Inkspot 58 by Australian Cartoonists' Association

Number 58, Autumn 2009

Savage words with

Ralph SteaDman

www.cartoonists.org.au

president’sparlay Number 58 Autumn 2008 www.cartoonists.org.au 1300 658 581 --- ACA Board --Patron Vane Lindesay (03) 9523 8635 President Jules Faber president@cartoonists.org.au Deputy President Jason Chatfield deputy@cartoonists.org.au Secretary Kerry Anne Brown secretary@cartoonists.org.au Treasurer Grant Brown treasurer@cartoonists.org.au Membership Secretary Peter Broelman membership@cartoonists.org.au Vice Presidents Steve Panozzo (NSW) nsw@cartoonists.org.au Rolf Heimann (Vic/Tas) vic@cartoonists.org.au Paul Zanetti (Qld) qld@cartoonists.org.au Simon Kneebone (SA/NT) sa@cartoonists.org.au Mick Horne (WA) wa@cartoonists.org.au ABN 19 140 290 841 Inkspot is produced four times a year by the Australian Cartoonists’ Association.

PO Box 318 Strawberry Hills NSW 2012

ACA AFFILIATED ORGANISATIONS National Cartoonists Society President: Jeff Keane Secretary: Rick Kirkman

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Cartoonists’ Club of Great Britain President: Terry Christien Secretary: Richard Tomes

www.ccgb.org.uk FECO

President-General: Marlene Pohle Secretary-General: Peter Nieuwendijk

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Inkspot Editor: Mark McHugh Inskpot Prüfriider: Steve Panozzo Many thanks to Inkspot contributors Cover illustration by Bill Leak

It seems like I was just writing this bit but life moves pretty fast and here we are again. It’s been a fairly intense period here in Coffs Harbour, as it recovers from Caricature by Anton Edmin the disastrous floods of March. There are grim times at the Bunker Cartoon Gallery as upper management talks of culling the collection in favour of just the cartoons that make them laugh, have a well delivered social point or are well drawn. Understanding that it’s a cartoon gallery, not an industry gallery, and that the cartoons have been donated by people from all walks of life and from all over the globe doesn’t seem to have registered. However, the battle will continue to save the collection, a large percentage of which has been donated by ACA members through competition and donation. I thank those of you against the cull who have written in support of the Bunker, and I urge all of you that it’s not too late to write and voice your concerns. With newspapers cutting cartoonists loose around the world, we can ill afford to have this lone repository of Australian cartooning history suffer a similar fate. No less besieged by the elements, Victorian cartoonists have been hard at it helping to raise funds for those affected by the bushfires earlier in the year. Big thanks go to George Haddon and Vic/ Tas VP Rolf Heimann who have been tirelessly collecting donated cartoonists’ work for sale.“Cartoonists On Fire” will open at the Block Arcade in Melbourne on 25 May and run for a week. Those with some time to spare and can help out at the exhibition are more than welcome – please contact Rolf at vic@cartoonists. org.au Pop culture convention Supanova went “live” during March and April to a great response from the general public in both Melbourne and Brisbane. With numerous ACA members turning up at each venue to fly the flag, it was great exposure for us in our 85th year. With continued support from ACA Members and Supanova itself, it’s bound to be a success into the future as we develop a stronger relationship. The ACA President’s Night in Sydney on 11 April was a fantastic evening and whilst the crowd was more compact than expected, it was nevertheless an

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exciting opportunity for me to formally meet with members for the first time. A prize on the night for “Best Caricature of the New President” went to Anton Emdin, who was drawing between checking his mobile for messages from his imminentlyexpectant wife. His winning mugshot can be seen above. Thanks to NSW/ACT VP Steve Panozzo for organising this glittering evening. Finally, thanks to the numerous ACA Members who have contacted me since last issue to offer support and thanks for decisions the Board made regarding The Stanleys for 2009. Some tough decisions needed to be made regarding the venue and as a Board we were able to make them by working together. It’s fantastic to see so many members getting behind the decisions the Board makes, which are all done (as you well know) for the benefit of the ACA and our Membership. Keep on inkin’.

It has come to the ACA’s attention that yet another news organisation, APN, is requesting that freelance contributors hand over copyright. This includes cartoonists. Last year, the ACA wrote a letter to Fairfax protesting its attempts to grab copyright from freelance contributors. The ACA’s stance remains the same on the issue in 2009. Copyright is very important to cartoonists, especially to freelancers whose copyright is automatic under the Copyright Act (staff artists may not be entitled to copyright under the provisions of full employment). Cartoonists should know that they are under NO obligation to agree to such demands. Cartoonists have a right to protect secure income from their work. Signing away your intellectual property means the news organisation concerned OWNS the work and can make money from it’s repeated use, sometimes over many years, without seeking your approval. Think twice before agreeing to giving up copyright to anyone. With job cutbacks and limited work opportunities in newspapers there are more freelancers plying their trade, therefore the ACA encourages all cartoonists to reject such overtures by third parties to seek ownership of their work. For further information, visit www.copyright. org.au, www.viscopy.com and www. artslaw.com.au. For members of the MEAA, we suggest you contact your local branch office or visit www.alliance.org.au

PARZ!

Australia has never before been a land of such extremes - if it’s not an excess of water up north, it’s fire down below and economic bedlam all over. Over the last few months, as the continent endured an onslaught of Mother Nature’s worst, Australian cartoonists pitched in to help in any way they can. Mark Knight, whose property backs onto the Bunyip State Park, almost lost his home in the recent devastating Victorian bushfires. His subsequent cartoon, published in the Herald-Sun, depicts the scene in his backyard as firefighters struggle to contain the blaze.

Haddon, Michelle Baginski, Alan Rose, Will Goodwin, Anthony Pascoe, Jason Chatfield and Gavin Bell - went into action, while Paul Harvey sold copies of his latest book, The Mighty Bunyips. Long-suffering “roadies”, Rolf and Lila Heimann, supplied everything, transported everything and also managed to feed everyone, count the money and make coffee. “Everyone involved had a great time,” says Haddon, “including the public who enjoyed watching Harvey drawing Chatfied drawing Harvey, and Al Rose got so tired drawing at one stage that he put the pen down, sat back and had a class full of school kids on an excursion to the “big smoke” draw him - with some amazing results! All up, the ACA raised $1,400 to aid the appeal. George and Rolf are now in the process of launching a major fundraising exhibition in Melbourne’s Block Arcade, with proceeds going to The Red Cross appeal. “Cartoon-

and 46 cms, while Stuart Hale and his partner Zan Davies welcomed the arrival of their first. At the time of going to press we weren’t sure of the details, and they’re having trouble deciding on names. Send your baby name suggestion to stueyhale@yahoo.com.au. First prize is a baby.

Superheroes & Schlemiels

The Jewish Museum of Australia in Melbourne will play host to an exhibition entitled Superheroes & Schlemiels (Jews & Comic Art). The exhibition was created by the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme (Paris) in cooperation with the Joods Historisch Museum (Amsterdam). It opens on 3 May and runs until 30 August at 26 Alma Road, St. Kilda. A special ACA members’ evening has been arranged for 5 May at the Jewish Museum, starting 5pm. The cost is $20, which will include refreshments. Lazarus Dobelsky - comic book devotee, former fanzine editor and Melbourne based solicitor - has contributed material to the exhibition from his personal collection, and has agreed to host a very special viewing of the exhibition. For details, contact Rolf Heimann on (03) 9699 4858.

Hei Man! It’s a Dozen

With Rolf Heimann’s children’s books now appearing in Bahasa, Indonesia, he no longer has to say ‘appearing in almost a dozen languages’. This language makes it a round dozen, if you count platt (a regional minority language of Friesland in North Germany). Translators did not always have an easy time. Among clarifications required were questions like: “What is a Wagga Wagga?”

Matthew Martin came up with a unique way for people to help the bushfire victims. He designed and supplied a free cartoon for romantics to print out as a St. Valentine’s Day card. He suggested people printed out the image, and donated to charity any money they would have normally spent on their loved one. In response to the enormous relief effort underway for the flood and fire victims, our Victorian colleagues got themselves into fundraising mode, drawing caricatures for the Red Cross Bush Fire Appeal in the Atrium of Melbourne’s Federation Square in February. With the venerable Jim Bridges cracking the whip, Victoria’s finest on-the-spot caricaturists - George

ists on Fire” will run from the 25th until the 31st of May. For details, contact Rolf on (03) 9699 4858.

Such Rubbery News

It’s a case of cigars all round to new grandad Peter Nicholson on the arrival of Emmanuel in London. Nicho flew over to to welcome the new addition to the family. While he was there he indulged in his favourite pastime, rowing in the Head of The Thames. Upon returning to Melbourne, another grandchild, Rosa, was born. We don’t know if he celebrated by rowing in the Yarra. Congratulations are also in order for Anton and Ash Emdin on the arrival of baby #2, April, weighing in at 7.2 pounds

She’s Found Her Thrill

Resident Stanleys expert Jenny Hughes, fresh from a Tasmanian sojourn during which she picked a cubic tonne of blueberries, has gone out and bought a campervan. First stop in Jenny’s itinerary will be Adelaide in May, as she begins her six-month Magical Mystery Australian Odyssey, taking her all around Australia and (possibly) into your neighbourhood. You have been warned.

