PCO member Ken Pyne writes:

I went to a recent exhibition and overheard a cartoonist humbly thanking one of the organisers for lowering themselves to include cartoonists with ‘proper’ artists.

It is this Uriah Heep attitude I have heard over the years from cartoonists that keeps us down, and while it exists among us, we cannot easily complain about how badly we are treated as a profession, if we are going to do this sort of thing ourselves.

For God’s sake we need to show some bloody self worth now and again instead of just whingeing in pub corners!

Bloghorn says click P for Pyne and a fine selection of to-the-point cartoons.

PCO cartoonist Bill Stott writes;

ONE of TV’s most irritating programmes is “Click”. It usually crops up when you expect news and concerns itself with the geekier end of things computerish, or the needs of those whey-faced wannabes who claim not to be able to live without their Blackberrys. More than once in the hearing of your correspondent, Click’s cutting edge presenters have referred to events “way back in the 90s”. I wonder how old are Click’s younger viewers? Seven?

It might have been our patron, Libby Purves, or perhaps Bill Tidy, who suggested that cartoons demand a certain level of knowledge, historical or otherwise, for them to raise a smile.

If you didn’t know about the Titanic, Bill’s famous “No news of the iceberg ?” gag would fall flat. PCO member Mike Williams tells of a young person not understanding a fine joke about Vikings – “I’m a Viking. I’m SUPPOSED to leave rings on the table!” Said young person remarked, “Vikings wore lots of rings, did they?”

Cartoonists aren’t just history buffs. Cartoonists are interested in everything. They have to be. That’s what the job’s about. Everything. Very little is beyond humour’s scope. Maybe that’s why cartoonists come from all sorts of other lives – education, science, banking, road mending, string manufacture – and why many are tolerably able in fields other than drawing folk with big hooters.

So when the freelance cartoonist is commissioned to produce twelve sure-fire gags for a double glazing company – and companies are very keen on “product placement“ – then that freelancer had better be up to speed on all things transparent and still be able to make it funny.

Is this really the future of print cartoons?
Bloghorn offers a hat-tip to the Daily Cartoonist for a thoughtful analysis on the business issues around the future of commercial drawing.

Brian Sewell, the really quite grown up enfant terrible of the whacky, zany world of art criticism, when asked if cartooning was an art, replied “Oh no. It’s a facility.“ A polysyllabic reply, if nothing else.

But more than that, he and others in his profession or trade or art or facility are regularly put on the spot by a label-hungry media and public, and asked to bestow names; to make things tidy.

Therefore we get; that’s art, that’s not, that’s Jack Vettriano. (I suspect Mr Sewell wouldn’t be so kind).

I also suspect that he doesn’t know much about cartooning. He’s not alone in that.

Has he really looked at Mike Williams, Ray Lowry, Martin Honeysett, Heath Robinson, Ralph Steadman…[that’s enough - Ed] because good cartooning is so obviously an art. It shoots itself in the foot because it is also funny.

Mr Sewell and his friends say that real art is, and must be, serious.

We are not all in the class of the cartoonists mentioned above, I’ll bet that whilst Peter Paul Rubens was whacking out paintings of his big ladies being harassed by variously-hued male abusers, down the street and around the corner, were many other lesser lights striving towards the exactly the same end.

And yet, when one “In the School of Titian” turns up at Sotheby’s, it is still “art”.

It’s the last week to enjoy Martin Honeysett’s work as the first PCO artist of the month.

The PCO says click H for Honeysett

The BBC magazine has produced an interesting piece on family board games from World War 2. When you read the piece and look at the games, they were clearly no more than thinly disguised political propaganda.

At the time these were made, sold and distributed, the government, who encouraged their production, was clearly, keenly aware of the power that drawn cartoon and comic imagery had as an attractive sales device.

Presumably, BLOGHORN thinks, the power of what professional artists do, has not changed in the intervening 60 years, but the context in which art with a message can be used has clearly changed a very great deal. What do you think?

PCO member Noel Ford writes;

I’ve just had an interesting and, for me, unique experience, complete with ironic twist, that should be of interest to any cartoonists with a grievance concerning the unauthorised use of their cartoons.

Earlier this year, a client informed me that three of the of the cartoon illustrations which I had produced for him, had been spotted in a business magazine, decorating a feature. Consequently, I wrote to the editor of this magazine, informing her that she had published the cartoons without obtaining permission from either my client or myself. I was quite polite, and said that, in this case, the matter could be resolved by her paying me for repro rights, for which I enclosed an invoice.

I received no reply.

I phoned, explained the situation, and was told the editor would call me.

She didn’t.

I phoned again, and spoke to the magazine’s business manager, who promised everything would be sorted.

It wasn’t – and he didn’t call back.

I phoned again. Neither the editor or the business manager was available, so I asked for a call back, adding that I would not call again and that should they not contact me, I would commence legal proceedings.

They didn’t call back.

I wrote a final formal letter, informing them they were in breach of my copyright, and confirmed that unless I heard from them forthwith, I would take the matter to the courts.

They didn’t reply.

So, having made the threat, I was obliged to follow through, and I went to the website of Her Majesty’s Courts Service here

Submitting my claim, on line, was both easy and quick. I had to pay £30, which would be added to my claim.

The court served my claim on the 8th of August. Whether the editor was happy to concede my claim or she just didn’t fancy the trip from SE England to Aberystwyth to defend her magazine, I don’t know, but I received a cheque from them this morning for the full amount of my invoice, plus my court costs.

So, the moral is, don’t stand by and do nothing but moan if your work is used without consent. The law is there, and HMCS and the Internet make it easy to claim.

And the ironic twist? The magazine had used my cartoons to illustrate a feature on how to avoid being sued.

The PCO says: Hooray! And check out F for Ford at our portfolio website