Cartooniana

- My grandfather loved those drawings!
As a guest to this house exclaimed yesterday at which I was at first a total ? since Det lille rige med svovlstikkerne (roughly "The Little Sulphurous Country" a play on words from the original title of The Little Match Girl) by Adam O. was only published this week.

But her remark was a revelation. She merely glimpsed a spread from the book while rushing through the house, and yet it felt familiar to her. It was a revelation as to the place in the grand tradition of Danish cartoon art, which in spite of his young age is already rightfully Adam's.

He places the political enterprises of the day in full sceneries with colors as saturated as if they were still created in water color like Alfred Schmidt did and Herluf Jensenius and Roald Als before him too. Within each scenery and its coloring roam the sharply drawn politicians and the rounded outlines of the homeless and their countrymen, highlighting that strange animal that is societ…

In questioning the quality of many of the cartoons created and not least the amount of Eiffel Towers therein while first covering the Paris Attacks, there is another side to that subject, when a cartoonist is arrested for creating a drawing on the matter.
Such is the situation right now for Hadi Heidari, who was arrested on Monday as witnessed by two of his co-workers how "a young man came with a warrant. He showed Hadi the warrant and they took him quietly", according to Iranhumanrights.org. We have followed Hadi Heidari's work before on this blog too, when he was taken to court in 2012 and later acquitted for allegedly having "insulted" war veterans. 
His "crime" - let us retain the quotes - is still the old one from his first arrest in 2009 following the Green Revolution, which prompted the next one in 2012 and now he is among the number of critical voices of the press being seized lately in Iran.

While waiting to learn more of his situation let u…

- I think, I shall draw the Eiffel Tower; one cartoonist tweeted on Sunday following the massacre in Paris. A colleague of his answered back that he would then do the Seine in red.

They shall remain unnamed, since it was done with a pained grin. Let us be blunt: The batch of cartoons following the massacre has certainly not been of much quality, the excellent ones being few and far apart. Cartoonists are analysts with the need to take one step back to see other sides to the debacle in front of them. In this case the perpetrators were as yet not identified and no one wanted to jump to conclusions giving the extreme right voices in European politics a field day. It was not yet the time for anything but giving homage to those, who had been killed.

Making a cartoon that of homage is a tricky situation. Especially when it is required of the cartoonist to draw here and now and refrain from all humor, in particular any hint of ambiguity - then there is not much left of what makes cartooning…

When someone heftily refuses to be seen in certain others' company, there is every reason to focus on their correlation. Each of the present company speaks by way of accusational noise in which it is vital to retain the full attention of their listeners. The last thing they wish to be compared to are those who do the very same. If the listeners should discover likenesses in their verbal tactics, they might begin to think twice. 
But inviting one's beholders to think twice is the very intention of the cartoonist and Steve Brodner is letting their empty eyes and sullen features be reflected in each other to the tone of that autumnal brown known all too well not that long ago in Europe. A brown, which declared to be building new empires, but which apart from the violence turned out to be nothing but empty at heart. A fruit anyone?






The cartoon shown is courtesy of Steve Brodner and must not be reproduced without his permission.

This morning the stencil, which traveled from Ukraine found a wall in Damascus.
A wall as it is, since this may just be its first destination in Damascus. It was reported back that this particular wall turned out to be of a coarse nature and so the color is not solid, making for a shimmering effect. It is as if he is not quite there and yet that is exactly what he is, what makes him all the more haunting, since this is how the actual person goes about Syria. 
He may at first seem to be placed in isolation, but the white paint underneath him barely covers the many voices, who once called out for change and for dignity. And thus the one wall tells us of the length and of the layers of the Syrian war.



For details of the stencil see more at: FREEDOM GRAFFITI WEEK Syria

At times the strongest commentary to a situation is the indirect one and following the massacre that took place last night in Paris, I immediately thought of the as yet unpublished (but oh, must it find its publisher soon) collection of poems and drawings Songs to Sissera by Riber Hansson.

Sissera of course refers to the Biblical figure, but another struggle surfaces when reading of his demise: That of the artist creating. The voluminous ink splotch, soaking the paper, running and growing to all sides of the picture plane at once controlled and yet not at all so. It seems to speak of destruction by its very massiveness before us and yet it is its very creation we are seeing.

It is the artist on whose command everything is destroyed. Or as it is, created where nothing was to be found before.






"Around the bay's shallow waters the houses are flocking,
a thirsty herd of wood and stone.
A ripple rocks the gentle glow of lanterns.
Words cross the water. Humans have for a thousand
y…

Víctor Vélez is a prominent contributor to the Anatomia Cartooniensa in which he nails the evolution of the corrupted being.

Human form, or any living form for that matter is not as long-winded in developing new attributes as science has told us. The sense of a new exploitation to be made and instantly a new form sees the day.

The accelerated evolution has a typology of its own: Claws, beacons and teeth can be recognized across the field as the main physical ingredients. Each ingredient is at once to be used as a weapon and create movement. The beacons for one have scissors as their forefathers, diving in stabbing anyone daring to try to escape.

The brain of the corrupted being has grown into a being of its own. A formidable beast clawing out from behind what could deceivingly be seen as curly locks. Víctor Vélez creates movements through its opposite, through the density of the sharp black line so tense that we sense the anger about to burst out from within the brain deformed.

Corrupt…