Torkan School

Roger Fletcher has been encouraging the next generation to don smocks and arm their pencils. Torkan’s custodian taught cartooning workshops at the State Library of NSW during April. The www.cartoonists.org.au

PARZ!

ACA hopes that the success of Roger’s workshops might re-ignite the SLNSW’s enthusiasm for cartooning. After a deal brokered in 1990, the ACA entered into an agreement to develop and maintain a cartoon collection to be preserved by the Library. As part of the deal, the SLNSW started a Summer School of Cartooning, led by ACA members. The Summer School proved to be so popular, that State Libraries around the country got involved. Upon State Librarian Alison Crook’s retirement, the relationship floundered as her successor failed to show any enthusiasm for cartoons. Now, with the arrival of new NSW State Librarian Regina Sutton, there is cause for optimism and we’re hoping Roger’s workshop programme will lead to bigger and better things.

in hospital with pneumonia and a staphylococcus infection, which meant he had to miss the Australian PGA Championship at Hyatt Regency Coolum, where his caricatures adorned the dinner menu. Now he’s back and fighting fit. In March, he managed a difficult shot off the 17th tee at St. Michael’s Golf Club (to which he has belonged since 1946) to rapturous applause. All par for the course... of course.

Jules Takes a Shine

ACA President Jules Faber met with famed pianist David Helfgott in February at the Helfgott’s idyllic farm in Glennifer, NSW. Jules was asked to paint his portrait, hoping a cartoonist could capture the ‘impishness’ professional portrait artists hadn’t captured quite satisfactorily to date. With Jules taking his family along, David took a ‘Shine’ to daughter Mary, even sharing a duet at his piano. The finished work will be exhibited in the Coffs Harbour Portrait Prize, which opens on 8 May.

Rafty On Course

He’s 93 and a half, but Tony Rafty is still making headlines. A lifelong golfing fanatic, Rafty is the centrepiece of the April 2009 edition of Golf Australia. Not surprisingly, when one considers that he has drawn all the world’s greatest golfers, both male and female, from life - often sitting at the back during media conferences. And we bet you never knew that Rafty helped Steve Elkington learn to draw (which he still does). Last year, Rafty was flown to Chicago by a large American company to sketch clients at a trade show, where he knocked out more than 40 drawings. He also zipped off to Greece with his daughter at one point. In December, Rafty spent four weeks

Jules Faber meets famed pianist David Helfgott

ISCA Faces Up

Rafty, Pic by Brendan James, Golf Australia

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The National Caricaturist Network has had a facelift. It’s changed its name to the International Society of Caricature Artists. The ISCA is an international nonprofit trade association based in the US. Its purpose is to promote the art of caricature, educate the public and the media about the art of caricature and to provide its members with helpful information about caricature as an as artform as well as a profession. The ISCA currently has over 550 members from around the world. For more information, visit: www.caricature.org

Cartoonists Not Laughing

Editorial cartoonists in the United States have been dropping like flies thanks to the newspaper industry being poleaxed by the dreaded Global Financial Crisis. Below is a partial list of editorial cartoonist positions that have been lost thanks to redundancies, “buy-outs” and retirements to “pursue other interests” over the past two years. The numbers are alarming for an industry that numbered in the hundreds ten or so years ago. While Australia’s newspaper industry has been hit hard by this latest recession, we have not seen such a dramatic effect on editorial cartoonist positions here. Unfortunately, several freelancers have recently lost their regular “gigs” thanks to bean counters who don’t value editorial cartoon commentary and opinion as highly as the bottom line. Australian comic strip artists have been facing the same issues for many years and can vouch for the difficulty is getting published, let alone stay in the funny pages. Ironically, highly-paid columnists don’t seem to be biting the dust. U.S. EDITORIAL CASUALTIES John Branch - San Antonio Express-News, Ed Stein - The Rocky Mountain News, Drew Litton - Rocky Mountain News, Ben Sargent - The Austin American Statesman, Brian Duffy - The Des Moines Register, Bill Schorr, Bill Garner The Washington Times,Patrick O’Connor - The Los Angeles Daily News, David Horsey - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jim Borgman - The Cincinatti Enquirer, Eric Devericks - The Seattle Times, Lee Judge - The Kansas City Star, Rob Tornoe - Politicker.com, Don Wright - The Palm Beach Post, Steve Greenberg - The Ventura County Star, Stuart Carlson - The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Dwane Powell - The News & Observer, Jim Lange - The Oklahoman, Chip Bok - The Akron Beacon-Journal, Peter Dunlap-Shohl - The Anchorage Daily News, M.E. Cohen, Jake Fuller - Gainesville Sun, Dave Granlund - MetroWest Daily News, Paul Combs, Mike Shelton - The Orange County Register, Gordon Campbell - Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Richard Crowson - Wichita Eagle, Mike Peter - Dayton Daily News, Dick Adair - The Honolulu Advertiser, Ann Telnaes, David Catrow - Springfield News-Sun, Bill Day - The Memphis Commercial-Appeal, Robert Ariail - The State.

PARZ! Funny Girls

The Bunker Cartoon Gallery in Coffs Harbour was host to a “girls-only” cartoon exhibition in March. Entitled Women the World, it featured work from cartoonists not only resident in Australia, but those from as diverse locations as Sweden, Serbia, Belgium, the Philippines, China, Turkey, Japan, Cuba and Iran. Among the “local” representatives were Judy Nadin, Fiona Katauskas, Judy Horacek, Dee Texidor, Angie Lyndon, Barbary O’Brien, Joan Rosser, Mandy Ord and last year’s New Matilda Cartoon Competition winner, Sarah Parsons. The show, which curator Louise Rawson-Harris hopes will kick-off an annual event, was opened by ACA President Jules Faber

Judy Nadin and her stunning portrait of Amy Winehouse at Women of the World

2009 Bald Archy Begins National Tour

Bishop as warring felines). The exhibition opened in Canberra on 6 February, and the winner was announced at the Sydney opening in March. After a successful April run at the Bunker Cartoon Gallery in Coffs Harbour, the 2009 Bald Archy Peter Lewis’ entry featured Federal pussies Julia Gillard taking on Julie Bishop roadshow travels Wagga Wagga (7 now overlapping the remaining fulltime - 31 May), Deniliquin (5 -28 June), West journalists, designers and cartoonists.” Wyalong (3-23 July), Melbourne (29 July Consequently, Phil’s last cartoon was a - 30 August), Adelaide (6 September until 4 cute take on Charles Darwin’s 200th anOctober) before wrapping up in Bowral in niversary (Top right). October. “I have had great fun pontificating in ink every 7 days,” he wrote, “and I do appreciate the regular and occasional comments and reactions from friends and Whilst few Australian editorial cartoonstrangers on the return email pipeline. ists have been hit by the same woes Under the yellowing light of a plunging befalling our colleagues in America, share price, I bid you a fond ‘Au Revoir’.” there has been the

Somerville Devolves

odd local casualty. Phil Somerville, who has been drawing the weekly commentary in Fairfax’s Sun-Herald for some considerable time, was one of them. In February, Phil sent an email informing us that “while contemplating a witty comment on the spinal fusions happening to the world’s economy, I myself have been tapped on the shoulder by the Grim Human Resources Consultant. “In a new model of heaving efficiency, the Fairfax papers are

iCartooning?

Blogger Jason Ankeny, writing at Fierce Mobile Content, thinks that the future of comics will be best served by the mobile phone platform. For example, Apple’s iPhone “supports a revenue model of readers purchasing the e-book (or app) which supports the creator’s work.” “Few forms of creative expression are better suited to that kind of brief consumer engagement than comic strips,” he says. “An entire strip could fit horizontally across an iPhone screen, a comic strip can offer a complete and satisfying experience whether you read just one strip or several weeks’ worth at one time.”

Maitland-based artist James Brennan has won the Bald Archy Prize for the second time running. His portrait of racing identity Bart Cummings, called Old Owl Eyes Is Back, was judged the winner of this year’s competition. Among the entrants this year were Matt Adams (with a portrait of controversial photographer Bill Henson), Judy Nadin (who painted radio jocks Hamish & Andy and another of former NSW Premier Morris Iemma), Simon Schneider (notorious Sydney Swans player Barry Hall) and Peter Lewis (who represented Federal MPs Julia Gillard and Julie www.cartoonists.org.au

Testy Chesty Noodled By Bonds Move words by Lindsay Foyle

Chesty in 1938 by Syd Miller

hile Pacific Brands might be moving manufacturing for their Bonds label to China at the cost of 1800 Australian jobs, the image of Chesty Bond will always be Australian. The Chesty Bond comic strip was first published in 1940 for Bonds Industries, drawn by cartoonist Syd Miller working with Ted Moloney who was, in turn, working for advertising agency J. Walter Thompson. They had originally begun work on finding an image for Chesty Bond in 1938 and, after trying a number characters, settled on the one we know at the end of 1939. Once he made his way into a comic, Chesty Bond became a regular feature in The Sun, running three times a week. The character also appeared in stores as a life-sized shop dummy. It gathering a solid following and it was extended to five days a week in 1942, possibly becoming the world’s first daily advertising comic strip.

