mentioned on Saturday, but Richard Thompson caricatured Hilary Clinton as a finger puppet this week. I've made it and she's glaring at my house guests now.

Two minor bits

Today's Express gave The Jungle Book dvd a glowing review. The article's not online.

And in the Post's Food section, the Palm, the restaurant chain with local caricatures got a write-up with a photograph of said caricatures, and the photograph actually is online.

Thomas Fleming, Washington caricaturist

I picked up a damaged copy of Around the Capital with Uncle Hank by Thomas Fleming, New York: Nutshell Publishing Co, 1902 yesterday.

Actually, the web says he studied worked at the New York Sun, New York World, and Commercial Advertiser, and the most famous of his cartoons was "Senator Tillman's Allegorical Cow" whatever that might have been.

In this book, every other page is a cartoon, usually a caricature of a large-headed politician, like the ones that follow, but he also did line illustrations that look influenced by Phil May. An example can be seen here in the Corcoran Gallery cartoon where the old maid is admiring the Venus de Milo's breasts; for those wondering, back in the Museum's early days it had lots of displays of casts of classical sculptures for study. Actually, I would like to see that come back as you get a tactical sense that photography and books can't convey. And the tyranny of the art world for the original object can get tiresome.

I have nothing to say about the sheep-hugger though.

new caricatures in DC restaurant

In their Yeas & Nays column, Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin wrote "The Palm unveils its new caricatures," Washington Examiner August 31, 2007.

Miguel Covarrubias portraits on display this fall.

The great Mexican caricaturist has material - "portraits of and by" - borrowed from the National Portrait Gallery in the exhibit "Mexican Treasures of the Smithsonian" in the underground Ripley Center from September 4 - November 11.


Last year's exhibit of his work was well worth seeing. Here's the review I wrote for the International Journal of Comic Art 8:2:

Miguel Covarrubias: Mexican Genius in the United States. Washington, DC: Cultural Institute of Mexico, May 3-July 7, 2006.

Covarrubias, while little remembered today, was a giant in magazine illustration and caricature from the 1920s though the 1940s. According to the promotional material for the exhibit, he illustrated for Vanity Fair, Vogue, The New Yorker, Fortune, Life and Time while also illustrating over twenty books. Surprisingly, he also did pioneering cultural anthropology research when he visited Bali with his wife in the 1930s.

This exhibit also consists of two smaller shows. On the ground level of the building, an aging mansion, sketches and studies from the Universidad de las Américas were displayed in a set of unadorned side galleries off the lobby. The fifty-two sketches appeared to be studies for more complete work. They were mostly on cheap newsprint paper, and the identity of the subject was frequently lost except for the famous like Marlene Dietrich, D.H. Lawrence, Joe Louis, Walt Disney, and Benny Goodman. The sketches showed Covarrubias working with a quick, forceful stroke, and "Unknown Character" in the first room demonstrated that Edward Sorel must have been familiar with his work. In the final room of the galleries, two or three films were supposed to be showing, but none were. The press release listed two films by José G. Benítez Wall, A Mexican in New York (1997) and Miguel Covarrubias 1904-1957 (1996) and the wall text listed a third, A Master Artist's Trade (1997).

Returning to the lobby, the visitor (of which I was the only one) could examine exhibit cases with published versions of some of his book and magazine work. Books he illustrated included non-fiction and non-cartoon works such as The Aztecs: People of the Sun. He wrote and illustrated Mexico South: The Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Knopf 1967) and drew striking maps and Olmec heads for it. In Fine Art Color Prints (Chicago: Peoples Book Club, 1945), Covarrubias contributed a very well done and very complex "Map of America" showing the distribution of natural resources. The exhibit cases also included Vanity Fair from June 1933 showing one of his series of Impossible Interviews -- "#18 Herr Adolf Hitler and Huey S. 'Hooey' Long versus Josef Stalin and Benito Mussolini." These Impossible Interviews were a major component of the second part of the exhibit, which was up four flights of red, fraying but thickly carpeted stairs, lined by mural scenes painted by Cueva del Rio from 1934-1941.

The fourth floor held the exhibit Miguel Covarrubias: Caricaturista, curated in 2004 by Kathryne B. Tovo for Humanities Texas with the University of Texas' Ransom Humanities Research Center. It was not readily apparent if the original show consisted of all reproductions, but the traveling version did. Given the quality of Covarrubias' artwork, the use of reproductions was a considerable disappointment, especially since the Ransom Center appears to have had access to the original works. In spite of that, this exhibit was a good representation of the breadth of his career, and was very well-labeled with biographical information on his subjects including scientists and explorers like William Beebe and Richard E. Byrd.

The label for the Impossible Interview in Vanity Fair of December 1931 succinctly explained the series rationale:

This regular feature paired two people who could not meet in real life in an imaginary conversation. Featuring such ill-matched celebrity pairs as a birth control advocate with the mother of quintuplets, a speakeasy hostess with the president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, or a sultry Marlene Dietrich with moralist Senator Smith Brookhart, each interview offered rich potential for comic conversation and visual contrasts -- with the less respectable figure often achieving a slight edge.

Sorel's debt to Covarrubias can again be seen in his recent similar series for the Atlantic Monthly collected as First Encounters: A Book of Memorable Meetings (Knopf, 1994). The time is overdue for a collection of these original Interviews.

