Gerald Scarfe- Caricature

Gerald Scarfe has now been political cartoonist for the London Sunday Times for 44 years, and has also worked for The New Yorker magazine for 21 years. His work regularly appears in many periodicals in the UK and worldwide. He was made a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, 2008.He doesn’t understand where his drive for this work comes from, or even his artistic side. His father was a banker and his mother a schoolteacher. An asthmatic child, he was born during the war and spent years bedridden in hospital where he drew cartoons and made Plasticine models. As a teenager, he won a drawing competition in the Eagle comic. David Hockney was a runner-up.“I hope that in general I’m fairly cheerful but there is undoubtedly a black side to me as there is with most people I suppose". 

Fig 1- In 1994 the New Yorker Magazine sent Gerald to Wembley Stadium for the Rolling Stones Voodoo Lounge Tour and make a drawing for the magazine. When Mick Jagger saw it he asked for it to become a Stones T-shirt (Print size: 48cm x 32cm. Printed on high quality archival matt paper. Hand signed by Gerald Scarfe. Limited edition of 100. Issued with a signed Certificate of Authenticity)

But Scarfe’s spent a lifetime ripping apart those in power with cartoons so savage that his letterbox and email regularly fills up with complaints. Five female MPs had a go recently when he drew a cartoon of the Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, breastfeeding Greece and Italy, with Spain in the background waiting its turn. “I guess they were feminists but it seemed rather strange,” he said. They accused him of sexism, saying he wouldn’t have drawn a man like that.

Fig 2- Many Germans are wondering how long they can continue to support other European countries before their finances run dry. In other news this week, a report suggests that the longer mothers breast feed, the better it is for the baby.  (Print size: 48cm x 32cm. Printed on high quality archival matt paper. Hand signed by Gerald Scarfe. Limited edition of 100. Issued with a signed Certificate of Authenticity).

He drew Margaret Thatcher throughout her entire career. She appeared as a mad cow, Christmas tree, dominatrix, Union Jack, guillotine, pterodactyl, scrawny show dog and lactating monster suckling John Major and William Hague from her purple breasts. She was grotesque, her nose became sharp as a dagger. Scarfe recently gathered together his drawings of her – more than 300 of them – and a selection have gone on display today, for an exhibition titled Milk Snatcher, at the Bowes Museum in County Durham.“I wasn’t a fan of Mrs Thatcher but she was an amazing woman, you have to admit. She was our first and only woman prime minister and to get there as a woman she must have fought, she had to be incredibly strong,” he says.“It is so boring drawing politicians over and over again, they are such a boring crowd in general. You get the occasional Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson but there are a lot of Nick Cleggs around as well, boring people. You’ve got to try and do something with them to make it an interesting picture. She was pretty easy to do because she was a very aggressive kind of person.”

Fig 3-The late Prime Minister, depicted eating her successor, John Major 

His caricatures take a long time, and are careful studied. He explains: “When I had to start drawing Cameron I first looked through photographs and watched him on Newsnight and listened to him on the Today programme and gathered all the information I could. An artist is a bit like a computer that distils things down the arm and onto the paper. When I’m drawing people I sometimes feel like I become them. I’m an impersonator, like Rory Bremner to a certain extent. With someone like Cameron it’s difficult because he’s rather bland. I always draw him in his Bull Dog outfit because he’s so desperate to get away from it. He so desperately wants to be an ordinary bloke drinking Guinness in a pub with a whippet at his feet and playing darts for the local team,” he says.

In response to Scarfe's caricature i decided to create one of my own of David Cameron. To begin with i set about drawing out the basic shapes of his face. There are 5 shapes that make up a human face, the face shape, the nose, the mouth and then the two eyes. I then added in some smaller features to make it look more like Cameron. 

I didn't think that my first attempt drawing David Cameron was that successful, I didn't think it resembled him enough, for you to be able to recognise it as him, so I decided to have another attempt at it.

Gerald Scarfe often positions his caricature in the characters most used posed, but over exaggerations them in the same way as his overextends their features. I found the image below of David Camerons iconic pose with his finger pointing upwards.

Fig 4

I then went onto exaggerated the positions. the finger pointing is the main feature, so I made it much larger to emphasis it and made his shoulders a lot larger to draw attention to his rather small head. I was surprised by this exercise I am normal rather tight when i draw, but because I was trying to imitate Scarfe's style i was much looser, the lines are flowing and smooth, which i think adds more character and life to the image. I then decided to colour in the image using photoshop which gave another dimension to the image. I feel that my second attempt does resemble David Cameron but as Scarfe has commentated, it takes a lot of practice to perfect a caricature. 

Image References

Fig 1- Geraldscarfe.com. (2016). The Rolling Stones | Gerald Scarfe. [online] Available at: http://www.geraldscarfe.com/shop/discount/the-rolling-stones/ [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016].

Fig 2-  Geraldscarfe.com. (2016). Angela Merkel and the benefits of long term breast feeding | Gerald Scarfe. [online] Available at: http://www.geraldscarfe.com/shop/discount/angela-merkel-and-the-benefits-of-long-term-breast-feeding/ [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016].

Fig 3- Duguid, H. (2016). Why I admired but ridiculed Margaret Thatcher, by Gerald Scarfe. [online] The Independent. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/cartoonist-gerald-scarfe-why-i-admired-but-ridiculed-margaret-thatcher-10104406.html [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016].

Bibliography

• BBC News. (2016). Gerald Scarfe's controversial Margaret Thatcher cartoons on show - BBC News. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-31711778 [Accessed 10 Dec. 2016].
• Duguid, H. (2016). Why I admired but ridiculed Margaret Thatcher, by Gerald Scarfe. [online] The Independent. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/cartoonist-gerald-scarfe-why-i-admired-but-ridiculed-margaret-thatcher-10104406.html [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016].
• Duguid, H. (2016). Why I admired but ridiculed Margaret Thatcher, by Gerald Scarfe. [online] The Independent. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/cartoonist-gerald-scarfe-why-i-admired-but-ridiculed-margaret-thatcher-10104406.html [Accessed 10 Dec. 2016].
• Geraldscarfe.com. (2016). Angela Merkel and the benefits of long term breast feeding | Gerald Scarfe. [online] Available at: http://www.geraldscarfe.com/shop/discount/angela-merkel-and-the-benefits-of-long-term-breast-feeding/ [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016].
• Geraldscarfe.com. (2016). The Official Gerald Scarfe Website | Buy signed prints & books. [online] Available at: http://www.geraldscarfe.com [Accessed 10 Dec. 2016].
• Geraldscarfe.com. (2016). The Rolling Stones | Gerald Scarfe. [online] Available at: http://www.geraldscarfe.com/shop/discount/the-rolling-stones/ [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016].
• Salter, J. (2016). Gerald Scarfe, political cartoonist. [online] Telegraph.co.uk. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/7836180/Gerald-Scarfe-political-cartoonist.html [Accessed 10 Dec. 2016].
• Samadder, R. (2016). Gerald Scarfe: 'Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are walking caricatures. There's not a lot you can add'. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/may/03/gerald-scarfe-cartoonist-this-much-i-know [Accessed 10 Dec. 2016].
• Vam.ac.uk. (2016). Video: Gerald Scarfe - Drawing Inspiration - Victoria and Albert Museum. [online] Available at: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/videos/g/video-gerald-scarfe-drawing-inspiration/ [Accessed 10 Dec. 2016].