where he worked on some of Australia’s first animated films while drawing freelance cartoons for The Bulletin and Aussie. Not long after Smith’s Weekly started in 1919, Miller signed a contract to cartoon, caricature, draw humorous illustrations and write film and stage reviews for the new paper. In 1923, he married Susan Austin and they had two children - Robin in 1928 and Peter in 1930. Miller was said to have had the energy to work 90 hours a week and often took on freelance work, which would have earned him the sack if discovered. He resigned from Smith’s Weekly in 1931 to concentrate on freelancing for the Sydney afternoon newspaper The Sun, all the while drawing a feature called Curiosities for The Herald in Melbourne

Chesty’s adventures ranged from fighting with the Allies to helping Santa deliver Christmas presents. although clearly an ad, something about the adventures appealed to the reading public and Chesty Bond became immensely popular. Sydney Leon Miller was born in the Sydney suburb of Strathfield in 1901. His father was a newsagent. He was educated at Fort Street High School where the headmaster insisted he learn two languages rather than to draw. In 1916, soon after he left school, he started work as a trial apprentice in the process-engraving department of The Bulletin while attending night classes at the Royal Art Society. In 1917 he joined Cartoon Filmads, run by Harry Julius

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Boss, for Smith’s and published his own comic books from 1943 to 1945. For a short time he published a children’s newspaper called Monster Comics before the increasing cost of paper brought his publishing to a halt. Miller stopped drawing Chesty Bond in 1945 when he was contracted by The Herald to draw Sandra and in 1946 Rod Craig which was also became a radio serial. At the same time he also drew a feature called Animalaughs. Both were syndicated around the world. When Rod Craig ended in 1955, Miller started another comic strip, Us Girls, that ran in The Herald and came to an end when he resigned to work in TV animation at Ajax Films in 1957. For a number of years, from the mid-1950s, he drew a second advertising comic called A Little Bear Will Fix It. He retired in the mid-1960s and involved himself in photography, drawing - especially scraperboard illustrations of flora and fauna - and creating copper sculptures. Miller’s wife Susan died in 1978 and, five years after, he suffered a severe stroke and was admitted to the Sydney Adventist Hospital in Wahroonga. He died on 31 December 1983.

Chesty today in 2009

and Weird and Wonderful for The Daily Telegraph in Sydney. He created the comic strip Red Gregory for Smith’s Weekly in 1938, which he later published in book form. During the Second World War, Miller drew a Hitler send-up comic, The Big

The Chesty Bond strip was taken over by Will Mahony who drew it until1950, followed by Linaker and finally John Santry, who drew the strip until it was discontinued in 1964. But the character’s legacy is still a potent one, enough for Bonds to maintain the character on their packaging, and lives on in the memories of many Australians. Lindsay Foyle

George “Desperate” Haddon, Vane “Blue” Lindesay and Geoff “Jeff” Hook at the Quill Awards in Melbourne.

WHERE THERE’S A QUILL, THERE’S A WEG

n March, at Melbourne’s swanky Crown Palladium Hotel, George Haddon took to the stage. Not terribly remarkable, you might say - George is often up in front of a crowd accepting every conceivable (and well-deserved) cartooning award there is. This time however, he was there to deliver a tribute - well, two really. Namely the late, and lamented, William Ellis Green - better known to the world at large as WEG - and the very much alive Geoffrey Raynor Hook, who is also known by a moniker - namely a fishing hook and the name “JEFF”. Vane Lindesay was there... The occasion was the Melbourne Press Club’s Quill Awards for “Lifetime Achievement in Journalism” which included the recognition of two highly professional cartoonists - Bill Green and Geoff Hook. George Haddon’s tribute to Bill, as he was known to his many friends, was warm, sincere, and quite moving to we who worked with and knew Bill to be the wonderful, cheerful, selfless man he was. Bill was no glory seeker - glory sought him. In 2001 he received the OAM for his services to cartooning and to his contribution to many charities. Other awards were the Active Service Medal 1945-1975; the Officer of St. John for his services to the St. John Ambulance organization; the Australian Cartoonists’ Association

‘”Jim Russell Award” for his outstanding contribution to cartooning in 2003; two posthumous awards from theAustralian Football League “in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the game of Australian Football”, and the Melbourne Press Club Quill Award, a quill feather set in a thirty centimetre high perspex block, suitably annotated. The only other cartoonist recipient of this award was Les Tanner in 1999. Bill’s proudest achievement, he confessed, was the raising of over two million dollars from the sale of his AFL Grand Final posters, donated to the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. For 64 years, WEG created these posters free of charge. With the his passing, Australia lost an exceptional talent. Geoffrey Raynor Hook was the other legend to be distinguished with the Quill Award for a lifetime of achievement.“JEFF” (his cartoon signature) began his newspaper career as a cadet press artist on The Mercury in Hobart where he was born in 1928. With persistence, he achieved his ambition to be a cartoonist on The Mercury, but as he said on the awards night,“I left Hobart and came to Australia”. That was in 1964, when eventually he joined the staff of the Sun News-Pictorial in Melbourne and where he introduced the concealed hook in his cartoons. George Haddon, in his affectionate tribute to Geoff, recalled how he, in a long career, went on to “drive several generations of Victorian readers to absolute distraction looking for that bloody hook!

“ George also recalled the occasion when Geoff forgot to include the hook in one of his cartoons, and in a panic rang the process department to alert them. His comforting response was “yeah mate, we know - but don’t worry, we put it in for ya!” “Where?,” Geoff asked. The response was, “I’m not telling you -find the bloody thing yourself! “ Throughout his career, Geoff Hook’s cartoons have had the recognition and rewards they deserved. As George reminded us in his tribute, Geoff won the “Best Political Cartoon” award at the 1987 International Cartoon Festival in Belgium, and again in 1991. In 1987 he was voted the year’s best “Humorous Illustrator” by his ACA peers, winning a Stanley Award. In 1998, those same peers honoured him with the Silver Stanley for his outstanding Contribution to Australian Black and White Art. His work is represented in international cartoon collections, in corporate and private collections including the National Museum in Canberra. Geoff has illustrated over fifty books, and now in retirement from newspaper work he paints watercolours - and, said George, “ you won’t find a hook hidden in any of them!” Vane Lindesay

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Illustration by Mark McHugh with apologies to Ralph Steadman

Savage words with

Ralph SteaDman

Mark McHugh talks wasps, Picasso, the American election, Hunter S. Thompson and Australian wine on a malfunctioning tape recorder with legendary illustrator, political and social caricaturist Ralph Steadman

i Ralph! First of all, I want to thank you for your time today

RS: But I haven’t said anything yet! (laughter...) Our conversation is flying around all these satellites; so if a satellite should fall on one of us before the end of this conversation.... I’m sorry. MM: No problems at all. Hopefully that won’t occur! RS: No hopefully not, but I tell you what - I’ve got a wasps’ nest in my studio. MM: Oh really? A live one?

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RS: Yes, it’s just started building up. I’ve called someone to come and remove it. MM: How are you besides the wasps? RS: Besides the wasps, not too bad. I’m trying to get a new book going made up of things like a journey through my studio; it’s going to be called Proud to Be Weird. MM: That sounds great... RS: I’ve got so many unused drawings around my studio, I thought I’d bring them out and make a book out of it. MM: Like a collection of

unpublished work? RS: Kind of like a free association. MM: First of all, I was going to ask -who were your influences? RS: You mean in the beginning? MM: ...yes. Were you influenced by the German artists George Grosz, Erich Heckel or perhaps Ernst Ludwig Kirchner? RS: You hit the nail on the head. All of those guys, as well as Otto Dix, the German expressionists and certainly Dada. Also Picasso. He was the greatest cartoonist of the 20th century; his stuff was cartoon, an art cartoon. He put the art into the cartoon

MM: He was quite prolific as well wasn’t he? RS: Oh Yes! I’m actually doing something at the moment called Gonzo Guernica. Do you know the light bulb in Picasso’s Guernica? MM: That’s right, there is. RS: Well I’ve got Hunter (Thompson)’s Zippo lighter there as the light bulb. Did you know that the painting Guernica is depicting the bombing of theBasque town of Guernica? It’s set in a cellar, there is a staircase and diagonal walls in it. Have you read much Kurt Vonnegut? MM: I have read Breakfast of Champions.

MM: That was actually going to my next question, regarding your time at Private Eye. RS: Well I went in with Gerald Scarfe. We used to hang out and go drawing together. He rushed up to me at the first ever inaugural cartoonist club meeting and said “I like your line, can I come and see you? Can I bring some cartoons?” Which he did, and they were terrible cartoons, very influenced by the work he did

politicians loved it. I felt disillusioned by it, so I started to just draw their legs. I’ve done John Major, Kenneth Clarke, Virginia Bottomley, Gillian Shephard, Ann Widdicombe, Tony Blair’s legs and Gordon Brown’s legs. Actually we have a dictatorship here at the moment, with this new guy. He has had his eyes on that job for many years, ever since New Labour and Tony Blair came in. Gordon Brown couldn’t wait to get in there.

...People kept writing

MM: Is he doing much of a job?

about them, drawing them, photographing them, and the politicians love it. so I started to just draw their legs ...

