I’ve always hated museums. They’ve been my recurring nightmare, places
where I trailed my young children round a series of dull rooms peering into
showcases stuffed full of boring debris while my legs ached and my brain
suffered from cultural overload. A resolute Philistine, I grew adept at
getting in quick and getting out even faster.
So why, I asked Paul Gravett, administrator of the Cartoon Art Trust,
bluntly, why the hell would anyone want to visit a cartoon museum?
“Some come to study, others to admire the quality of the artwork,” he said.
“But the best way is to look and laugh.
“British cartoonists and illustrators have always been among the best in the
world. We present material seriously but not solemnly, in a way that we hope
stimulates visitors to take a closer look.”
I have to admit that after thirty minutes of admiring the deadly expertise
of Judge Dredd in a recent exhibition at the Trust’s museum in Holborn, I
realized I was enjoying something in a place that is normally the bane of my
life. And, not for the first time, I appreciated the art that has been under
my nose in newspapers and magazines for years.
Cartoon art covers everything from sophisticated caricature (Thomas
Rowlandson, Ralph Steadman and Gerald Scarfe, at their sharpest) to
children’s comics (Film Fun, Lion, Beano, Bunty, School Friend, Eagle, etc)
to animation (the Simpsons, South Park, Wallace and Gromit, The Flintstones,
Captain Pugwash, Rupert, and Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman, to name but a
few).
Paul Sassiennie lives in north London with his wife, three children and over
35,000 comics, the latter one of the finest collections in Europe.
“The use of pictures to tell a story stretches back to the dawn of man,” he
said. “Palaeolithic art, dating back to the most recent ice age, has been
discovered at more than a hundred sites in Western Europe.
“The space agency, NASA, used drawings on a deep space exploration vehicle
to show homo sapiens and our position in the universe, for the benefit of
any extraterrestrials who see the craft.”
Back on terra firm in London, what are the chances of new cartoonists making
a living today?
“With the shortage of newsprint there is not a good opportunity at the
moment for young people getting their cartoons published,” said Frank
Dickens, whose strip cartoon, Bristow, as been published for over 40 years,
around the world. “The nationals are buying syndicated stuff from America
because it’s cheap. Of course the big money in cartooning comes from
syndication, having a regular feature, but this is a hard thing to get now,
especially for a beginner. It’s still possible, if you come out with a
blinder.
“When I was at the Bologna book fair talking to an American cartoonist, he
said a lot of them are going in for writing, these days. When you say a lot
of indians came over the hill it’s easier to write it in a sentence, rather
than draw it.”
So what does it take to become a successful cartoonist? “Driving hunger,”
said Dickens, whose creations also include Albert Herbert Hawkins, the
naughtiest boy in the world. “To be a good newspaper cartoonist you’ve got
to mirror the times.”
Just supposing your work gets syndicated, how do you keep on churning out a
newspaper strip, week after week? “There’s something funny in everything,”
said Dickens, “if you think about it long enough.”
Such as the so-called argument for passive smoking…
And when your work is really good, it may get an exhibition of its own.
Perhaps in a Cartoon Art Trust project.
Indeed, more and more of CAT’s counterparts are opening all over the world –
as showcases dedicated to what the French call the Ninth Art of cartoons and
comic strips (the Seventh being cinema, and the Eighth, television). Some of
us would argue there is also a Tenth Art – of anti-smoking propaganda, which
can be amazingly creative.
As for the world’s cartoon showcases, some are privately owned, others are
backed by the State. And all of them are collections of what most adults –
in Britain, anyway – believe to be disposable kids’ stuff.
Emerson said that cartoons gave “the truest history of our times”. Long
neglected as source material they are now highly valued for their unique way
of bringing the post alive. If you don’t believe me, take another look at a
selection of Giles cartoons from the 1950s and the 1960s, or the work of
Gilray.
Even British art critics – a pompous supercilious bunch, most of them, at
least when it comes to taking cartoons seriously as an art form – are
reluctantly coming to recognize the influence and importance of the humble
cartoon. Sir Ernst Gombrich was one of the first to acknowledge its
significance. And when some comics fetch more than £60,000, even hard-nosed
auctioneers sit up and take notice.
“There are cartoon museums in France, Belgium, America, Canada, Sweden,
Switzerland, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Japan,” said Gravette.
“Its the Cartoon Art Trust’s job to preserve the best examples of British
cartoon art. This includes all the merchandise and paraphernalia, such as
Heath Robinson’s crazy contraptions – and toilet paper, Giles’s working
studio, Hoffnung’s musical instruments, Spitting Image puppets, Desperate
Dan’s cow pie, Roy of the Rover’s football and even Larry’s autobiography on
CD-ROM.”
Maybe I should donate my collection of ashtrays featuring cartoons by my old
friend, Larry, who is one of the finest British cartoonists alive. It seems
museums can be fun, after all.
Some of the world’s comic museums:
National Museum of Cartoon Art, London, England www.cartooncentre.com
Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature at the University of Kent,
England www.library.kent.ac.uk
Centre National de la Bande Dessinnee et de l’Image, Angouleme, France
Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinnee, BrUssels, Belgium
Words and Pictures Museum of Fine Sequential Art, Northampton,
Massachusetts, USA
The Wilhelm-Busch Museum – Deutsches Museum fur Karikatur und kritische
Grafik, Hannover, Germany
Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco, USA
National Gallery of Cartoon and Caricature, Washington DC, USA
International Museum of Cartoon Art, Boca Raton, Florida, USA
Sammlung Karikaturen and Cartoons, Basel, Switzerland
Seriemuseet, near Malmo, Sweden.
