Category: Cartoon

Oh the irony: freedom of expression in a corporate media world

1/9/2015

I'm writing this as the radio airs a live report of gunfire. The French police have just killed the two brothers who hunted down particular editorial workers at the satirical Paris magazine two days ago, murdering 12.

A bloodbath over hand-drawn images is over (for now), while the global reaction is unfolding in drawings.

French illustrator Lucille Clerc's image that she posted on Twitter went viral after it appeared on a fake Banksy Instagram account.

The call has been sent - and heard - far and wide: Defend free speech by publishing the triggering images of Mohammed, and by taking up the pen or pencil in a massive freedom of expression effort. (Some early responses by cartoonists can be seen here.)

As much as I am deeply offended by some of the cartoons printed in Charlie Hebdo (like this one of the naked young woman with her burqa up her ass, in line with the magazine's support of banning women's right to choose) I will defend all extremists' right to draw and publish extremist drawings. Respecting the right of all dissenting voices is part of a (still mythical) free and open society that nurtures rational thought and behaviour. The world witnessed the alternative on Wednesday morning.

Here in Vancouver, former Province editorial cartoonist Bob Krieger took to the drawing board hours after the news of the murders of his fellow cartoonists and others.

But you won't find this one-panel in the local newspaper anymore; the last Province cartoonist was let go in 2013, the way cartoonists have been unloaded all over the country by their corporate media owners.

Surely it was simply a cost-saving measure, but the result is a pitiful amount of visual commentary, and a corporate curbing of free speech.

This week the Province (owned by Postmedia which also owns the only other paid daily newspaper in this town) ran a guest column on the topic of the need for cartoonists' freedom of expression by Aislin (Terry Mosher) of the Montreal Gazette. That one voice ran in other Postmedia outlets including the Regina Leader-Post, Windsor Star and a whole whack of online news aggregators. And nothing against Aislin, but I miss our own, Vancouver-based critical drawings as we try to absorb the unfathomable. But as Krieger told The Tyee after he was shown the door, "corporate media is way too controlling and they don't want as much of a variety of opinion as newspapers should have."

You can't keep good cartoonists down.

Yet suddenly Canada's corporate media can't get enough visual commentaries, and entire pages have been dedicated to the drawings, sometimes in full colour - a dream to many cartoonists. But look closer at the spread in yesterday's National Post (also owned by Postmedia) and it's clear that less than half of the cartoonists are actually employed by newspapers.

You can see the irony here. Freedom of expression: Yes! ... unless there's more money in clickbait that has no relevance to local readership.

Cartoonists are compelled to make art, to share their expression freely. The papers aren't paying like they used to but the people are clearly paying attention, via social media retweets, hits, and followers. There's a lot of value in that.

It's astounding that the penny has not yet dropped.

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art has a function in unfathomable times

10/24/2014

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It was a day of horror that has changed the climate at the centre of the Canadian hive forever.
And it took an artist to channel our collective grief.

Cartoon from thechronicleherald.ca

Veteran editorial cartoonist Bruce MacKinnon's one-panel image that ran in the Halifax Chronicle Herald yesterday earned immediate and widespread reaction because it showed where words failed.

It depicts one of the bronze WWI soldiers from the National War Memorial escaping the pack to attend to the lifeless body of 24-year-old Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, whose image is only identified in colourful contrast by the Argyll and Sutherland Highland socks in white spats.

Art happens in the emotional minefield where makers dare to tread. It's a risky business, editorial cartooning; too strong or ambiguous and it becomes a target of already-highly-charged readers. Too sentimental or obvious and it dies on the page. MacKinnon did it right, and The Chronicle Herald had his back.

In a follow-up Herald story on that weighty cartoon, the artist said it was "gratifying" that in the internet age of image-bombardment "a single still image can still move so many people."

MacKinnon's modesty likely has something to do with how many media owners in this country regard the cartoon. Far from being an escapee from the funny pages, it is line drawing in and of the moment. It has the ability to distill public dispair with the point of a pen. Sometimes the one-panel will fall flat, but that fear does not deter artists from trying again. They can't help themselves, but it helps to be employed to keep at it.

(Image courtesy of the artist)

Vancouver cartoonist Bob Krieger did it in the days after the World Trade buildings and too many of its occupants were annihilated. Suddenly, the heroes of that town were no longer their beloved (and winning) Yankees. While readers were near drowning in stories of tears and fears, he hit the right note, in simple crosshatch.

As a former newspaper editor I grappled with editorial cartoonists over intention and ideas, but that all came to an abrupt end when the publisher announced that paying for an original weekly editorial cartoon was a waste of what had been whittled down to $100 per artwork. That was the beginning of the end for me.

So it's gratifying to see thousands of people virtually passing around this piece of art, bringing global attention to the remaining newspaper publishers who still see the value of paying to ensure original work by local artists are in their folds.

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Down on your drawing? break out at Vancouver Draw Down

6/13/2014

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Remember when you were a kid you knew you could give a drawing as a present to any adult and that adult would love it, even though you would definitely not like a drawing-present yourself?