RS: So he was this radical American writer, and he was actually a soldier in World War II. He got cut off from his battalion along with a few other soldiers and wandered behind enemy lines, so they went down into a cellar underground, and it was at that moment the bombing of Dresden occurred. So when they came out there was nothing there but dead bodies....can you imagine that? It was 26 years before he got round to writing about it. Anyway what’s the next question? MM: OK, you worked for Punch. RS: Yes, that’s right. MM: Did you find it restrictive working for them, being a satirist on a constant basis? RS: I tried for three years to get in there. You’d send them a drawing, and it was sent back, by the editor at the time with a rejection slip and a drawing of an arrow going over a target, and it said “Not quite yet!” Finally they took one. Then the next week I sold two more, then three, and that went on for a while and I did a few big spots for them. Then if I didn’t sell something to them, I’d sell it to another newlyformed magazine called Private Eye.

at his Uncle’s advertising studio. They had a very commercial tilt. Anyway, I introduced him to my art teacher Leslie Richardson, and I said to Gerry, “why don’t you come out drawing with me?” We went down to the Victorian Art Museum and the Natural History Museum and we would draw, and we did it for four years. We were known as the “Terrible Twins”! Anyway, we became good friends, Gerry and I, and he became Godfather to my daughter Suzannah. So I went down to Private Eye and Gerry came with me. I had a drawing I had sold them called Plastic People and I got a cheque for five pounds for that. The editor at the time said “More power to your elbow” and the next week Gerry was in there, and my first wife felt... accused him of borrowing a line and starting to do stuff in a similar style, and he was in there like a shot. So that’s how that went, we were never really friends after that

RS: Well what I believe we need is an election now. I know that’s being slightly rebellious, but how can we really have a democratic process with this guy when nobody voted for him. We are living in a dictatorship. How about that? England in a dictatorship! MM: What do you think about the Obama/McCain election at the moment? RS: When I first heard about that Sarah Palin, I thought, “uh-oh, she’s like the desire of every guy in America with a slightly-red neck”. They’ll be looking at her going “Whoooaa”, and the old boy running with her will be dead in a couple of years, and she’ll be President... she even holds a gun and shoots moose. MM: A redneck fantasy? RS: Absolutely, so I think that could happen and the worst aspect of her is that she wants to ban certain books in the library, almost like fascism, and the Nazi book-burning in Berlin.

MM: Is it true you don’t do caricatures of politicians anymore?

MM: That’s right - and if she gets in, she is only one job away from the top job and believes inCreationism. How scary is that?

RS: Well, I started just drawing their legs for the New Statesman; we needed to take the wind out of their sails by simply ignoring them. People kept writing about them, drawing them, photographing them, and the

RS: I think Barack Obama is good. I think what should have happened really is that both Hillary and Obama should have put aside their egos and made a deal between the two of them and said, “OK, look - I’m young and I www.cartoonists.org.au

can probably wait and you’re not as young and you probably don’t have the time and probably need the job now”, and sorted it out and had a woman leader. Hillary Clinton would have been good with Obama as her running mate. But really, they probably hate each other. I think their egos are just too big. The last election was a disaster; look at the trouble the world is in now. I think if Hunter was around he would have loved this election. Hunter said “George Bush makes Nixon look good”. During the last election I drew an illustration called Portrait of a Decent Republican. It showed a Republican as a flasher, showing his dick saying “How’ja like my Haliburton?” All this government has done has supported and propped up these big corporations run by these obscene men. Thieving fiends. The only people that suffer are the taxpayers.

who had this sort of thick Brooklyn accent. He said “wanna job?” and I said, “what is it?” He replied, “Kentucky Derby with an ex-Hells Angel with a shaved head called HunterThompson”. “What will I be drawing?“ “The faces. He wants to capture the faces of the people there”. So I agreed to take the job and on the way there, I left my inks, colours and paper in a taxi cab, and the wife of Don Goddard, the editor of Scanlan’s, who worked for Revlon, luckily had dozens of Revlon lipstick and makeup preparations. I’m not sure how but I got my hands on some paper, but I used the Revlon samples to colour the drawings, and the makeup would

front of them at the Derby. Hunter called my drawing people “A filthy habit!”. Anyway when the Kentucky Derby story came out, the combination of the writing and drawings was electric. That’s when Bill Cardoso - I think he worked for the Boston Globe at the time - wrote to Hunter and said “That Kentucky Derby piece was pure gonzo!” and Hunter picked up on that word and used it. He loved any word that ended in “o”. He had a dog called Laslo, he would have liked Bono or Dingo. You have dingoes over there don’t you? After the Kentucky Derby, I went back to New York and rang the editor of Scanlan’s. “Got the drawings?” I asked, and he said, “yes, but I don’t see any horses! Haven’t got any horses in the drawings.” I said, “I thought you were just looking for the faces?” He said, “yeah, but I’d like a horse in there” so I did this drawing of a horse with a big dick being held by the owner with this grotesque face and a giant cigar hanging out of his mouth. The owner also had his dick hanging out.

...that’s because I cared about my line...

MM: Famously, you were sent by Scanlan’s Monthly to cover the Kentucky Derby with a young journalist called Hunter Thompson which led to a long collaboration and the birth of “Gonzo Journalism”. This was almost not to be, as Hunter originally suggested Australian cartoonist PatOliphant. RS: He was supposed to go, but he was on his way to London to attend a cartoonist convention. MM: There’s a lesson in that... RS: Yes - don’t go to Cartoonists Conventions (laughter...) I think the problem with Pat Oliphant in the end is style. Some cartoonists forget about style, like when Scarfe said “I like your line!” That’s because I cared about it. I had a book of my 60s collected works called Still Life with Rasberry, and the editor of Scanlan’s found the book in London and brought it back to America, and said, “this is the guy you should get to work with Hunter”. And at the time I had just arrived over there and was staying with friends Dan and Pam in Rhode Island, and I got a phone call from a J.C. Suares - the Scanlan’s art director 10 www.cartoonists.org.au

smear, which became an effect. A lot of things like that happen by accident; a lot of that’s because I’m so clumsy when I work, as well. MM: Do you think most great art happens by accident? RS: I think a lot of it does, yeah! Think of Picasso in about 1901 or something - he went to an exhibition of all these African masks. So If you look at the drawings of Picasso from then on - very African. At the time the Fauvists were doing their whole “wild beast” thing and so Picasso painted this painting Les demoiselles d’avignon and when the painting was finished, he rolls up thecanvas and stores it under his bed. It was there until 1916. He brings it out and then there was this huge cubist revolution. That was really the beginning of it all. Hunter and I were a complete accident but it was a chemistry that worked. I mean, I was different to Hunter, we were like chalk and cheese, but I didn’t try to be braggish, I didn’t try to be the wildest. Otherwise, it would have been two blokes trying to be the wildest and it wouldn’t have worked. I could be as wild as he was but in a different way. He was unnerved because I used to draw these grotesque caricatures of people in

MM: I remember the drawing well... RS: You’ve seen it! Anyway that was pretty outrageous at the time. Scanlan’s was a controversial magazine that really went for Nixon and his administration, they made Nixon’s black list in record time. (Nixon sent the IRS and the FBI after its editors and investors, pressured labour unions to refuse to print the magazine, and had the December 1970 issue seized at a printing press in Montreal. Eventually, the magazine folded after the ninth issue) Anyway, I was speaking to Warren Hinkle III, the owner of the magazine. I asked him, “Whatever happened to my original Derby illustrations?”, because I rarely part with my originals. “How the fuck should I know?” was his reply. “Somebody probably wiped their ass on them”.

So that was a shame, but you know what? Somebody read that in my book, The Joke’s Over more than twenty five years later. They lived in San Rafael in Southern California and they wrote to me, “We are sending you back that drawing you mention of the horse”. You see, they bought a truck in the 70s and stashed in the cabin, up in the part where people stash their keys, was this drawing. MM: You’re kidding?

alerted the security guards, so we made a hasty exit. Thankfully we didn’t go through with it because each boat is worth the price of a new university and I would probably be in gaol. Anyway I ended up in New York, still coming down from Psilocybin with heart palpitations, barefooted and with no money. Luckily I knew someone, Ann Beneduce, who I had met at the Bologna bookfest. So I rang her. I had to borrow money for the call - I was in a bar and the guys behind the bar felt sorry for me and gave me a Guinness, and she said “Are you alright?” I said “I’m sick, feel terrible, I have no money or shoes and I’m in New York”.

RS: No! And they said, “We have had over twenty-five years of enjoyment from the picture framed in our house. So now we are ... returning it to you”. So I sent them a whole bunch of silkscreen prints to say thank you. MM: That’s extraordinary, and very generous of them.

trauma of the last six months, so I drew those pictures and sent them off to Hunter and Rolling Stone. When they opened them up, they were thrilled and used everything for the story. Jann Wenner, the owner of Rolling Stone magazine, wanted to buy the originals and my agent at the time talked me into selling them to him as he said it would be a good career move and he sold the entire set for the princely sum of sixty dollars per drawing. I rue the day I let him convince me. I mean, what those drawings would be worth now is anyone’s guess! Jann knows he robbed me and in the book he took the copyright off me as well - it said “drawings by Ralph Steadman, copyright Straight Arrow Publishers”. I have tried to buy them back from him, and he won’t sell them. Now the images are all over eBay in posters and T-shirts. Jann knows exactly how I feel about it and it’s a shame it had to be that way. He has had three children with a man now; they sent me a card announcing the birth of one of their children, I wrote back, “Right on boys! Who holds the copyright?” Anyway after years of really fighting for it, I recently got a small royalty from the book, but even that was after the book really took off... it may take off again. Anyway, that was a lesson learned.

we ended up in a dingy, under the influence of psilocybin and attempted to spray-paint on the side of the Australian Boat...