These rooms were filled interesting illustrations. Two especially worth noting were a skillful parody of Rockwell Kent that Covarrubias did in Kent's style in 1932, and an illustration of Walt Disney in Noah's Ark with all of his characters, done for Vogue in 1937. The Disney caricature was the finished version of the sketch seen on the first floor, and the failure to display the two side-by-side highlighted a disappointment of this exhibit. Overall, the show should have been better, but for those with little knowledge of Covarrubias' long and varied career, it was an adequate introduction to his work.

Comic books, caricature, anime, adaptions in today's freeby papers

Check out the Onion online - they've been posting expanded versions of last week's comics issue.

In today's free papers, in addition to the Tek Jansen story -

Rosenberg, Scott. 2007.
Based on a fake story: Out of a nonexistent novel comes a comic riddled with humor.
[Washington Post] Express (August 9): 19

There's a Stardust story -

Dawson, Angela / Entertainment News Wire. 2007.
She's got star power: Claire Danes has a heaven-sent role in the fantasy 'Stardust'.
[Washington Post] Express (August 9): E11

An anime singer appearance - Yoko Ishida, 'Sailor Moon' singer, singing at Jaxx on Saturday.

And in the Examiner, a rare caricature article -
Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin.
Yeas and Nays: Permanent Presence at The Palm - Mark Foley’s here to stay.
Washington Examiner (August 9): 6

Political caricaturist Krystyna Edmondson

Political caricaturist Krystyna Edmondson is profiled by her daughter in "Word for Word, Images of My Mother" by Anna Edmondson, Washington Post, Monday, May 14, 2007; C08.

Also in Style, Mike Peters' Mother Goose and Grimm is a tribute to Johnny Hart and B.C.

Oct 31 - Satrapi signing and article; DC caricaturist

Marjane Satrapi's signing Chicken with Plums about her musician granduncle tonight at Politics and Prose in the District.

An article about her is in today's Express -

Rosenberg, Scott. 2006.
A life in 8 days: Graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi traces family history.
[Washington Post] Express (October 31): 17

There's also an article of interest in the Post's Health section. Mike Caplanis writes about changing his career from advertising to being a caricaturist.

Truth in Advertising -- And Art
Live Reports from the Midlife Adventure
Washington Post Tuesday, October 31, 2006; Page HE03

Exhibit - thru October 31: Simplicissimus and the Empire

[this is a very good exhibit, and I believe they're original pages, not repros]

Contact:Norma Broadwater202-289-1200, ext. 106
nbroadwater@washington.goethe.org

September 6 – October 31, 2006
Simplicissimus and the Empire 1896-1914

Satire is undoubtedly as old as humankind itself, and has always provoked both laughter and outrage. Recognizing the success of theSimplicissimus and the Weimar Republic exhibition in the fall of2003, the Goethe-Institut Washington displays reproductions of original Simplicissimus caricatures dating from 1896 to 1914. Simplicissimus, also commonly known as "Der Simpl," was among the earliest and most significant of the late nineteenth-century satirical periodicals that nurtured and embodied the developing spirit of Expressionism in Germany. The magazine was satirically strongest during those early days, caricaturing Wilhelmine politics,publicservants, the military, and other political groups, but nevertheless leaving room for an animated portrayal ofdaily life. Originally conceived in 1896 as an art and literature revue for themasses, it soon changed its course to feature caricature and satire, projecting a shockingly aggressive, inherently revolutionary vision. Its attitude and ideology consisted of antagonism towards the bourgeoisie, rejection of urban life with its culture andmaterialism, and espousal of man's unity with nature. It highlighted new design currents and a new form of social and political satire. Simplicissimus developed a model still in use by modern caricaturists and illustrators. Although some of the texts' allusions may challenge today's public due to our lack of knowledge about the day-to-day political context in which they were created, the drawings speak for themselves.

Opening lecture Wednesday, September 6, at 6:30 pm by Marion Deshmukh, Professor of Art History at George Mason University, followed by a reception. RSVP to 202-289-1200 ext. 160.

Panel discussion Satire: History and Modern Perceptions on Thursday,September 14, at 6:30 pm: Satire and cartoons have a long legacy of provoking laughter and outrage. What are some highlights of that history, and what role docartoons and humor play throughout the world today? Are there any boundaries, or is everything allowed? Panelists include: PeterJelavich, professor of history, Johns Hopkins University KevinKallaugher (KAL), The Economist, www.Kaltoons.com Ann Telnaes, editorial cartoonist and Pulitzer Prize winner
RSVP to 202-289-1200 ext. 161

Gallery hours: Monday to Thursday 9 to5; Friday 9 to 3. Featured during "Third Thursday," Downtown's monthly gallery crawl, on September 21 and October 19 from 6 – 8 pm, and on Saturday, September 16, from noon to 5 pm as part of the14thannual Arts on Foot festival. Presented in conjunction with the film series Satire in Film. More information can be found at www.goethe.de/washington.

About the Goethe-Institut: Mutual understanding among nations bypromoting international cultural dialogue: this is the ambitiousmission of the Goethe-Institut. On behalf of the Federal Republic ofGermany, cultural institutes around the world provide cultural programs, language courses, support to educators, and up-to-date information on Germany in the context of Europe. Founded in 1990, Goethe-Institut Washington, DC is a center for German culture and language, and for the coordination of media projects for all of North America. From its location in the newly-revitalized Downtown, the Goethe-Institut Washington reaches out to both individuals and organizations in the community, bridging the past, present, and future with a variety of high-quality events.

ADDRESS:812 Seventh St. NW
Washington, DC 20001
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown202-289-1200
www.goethe.de/washington
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