It's one of those things that separates the kids from the adults. You know you're a fully formed adult when you understand that the piece of paper a kid hands up to you is not a cheap excuse for a real gift but carries the priceless traces of free-spirited play.

Consider this drawing of some figures in hats and gloves on a baseball diamond. The scribbles reveal that this five-year-old artist was fully engaged in the parameters of the game. But the happiness radiating from this drawing is not in the smiles on those figures' faces as in the engagement in the act of drawing. This is not a picture of felt pen marks on a piece of paper but a kid fully immersed in the idea, working out the positions, the scale, the action. He clearly started by filling the space with a diamond then plotting in his players, revising as he went, probably singing or making voices of the players as he drew.

Now consider this unhappy drawing of, ironically, a McHappy Meal. This was a still-life school assignment, not a whim. I laboured over every drop of condensation on the takeout cup. The fries resemble lumber. Every layer in the cheeseburger and crack in the bun is accounted for. This drawing reveals the opposite of the free hand; it is the hand imprisoned by adult expectations of what constitutes a proper Drawing.

Now sketching, I do that all the time, but that's just for figuring stuff out, just for me. Kind of like the baseball drawing.

Getting into or getting back into drawing for the fun of it is the whole point of the annual Vancouver Draw Down, culminating this Saturday all over town. This is not a competition, there are no grades; this is a chance to play with mark-making and be inspired by the creative ways drawing can happen. The fifth annual event takes its cue from the world's biggest drawing event, The Big Draw in the UK, part of the Campaign for Drawing, "a charity that raises the profile of drawing as a tool for thought, creativity, social, and cultural engagement," according to its website. (See YouTube video at bottom on why drawing matters.)

A few of the many ways to play Saturday, for all ages and experience, and with no registration required:

• Seabus Intervention (9 am - 5 pm): For the price of a ticket for the seabus, passengers are invited to use a Vancouver transit map to "create their own lines, routes and configurations."

• Costume Design Illustration (10 am - 2 pm): Head to the Arts Club Granville Island Stage rehearsal hall for a free four-hour session that explores illustration techniques, lead by pro costume designer Sheila White.

A detail from Marian Penner Bancroft's newly installed Boulevard.

• Time/Line Artstarts (10 am - 4 pm): Downtown at Artstarts Gallery ("the first in Canada devoted exclusively to young people's art") it's all about time-based collaborative drawing experiments.

• Boulevard Station, Yaletown-Roundhouse Station (noon - 4 pm): Trace the winter tree patterns of artist Marian Penner Bancroft's newly commissioned installation Boulevard and be a part of a collective drawing collage.

Download this file to print out a passport, get it stamped from at least two events, for chances at art-related prizes.

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You can't keep a good artist down

6/21/2013

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You might have heard the hammering this week of the final nail in the coffin of a well-known cartoonist's career with the Province newspaper. After more than 30 years, Bob Krieger joined the legions of other Vancouver Sun and Province reporters who took the buyout. Jumped before they were pushed, basically.

This is all about loss. And the city's two-paid-dailies-in-one-company knows about losses. You can almost hear the flushing sound of the whole print industry swirling out of sight. (More here.)

Krieger earned his full-time union salary by his deft drawing hand, his keen wit and his honed sense of social justice. His signature squat, cross-hatched caricatures that graced the editorial pages four days a week boosted the Province brand since he was first hired on in 1981. The sweetly scorching one-panel works graced many a staffroom fridge and coffeeshop corkboard. Gone viral, old-timey style.

But Krieger's departure is less about company losses and more about what he sees as newspaper politics. He calls 'em as he sees 'em but increasingly his ideas became just... wrong in the judgment of his bosses. While it's understandable that hemorraging newspaper revenues might have a chilling effect on editorial, hacking away at a healthy dose of opinion on the opinion page is a sure-fire way to lose readers. There might be a lot of industry stats that could counter that claim, but anecdotal evidence shows that when Krieger's art was eventually moved from the Editorial page to Sports, those of us who don't speak Sportuguese stopped seeking him out. One less drawer, one less draw to the paper.

There seems to be a major logic gap here. If the publisher really is all about re-focusing toward a web-based 'paper' (read the leaked memo to staff here) then a hot one-shot original cartoon image created by a local artist carries hefty potential for page hits by local readers, whose attention local advertisers are trying to capture. If we are to assume that this is a pretty basic strategy for building readership and advertising for a regional... uh, reading product, then some other agenda is behind showing the door to this editorial artist.

Artistic expression isn't tied to the promise of wealth — this insanely pricey city's strong arts community is proof of that — but the suppression of expression can be a killer. Something died at the Province when Krieger left last week. And it's starting to stink.

Above: Some of Krieger's favourites, used by permission.

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Oh the irony: freedom of expression in a corporate media world

art has a function in unfathomable times

Down on your drawing? break out at Vancouver Draw Down

You can't keep a good artist down

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