RS: Yes, so I have it now back in my possession. I always requested my originals back; in those days there were no photocopies or digital printing, so you sent the originals and I was always receiving the originals back, covered in blue pencil and writing on them like “reduce to 30%”. MM: That story on the America’s Cup in 1970 - is that all true? RS: Yes, all true. That was our second assignment. After the Kentucky Derby, I never thought I’d see Hunter again. I got a call from Hunter to meet him in New York and the both of us to took off for Newport,Rhode Island, to cover the America’s Cup for Scanlan’s. Instead of a hotel, Hunter had organised our accommodation on a three-masted boat. Anyway, one night Hunter and I ended up in a dinghy, under the influence of Psilocybin (a psychedelic drug). We rowed right up besides the America’s Cup boats and attempted to spray-paint “FUCK THE POPE” on the side of the Australian Boat Gretel II for some strange reason. As I shook the spray-can, the metallic ball-bearing inside the can made a loud noise and

She sent a cab for me and took me to her unit. I was a shade of blue, so she rang a doctor who gave me a shot of Librium which put me out. But anyway she probably saved my life. MM: Whatever happened to the original drawings from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? RS: Oh those!!! Well, unfortunately, I had this agent at the time, who thought it would be a ‘good career’ move to sell those. I got this ‘experimental’ manuscript from Hunter in 1971 asking if I could do some drawing to show the depravity of this trip he had been on with this Chicano lawyer, Oscar Acosta, to Las Vegas. He had done this thing for the Mint 400 and he was holed up in some motel in Bakersfield writing down this idea, and then he decided to go to the drug conference, which is a pretty crazy idea - to go to a drug conference full of police with a suitcase full of drugs. I was traumatized from my time in at the America’s Cup in Rhode Island, so when this crazy manuscript arrived, I felt that I had an outlet for the pent-up

MM: Now, you designed the cannon that Hunter’s ashes were recently shot out of (on 20 August 2005, in a private ceremony, Thompson’s ashes were fired from a cannon atop a 47-metre tower - in the shape of a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button - to the tune of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man”) RS: That’s right I did, I stated to draw the fist but as I drew the thumb, Hunter said, “I’ve told you before Ralph! Two thumbs, Ralph. TWO thumbs!”, and he drew the second thumb on. I did that when Hunter and I were doing a film with Nigel Finch for the BBC, www.cartoonists.org.au

called Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood in 1978. MM: I have seen the film. RS: Well Nigel rang me and wanted to get in touch with Hunter to make a film, so I said to Nigel, “you must send Hunter a telegram but make it direct”. So he sent Hunter a telegram saying “Arriving tomorrow with film crew, be there”. On the plane, Nigel was nervous about meeting Hunter and we got off the plane and we were walking outside when, suddenly, Hunter came tearing around the corner, behind the wheel of a red convertible straight toward me! Hunter just stopped right dead in front of my shins. “Now that was a moment when we should have had the camera rolling,” I said. One night Nigel, Hunter and I decided to go to the Woody Creek Tavern, and we were walking down the front drive at Owl Farm, when Hunter suddenly pulled a gun out of his pocket and fired loudly three times into the air, scaring Nigel half to death. “Always good to be prepared!” Hunter said. I mean, we’re talking about a .44 Magnum! But they (the film crew) loved it. One day he got the entire film crew up and they spent a whole day just shooting guns. He did torment Nigel; Hunter did have a mean streak. He used to have this bird called Edward; he would bang on its cage and say “Edward - THERE IS NO BIRDGOD, Edward!” The bird would normally adore Hunter and sit on his shoulder. MM: I can imagine he could probably be a bit difficult sometimes... RS: Oh there was this one story Hunter did once. He wanted to do some target practice, so I said, “I’ve got some bottles of ink, so lets hang them in front of paper and shoot them and make a kind of power-packed statement”. So we started shooting these ink bottles, splashing the ink on paper, using a 410 rifle (not a 12 gauge). Unfortunately, the artist in him got involved in aesthetics. He rushed forward to stop the paper from running any further; 12 www.cartoonists.org.au

he liked what had happened and didn’t want it to go any further, so he dropped the gun, and when he did that there were still bullets up the spout, and it went off. Luckily, it just went through the tank on his John Deer tractor. He said, “Are you OK?” He thought it had gone through my leg. Well, it could have! It could have killed me. He said, “I have never been out of control like that before, sorry about that”. It’s the only time he ever admitted that a gun was a dangerous thing. He never shot anything, any animal; not like Sarah Palin, who shoots

illustrating their wine catalogues, which must have been a tough job. Did you make to Australia at all?

MM: Did she continue to work for him?

RS: Yes, we went to Coonawarra, in South Australia. I wrote about it in my books (The Grapes of Ralph and Untrodden Grapes). We went to Penfolds Estate, and there was a marvellous old gentleman there - an old winemaker. I did a drawing of him in the book. Australian wine was the up-andcoming thing at the time; I took my wife along as I thought if I went on a wine trip alone I might get into trouble. However, we became completely fascinated by the whole process. We visited whiskey states like Tennessee, and Adelaide in your neck of the woods, Townsville, Sydney, Coonawarra, Alsace, The Rheinhessen in Germany, all of France, parts of South America including Chile and the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert, Portugal, up the Duoro Valley from Oporto. Peru and Macha Picchu, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and most other Mediterranean countries. We also did Scotland for the Scotch Whisky and the seven distilleries of Islay off the west coast of Scotland. In France we visited a Château, called Château de Jau near Perpignan in Southern France. They had just finished picking the vines and we noticed that there were grapes left where the machines had missed. So we quickly went around and picked these grapes. The grapes we picked were a blending varietal called Vermentino. We trod them with our feet and the winery saw them through to bottling stage for us. We called the wine “Les Pieds de Resistance”.

RS: Oh yeah! She knew what happened; she loved him, worked for him for 28 years......Yes it’s a sad time. I miss him. On February 21st every year I go outside and set up my drawing board, I splash some paper with red ink and I date it. It’s my way off marking the anniversary.

MM: Your illustrations for Alice in Wonderland won a Francis William Book Illustration Award and they have been described as an homage to Sir John Tenniel (the original illustrator), but taking it to a new realm. Is that something you were trying to do?

MM: You recently worked for the wine merchants Oddbins, in which your job involved travelling around the world drinking wine and

RS: I was trying to make a contemporary version; I did this slightly insane version of the White Rabbit. It has recently been republished by

...I think awards are just badges of mediocrity...

moose. The only time he ever shot at a bear was once when one was wandering around his property, so he took a gun out there and shouted across to Deborah Fuller, his assistant of many years, in a cabin across from him. He shouted across “THERES A BEAR OUT HERE!” She heard his voice and came to the door just as he shot at the bear. Not at the bear but at the ground around the bear to scare it off. The ricochet shot up from the ground and hit Deborah; she had about 5 small pieces of lead in her. MM: You’re joking? RS: No he took her to hospital to get them taken out.

Firefly Books. I was thrilled with it because they included several of the subsequent drawings I did for a later version. I did all of those illustrations as etchings; the originals were drawings transferred onto plates. I still have the plates here in my studio. MM: You recently wrote an oratorio? RS: I have written two; my first, Plague and the Moonflower, was with music by Richard Harvey. I have recorded it with Ben Kingsley as the narrator, and Sir Ian Holm as the Plague Demon. But we are aiming for a brand new production of it at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York as one of the inaugural celebration opening concerts since the renovations of the building began, after a fire in 2001. Johnny Depp liked the idea but was too busy to become involved, but Tim Robbins will be narrator this time around. My second oratorio, called God’s Drawing Board, was performed actually in Australia in Armidale, New South Wales (6th and 7th of December 2008). A lady composer called Elena KatsChernin, an Australian, has written the music to accompany it. The Armidale Rural Futures Community has already performed Plague and the Moonflower in 2003. MM: Did you recently illustrate Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451? RS: Yes I did that, it’s about burning books. Ray Bradbury is lovely. He said that the drawings I did for Fahrenheit 451 had bought his book into the 21st century. MM: You also illustrated George Orwell’s Animal Farm... RS: Yes, I did that and Treasure Island - they were just books that I wanted to do. I also wrote a book about God

called The Big I Am, and I Leonardo, and Sigmund Freud. MM: You were awarded the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Cartoonists’ Society in the US in 2006. That must have been an honor... RS: Which one? Oh that’s right because I received two lifetime achievement awards over there! Accepting the award I asked if I could sing them a song instead, and played them a tune

impoverished kids in the State. I had so much fun doing it. I said “Send me two more”. So I finally did three Fenders for him. As Humpty Dumpty said in Alice in Wonderland, “What I say THREE times is true”. The first one sold for $21,000. There are still those other two to auction, but right now the financial climate doesn’t seem too rosy. MM: One last thing Ralph if I could: England has a great tradition of illustrators. A member of the ACA described your work as “up there” with such great English illustrators as J.W.M. Turner and John Constable. What is it like to be compared with such greats?

RS: That makes me feel pretty good, but I think they are lying (laughs...) have you looked at Turner and seen how wonderful he is? And also Constable... (his) sketches are fantastic. His oil paintings Ralph Steadman with a customised Fender stratocaster to be auctioned for charity are beautiful work but his sketches..... WOW! Anna and I saw on my ukulele, it was great fun. I think an exhibition of Constable’s work awards are just badges of mediocrity, organised by Jasper Johns in Paris. It but awards are what they are. I’ve really turned my wife on to painting, just been annoyed watching these and she is painting a lot now. We went Olympics. Why couldn’t all these Gold to Aberdeen do silk-screens and she Medals be translated into money to was always painting and keeping a help impoverished nations? Then each little diary with sketches... But you will of those gold medals would represent have to thank that person who said an achievement for mankind, and your that - it blows my mind to think that medal would really mean something. somebody would think of me in the same breath as Turner and Constable. MM: And all the money they spent on the opening and closing MM: I will definitely pass it on. ceremonies... Thanks for your time Ralph! RS: Oh the cost of that! Mindblowing! Think of all the people that could have helped in China alone, not including the rest of the world. Actually, Nils Lofgren, a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band, recently asked me to decorate a $500 Fender Stratocaster, to auction off in Arizona, in aid of a group called “Big Brothers, Big Sisters” who help

ToMark see McHugh Ralph Steadman’s work go to showed absolutely no talent for cartooning whatsoever from an early age, but www.ralphsteadman.com

stubbornly he knuckled down and kept at it determined to succeed, unfortunately to no avail. Regrettably Mark is still under the illusion of being a talented cartoonist by a lot of kind hearted and well meaning people. These days Mark prefers to spend his days drawing the occasional cartoon, performing his much loved interpretative dance and selling Amway to friends. Mark is an extremely unlikable person of dubious character, his cartoon strip Easy Tiger appears weekly on page 37 in the “Australian scientific journal” The Picture Mag.

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Acrylic and foyle on Canvas

Now having retired from having to work in a newspaper office, Lindsay Foyle has been brushing up on... well, his brushwork. In fact he’s so cocky about it, he has taken to entering art competitions. And in March, Lindsay’s work Tamar Timber was selected as a finalist in the Glover Prize, which just happens to be the richest landscape prize in Australia. Not bad for a guy who has a reputation for drawing squiggly people with cryptic captions. At the opening in Evandale, Tasmania, Lindsay and partner Jan Andrews were joined by Alan Salisbury, who was clearly expecting to see a painting of some squiggly trees. How wrong he was.

Eric Löbbs into his own exhibition Also making an exhibition of himself in February was Eric Löbbecke, with his one-man Sydney show entitled Depouiller. Literally meaning “to strip off”, Eric says the meaning is a little more subtle in French, suggesting the peeling away of a façade to reveal what lies beneath. According to NG Art Gallery’s Nicky Ginsberg, Eric wanted to reveal the “underbelly” of powerful public personae, businessmen and politicians, exposing the “universal truth of our human nature when we are stripped bare”. Attendees (which included school friends, workmates from News Limited and wife Viki’s family from Taree) at Eric’s opening night were surrounded by a montage of generously-proportioned naked characters, engaged in a variety of activities, which covered all the available space in the small Chippendale gallery and included paintings, drawings, lithographs and an etching.

Eric’s caption

Additional to the show, a Feast for the Senses dinner was held at the gallery on 24 February, featuring Eric in conversation with artist Garry Shead, in which they discussed the transition between fine art and cartooning. According to Eric, it went for almost an hour and a half, with many curly questions from the floor. The night concluded that not much changes over time, even with computers to help us with our art! “This is my first solo fine art exhibition,” Eric said, “and it will be followed up by the next one, in 18 months time, which has already been booked in at this fabulous art space.” 14 www.cartoonists.org.au

Eric’s painting, Le Bijou, The Jewel - any resemblance to News Limited editors or management is purely coincidental. Trust us.

“Cartoonists Ahoy!” Old sea-salts, “Greybones” Gary Clark and “Peg-Leg Peter” McAdam, bring us swashbuckling tales from the open sea

H.M.A.S Manoora by Gary Clark A few years ago, I received an email from a guy named Greg Ryan, who is aboard a Royal Australian Navy ship, seeking permission to use Swamp images to create in-house safety posters. I happily agreed.

After a safety course induction, we were shown around the ship and to the VIP cabin (the one the Admiral has when aboard). Having met the Captain, we lunched in the spacious wood-panelled officers’ mess where we enjoyed

A year or more later, another phone call and it was Greg saying his ship, HMAS Manoora, was in Brisbane and he invited me to a tour of the ship whilst in port. I took the family with me and was met by a guy in casual clothes who escorted us on deck and was met by much saluting. It turned out he was a Lieutenant Commander and the air boss in charge of all on board flight deck operations!

To cut a long story short, I never got to enjoy the VIP cabin, but instead took the nearest bunk (Greg’s) and spent the next 24 hours pitching and rolling in a haze somewhere between life and a blessed release (between frequent trips to a little room on board ships known as “The Head”. I have no doubt now why they gave it that name.

The Manoora is a large troop ship (450 personnel) and helicopter carrier with four Black Hawks and three Sea Kings. She is frequently sent to many trouble spots in readiness for any military response or humanitarian work. The safety posters designed by Greg were a big success. Recently Greg phoned again to say that they were home-bound via Brisbane after weeks spent on exercise and I and my son, Scott, were invited to sail to Sydney with them. We embarked on a dull wet morning that marked the end of the perfectly bright and calm sailing conditions the ship had been enjoying.

with the Navy’s latest helicopter, on deck in the now escalating rough conditions. It was around here that this idyllic adventure took a turn for the worse, beginning with a practice emergency requiring all air conditioning to be shut down while we were confined in the small control tower cabin in a now constantlyrolling sea.

The following day, Scott and I, having both survived the night, emerged into bright sunshine as we sailed past Sydney heads where L.C. Ryan had launched a Sea King helicopter to escort our arrival into Sydney Harbour. restaurant-style dining, seated at one long table with some of the officers and attended by respectful stewards. To me, it was a scene right out of the BBC series Hornblower. Next, L.C Ryan took us to the ship’s control tower where we watched him direct flight deck crews, as they trained

It was a sight worth seeing. Flags flying, crew lined up at attention on deck, the officer of the deck saluting the flag as the base’s welcome siren announced to all that one of it’s own had returned safely... albeit it with two very washed-out, but appreciative, guests grateful for the privilege to have been briefly a part of her life.

The Alma Doepel Peter McAdam has been doing it tough,

sailing one of Australia’s maritime treasures, the three-masted topsail schooner Alma Doepel, from Port Macquarie to Melbourne. Built at Bellingen, NSW in 1903 by Frederick Doepel and named after his daughter Alma, this schooner worked the east coast of Australia as a general cargo carrier and made more than 560 crossings of Bass Strait. Alma was enthusiastically welcomed to Victoria Harbour in Melbourne’s Docklands, which will be her new home.

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Vale Michael Atchison OAM Michael Atchison (August 4, 1933 - February 16, 2009)

Atchison model by Ray Hirst (The Advertiser)

by Max Fatchen

ichael Atchison was a wonderful person to know as a friend, a brilliant and cheerful collaborator of the children’s books we did together and a cartoonist and commentator of the human condition. He could with a few strokes of his pen present a picture of current affairs what those of us who wrote would stumble to do in a column or a page. He made us think about our times and at the same time think about ourselves. He would amuse us but he could also move us. Unpretentious and with a sense of quiet humility he went about his craft informed and concerned. Working with him as a writer, 16 www.cartoonists.org.au

I marvelled at his gift of interpretation. Those days were wonderful days or creativity and enjoyment. There grew a wonderful

warmth and richness in our association.

There was Michael’s integrity in his craft, the way he could occupy the editorial page as a focus of our changing times. The thing about Michael was not only his art but his compassion, his understanding, that understanding of ordinary people’s worries and misgivings. As I have often remarked he mounted his steed, summoned his faithful dog and charged the windmills of humbug and pomposity, so that his readers knew they had a champion and the the Advertiser had someone extraordinary who cared. He made us aware of ourselves in view of the sharp insight his cartoons portrayed. His newspaper was proud of him and gave him rein to express himself. He sat in his cartooning den benignly bearded and not someone who admired tall poppies

TOP: Michael Atchisonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s last cartoon for The Advertiser

but loved his craft and revelled in his particular area of journalism and the world of print. His country awarded him an Order of Australia and it is proper to say he did love this country and its people and although he could call us to task yet in a way he belonged to us and in another way we belonged to him. He came from that great band of cartoonists and illustrators that this country has bred and who have and still do portray us with wit and perception. It was typical of his sometimes quietly teasing work that he employed a small craggy dog occupying a corner of his cartoons to

make a relevant and brief comment. I sometimes felt this dog was a kind of second self. The dog will always remain kennelled in our hearts. People have preserved his cartoons. They hang in boardrooms, in politicians offices (although he could wittingly sold them) and in the scrapbooks of ordinary people. But the memory of his genius hangs for me in the gallery of a great personality of whom he will always be there as he always was, at the end of a phone, or having a yarn and making me feel better to face myself and the world because of something he said, something he

advised, something he helped me in the discovery of myself. He had a richness of family life and deep sympathy goes to Olga his wofe and his daughters Nicola and Michelle and their children. We will so miss Michael Atchison but remember gratefully what he gave us in enjoyment in his cartooning years. Max Fatchen worked at The News and The Advertiser for many years. He was a colleague and friend of Michael for nearly 5 decades. He received the Order of Australia in 1980, the Advance Australia Award for literature in 1991 and a Walkley Award for journalism in 1996. Retired from journalism Max lives in Adelaide. www.cartoonists.org.au

Atchison: Looking on the Bright Side words and illustration by Peter Broelman

When Michael Atchison passed away earlier this year, a giant hole was left in the South Australian cartooning sketchpad. When SA cartoonists would meet every Friday morning in Stirling, it was no mistake that it was around the corner from Michael’s house. Such was the respect given to this modest Adelaide icon. Like all cartoonists, we would discuss politics, the joys of getting published, the woes of not getting published and the ACA. The ACA was a strong part of Michael’s professional life. In 1984 he was instrumental in organising and part-hosting, with Wayne Baldwin, the infamous Barossa Valley trip courtesy of Wolf Blass Wines. This wine tour had such an impact on those 30-odd cartoonists who attended, that it provided the momentum to spread the wings of the then Sydneyorientated ABWAC into a national body. He and his wife Olga opened their doors at their Stirling home for a welcome Sunday BBQ for the bleary-eyed throng. When the Stanley Awards came to Adelaide ten years later, Michael and Olga did the same. Michael was indeed a modest man. He referred to his cartoons as “nonsense”. He didn’t seek publicity and avoided awards and gongs. He wasn’t taken in by judging panels and the glitz and gamour of award functions. He preferred braces over bow ties. Privately he said that the only awards he supported was The Stanleys, simply because it was based on a peer vote. 18 www.cartoonists.org.au

Ten years or so ago Michael was diagnosed with cancer. He attended coffee mornings as often as he could. He continued working for The Advertiser and confided that, at times, he was crippled with pain while putting on a brave face. The cancer spread and more operations were performed. Yet still his right hand would grasp his FaxBlac and another cartoon would make an appearance the next day. Then, after 40 years, he gracefully retired. The cancer didn’t. Months later coffee mornings were held at his house as he was too ill to make it to the café. He would sit in his dressing gown, a morphine infusion pack around his neck, a copy of The Advertiser and The Spectator on a small table and two jugs of freshly brewed coffee waiting for the guests who would discuss politics, the joys and woes of getting published and the ACA. I visited him in the hospice early February. He was tired, yet still cracked a joke about the editor at The Advertiser coming in, perhaps to make him an offer. The wall opposite his bed was full of some 100 of his cartoons surrounding a large family photograph. To one side was his Stanley Award and Jim Russell Award. His funeral was a full house. It was no surprise that they played Monty Python’s “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life”. His cartoons on the big screen brought a laugh. Olga and the family provided us all with an insight into the man who wasn’t just a cartoonist but a loving husband, father and grandfather. As mourners passed by his casket to lay rosemary, I noticed the Jim Russell Award placed next to it. Although it felt like I was breaking some unwritten protocol I gave Jim a little pat on the head. It was comforting to know that the respect we all awarded him was appreciated ‘til the very end. The Art Gallery of South Australia is exhibiting 5 working drawings of Michael’s to commemorate his 40 years at The Advertiser. His work is in Gallery 6 until 30 June. Peter Broelman is an editorial cartoonist and former President of the ACA. He was twice awarded the Stanley Award for Editorial/Political Cartoonist (2004 and 2005) and was Cartoonist Of The Year in 2005.

HONOURED AT REUBENS

ormer ACA President and Ginger Meggs cartoonist, the late James Kemsley, will be honoured at the 63rd Reuben Awards on 23 May. The coveted Silver T-Square award will be accepted by James’ son, Jed, at the glittering black-tie event to be held at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles.

the contribution that James had made to the profession, allowing us to honor his memory in the presence of his eldest son, his chosen successor on Ginger Meggs, and the former ACA President.

award will be presented during the Reuben Awards black tie gala at The Renaissance Hotel on Saturday, May 23, and the NCS would like to ask Jed to accept it on James’ behalf.”

“It is what great delight and much affection that I can inform you that, by unanimous vote of the current NCS Board of Directors,

NCS President, Jeff Keane, wrote in the latest issue of The Cartoon!st, “His trips to the U.S. and Europe were notable for his dogged persistance in promoting the work of dozens of Australian cartoonists whom he thought deserved wider recognition. He was also responsible for introducing the work of a number of NCS cartoonists to Australian editors. He negotiated and oversaw a revolving slot on the comics pages of Australian papers that showcased these strips in 10-week runs.“

James was a familiar face to US cartoonists, having attended the Reubens on several occasions where he quickly struck up lasting friendships. Former NCS President and good mate, Steve McGarry, was the bearer of the good news: “As you probably know, James had made many friends and admirers within the ranks of the NCS. As his colleagues and peers, a great many of us were very impressed with his tireless and selfless efforts Steve McGarry and James Kemsley read to help fellow cartoonists, MAD at the airport for Kansas City in 2004 his willingness to share contacts and influence, and his eagerness to promote the work and careers of others. the National Cartoonists Society will Those of us who have served as officers honor James with the posthumous award of the Society, also recognised the of the Silver T-Square, one of the highest astonishing work he did honors our society can bestow. It is in breathing life back into the ailing ACA, awarded for his “outstanding service and and the manner in which he transformed dedication to the profession of cartooning.” the Stanley Awards. Previous recipients have included such cartooning legends as Hal Foster, Bill “When we learned that Jed, Jason and Mauldin, James Thurber, Mort Walker, Broels were going to make the trek to this Bil Keane and Walt Kelly, as well as two year’s Reubens, we realised that it provided Presidents of the United States, in Harry S. us with a unique opportunity to recognise Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. The

His son Jed will be flying in for this awards dinner and it gives us the perfect opportunity to honour one of the greatest ambassadors of our profession”. Former ACA President, Peter Broelman, said the award is a great honour for a worthy recipient. “James would have been speechless which is no mean feat in itself. I was fortunate enough to travel with James to various Reuben Awards and each and every time he left me in his wake, such was his enthusiasm and vibrancy. It will be a pleasure to see Jed accept the award on behalf of his dad.” Article by William Boswell

AUSSIES GO UPOVER TO HOLLYWOOD A small contingent of Aussies will fly over for the Reuben Awards when hopefully the exchange rate will be a little better for all concerned. Gary and Yvonne Clark, Jason Chatfield, Peter Broelman with Emily and Brianna, Jed Kemsley and Grant and Kerry Ann Brown (plus 4 kids!) will make up the largest group to make the trip since 1994.

(and old friend of the ACA) Michael Ramirez and a panel discussing the future of newspapers and comics. On the social side is the NCS Reuben Weekend Welcome Party, the syndicatesponsored cocktail party, a dinner party thrown by Cathy Guisewite at her spacious home and the weekend will be capped off by a private party at a nightclub!

The 5-star Renaissance Hollywood Hotel (right next to Graumann’s Chinese Theatre) is the venue for the entire 3-day Reubens Memorial Day weekend. Special conference guests include animators Steve Moore and Eric Goldberg, movie poster illustrator Drew Struzan, twice-Pulitzer Award winner

Naturally, the Aussies will make the most of their vacation. Jason and Jed will visit New York and hang out with cartoonists there. Gary and Yvonne Clark will do a little LA tour, for Grantand Kerry Anne it’s Disneyland and Las Vegas while Peter, Em and Bri will also do Disney, San Fran and Yosemite. Phew! www.cartoonists.org.au

Cartoon by Mark Lynch

FUNNY FACES NO LAUGHING MATTER words by Peter Broelman

raditionally Royal Shows in Australia’s capital cities is the opportunity for the country to visit the city. Today agriculture is no longer the main attraction. Showbags, games, rides, food and trade displays help draw in the big crowds. One of the lucrative spin-offs is live caricatures. ACA member Lee Sheppard visited the Sydney Royal Easter Show recently and came across a large caricaturing booth where he noticed that special banners featured the artwork not of the caricaturists working there but of several overseas caricaturists! ACA members recognised the work belonging to Court Jones, Jason Seiler, Jan Op de Beek, Mort Drucker and Mike Hasson and the ACA made contact with some of them to ask what they thought.

MAD cartoonist Tom Richmond, whose caricature by MAD legend Mort Drucker was used in Sydney, often sees his own work ripped off and went so far as to make it an issue on his blog on www.tomrichmond.com. “Obviously I don’t like it, don’t condone it and would rather these artists not represent my work or the work of any other artists as their own. Do I run up to an offending street artist and confront them? No, I do not.” “Legally they are doubtless in the wrong but realistically I have little legal power to do anything about it, nor the desire to fight an unwinnable battle. Confrontation does nothing anyway… most of these people do not care about anything except parting the tourist from his or her money. I have literally seen the same rippedoff samples hanging on different artist’s displays with a few feet of each other. The contempt they must have for their potential customers and for the artists they are plagiarising could not be more plain.”

US-based Caricaturist Court Jones (www. courtjones.com) was not impressed, “I’ve had people rip off my art for various reasons in the past. Sometimes it really bugs me, and “While I might shake other times it doesn’t, my head at this pracdepending on the tice by unscrupulous circumstances and how street caricaturists, it is being used. Whenwhat I most definitely ever someone prints do not think is that out an image of mine I am being flattered and uses it on a banby being plagiarized. What are the odds that this guy will look nothing like the caricatures ner like the one at the advertised at the Sydney Easter Show Some caricaturists I Sydney Easter Show, know seem to feel this clearly, their intenway if they happen to tion is to make the public think that they created the artwork see their work being used in this manner. They feel their work themselves.” is being praised by being worthy of copyright infringement. Nothing could be farther from the truth.” “With the hope that the display of strong quality artwork will increase foot traffic at their retail booth. That is about the “These artists are showing a complete lack of respect for the lowest thing you can do in our business. It shows a lack of work and artists they are ripping off. It is a crime of convenpersonal and professional integrity and no respect for me, the ience and laziness, not of admiration. Witness how they are so originator of the artwork. Some people might argue that it is stupid as to use caricatures of other caricaturists as opposed flattering that someone steals my image and claims it as their to celebrities, like these guys in Australia. It’s something to be own. But it is not.” sickened or saddened by, not appreciated.” 20 www.cartoonists.org.au

Australian caricaturist Paul Harvey (www.harv.com.au) from Melbourne said, “The practice of displaying another caricaturists work is common in Europe so I wasn’t surprised to hear that the practice is taking a foothold in Australia. I can’t for the life of me see how any artist worth his salt could pinch the toil of another to advertise himself. Surely it’s false advertising at best and theft at worst.” “Apart from being legally and morally wrong the practice could quite well be a pretty dangerous one as well. Imagine big burly blokes like Sebastian Kruger, Anthony Pascoe or Peter Broelman emerging from a crowd and angrily heading toward your drawing board. It’d dry up your texta, that’s for sure”.

In the face of an aggressive spin-doctor, without any real talent as backup, not only are they losing ground, the reputation of on-the-spot caricaturing itself is threatened”. “He thinks he is being clever by ensuring that the caricatures are those by overseas caricaturists - however he has underestimated the strength that comes from international professional affiliations”.

Lee Sheppard, who took the photo at the Royal Easter Show said, “I’ve had angry clients calling me for help due to the short falling with another artist, and I do my best to appease them but as they say - once bitten twice shy. It grates me that there are some so-called professionAcross the Nullabor in Perth, Terry als providing examples of their work that Dunnett (www.terrydunnett.com.au) has clearly do not represent what they are seen his fair share, “I was in London last giving the client. At times these artists year having have even lunch and provided a few ales samples in Leicester from well Square with known fellow NCN artists to caricaturists gain the Steve Hearn confidence and Mike in acquirGiblin. We ing a new had a wanclient. This der around is against the live fair trading caricaturists laws and set up there. misrepreSteve found UK cartoonist Steve Hearn poses with one of his ripped-off caricatures sents what one of his service they caricatures are providof Ronaldhino, the soccer player, being ing. They are clearly breaking the law used as advertising by one of guys - pur- through deception.” porting it to be his work I guess - the guy “The ACA discourages the misleading wasn’t around. We hung around but he never fronted. Steve was really happy, he use of caricatures at “live” stalls and believes that the offendors should only considered that meant he had ‘made’ it display their own work unless they have now his artwork was being stolen!” the express permission of the caricatur“It is very common practice - I was in ist concerned and that the work is propBarcelona two years ago and the street erly attributed”, added ACA Membership caricaturists there had all the big name Secretary Peter Broelman. caricaturists work up as theirs - Court “The public deserves to be protected Jones, Tom Richmond, Jan Op De from such unscrupulous behaviour as Beeck, Joe Bluhm etc. Exactly as our does the caricaturists whose work has friend in Sydney is doing - I often wonbeen shamelessly ripped-off. If anyone der why the punters don’t ask why their sees such instances the stall owner (I job doesn’t ‘look like that!’ won’t refer to them as a caricaturist) Sydney-based caricaturist Steve Panshould be embarrassed into changing ozzo (www.noz.com.au) said, “Without their ways.” potential clients having the commonsense to compare artwork styles on Peter Broelman is the Membership Secthe internet beforehand, professional retary of the ACA. He has been assisted in on-the-spot caricaturists are relying on researching this story by Grant Brown agents and reputation to sell their work.

MEMBERS ONLINE In today’s age the internet is pivotal to the careers of many cartoonists who display their wares online to potential clients. The ACA’s website, www.cartoonists.org.au, supports ACA members by hosting portfolios of their work. Try a Google search on “cartoonists” and the ACA’s website is one of the first to view. So why not consider your cartoons on the ACA’s site to maximise your exposure? What’s beneficial about the site is that ACA members can maintain their own portfolios (up to nine works) and write their own information for clients to enjoy. Members can change their portfolio as often as they like. Many members have taken advantage of this service by registering online. Simply go to “join” on the ACA’s homepage and follow the prompts. A username and password will be created and once approved you can create your own portfolio. The other advantage of the site is that client queries go straight to the member and not through a third party. Therefore confidentiality is assured. Many members have received enquiries and work opportunities through the site. Better still this feature is free to all financial members of the ACA, both full and associate. If you’re curious about what www. cartoonists.org.au can do for you visit the Members Search area and see for yourself. If publishers and advertising agencies are looking perhaps you should too. The ACA website is a work in progress and the ACA is investigating ways on how it can be developed and improved. If you have any suggestions please send your thoughts to secretary@cartoonists.org.au. While on websites links are important to all cartoonists. If you have a website please seriously consider adding a link to the ACA’s site. Not only is it public support for the ACA it also expresses solidarity and support for your fellow cartoonist.

www.cartoonists.org.au

Laughing with Leak

We need people who poke fun at the powerful and po-faced Editorial From The Australian April 04, 2009

AST week, Bill Leak’s editorial cartoon in The Weekend Australian offended some readers. To compound the offence, here it is again. This is not done to dismiss critics’ concerns. We accept that Leak’s work often upsets people. We understand some were affronted in 2003 by his celebrated cartoon of then Labor leader Simon Crean making a very important point to the media, while the press pack found fornicating dogs much more interesting. And we recognise a range of readers were appalled by his 2006 cartoon of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as a dominant dog sporting carnally with a West Papuan in canine form. But Leak should continue to draw it as he sees it. Great cartoonists express the issues of an age. Thomas Nast helped break Tammany Hall’s control of New York politics in the 1870s with his savage caricatures of Boss Tweed. Livingston Hopkins cartoons featuring “the little boy from Manly” in The Bulletin summed up Australian politics in the federation years. And when cartoonists are stopped by the state, it is a sure sign of strife for everybody who believes in open political argument. 22 www.cartoonists.org.au

As Christopher Allen points out in Review this weekend, while political cartooning prospered in regency England, in revolutionary France the tribunes of the people did not encourage criticism. The caustic commentary supplied by politically engaged artists in Weimar Germany similarly stopped as soon as the Nazis came to power. But while Leak will not be arrested, no matter how many politicians he upsets, he is certainly subject to the censorious tuttutting of people who believe that people like them are off limits for lampooning. For years, Leak made fun of the follies and foibles of John Howard, to laughter and applause from the cultural establishment - writers and broadcasters from the ABC and Fairfax newspapers - plus their fellow travellers in the blogosphere. But now that Leak is laughing at Kevin Rudd, today’s darling of the Left, all of a sudden his cartoons are in bad taste. This is the same censorious style adopted by people who applauded the persecution of Salman Rushdie after the publication of The Satanic Verses. It holds that publish-

ing anything that offends other cultures is impermissible, that laughing at people the opinion-makers approve of is out of order. Fairfax journalist David Marr’s selective support for art that offends is an excellent example of this. Marr defends photographer Bill Henson for his controversial images of naked children but attacked a Leak cartoon in The Australian that made fun of Henson, saying “it is astonishing that a national newspaper would print such a thing”. Perhaps people outraged by last week’s cartoon took offence because they assume their own political opinions and community standards are synonymous. But whatever critics think, Leak’s comment on the Prime Minister’s desire to demonstrate his fundamental friendship with US President Barack Obama was fair and amusing comment. He should keep it up. Australia need larrikins who laugh at the powerful - and the po-faced. Alexander Pope explained why in the 1730s:“Hence satire rose, that just the medium hit, / And heals with morals what it hurts with wit.”

www.cartoonists.org.au

A big “thank you” to everyone who contributed cartoons. We were swamped with submissions and, regrettably, space didn’t allow us to run them all. The topic for next issue is:

“Kevin Rudd” 24 www.cartoonists.org.au

send cartoons to inkspot@cartoonists.org.au

Jason Frazer Robert Mason

Lindsay Foyle

Alex Hallatt

Peter McAdam

Alan Rose

Mark Lynch

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