Private Eye celebrates its 50th birthday next month and appears to be in rude health, bucking the downward trend for magazine circulation in the digital age.

The anniversary is October 25 but the celebrations start on Tuesday (September 20) with the release of a new book Private Eye: The First 50 Years, a history of the magazine written by the Eye journalist Adam Macqueen that charts its rise from 300 copies of the first edition in 1961, below, to a fortnightly circulation of more than 200,000.

The book features interviews with key players in the Private Eye story, rare archive material and unseen photos. (There are some “seen” ones too.) And, of course, there is an abundance of the cartoons that are so central to appeal of the magazine.

You can see more of those, including many by members of the PCO, which runs The Bloghorn, when the famously anti-establishment magazine puts on a First 50 Years exhibition at the very establishment Victoria and Albert Museum [Shurely shome mishtake? – Ed]. It opens at the V&A on October 18 and runs until January 8.

Cartoons will be shown in themed sections, on politics, royalty and social observation, and there will be gags, long-running strips and caricatures. The Bloghorn will have more on the exhibition nearer the time.

Ian Hislop, Editor of the magazine, has said of the 50th anniversary: “I do not want anyone to think that this is all just a huge celebration of ourselves. Our 50th year is a chance to look back and take a dispassionate view of how marvellous we are.”

You can read more on how marvellous they are in a Media Guardian article this week and even Vanity Fair is on the case with a piece by Christopher Hitchens. Updates on the 50th anniversary celebrations will appear on the Private Eye at 50 blog.

The Bloghorn is made on behalf of the UK’s Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

If you have been following this story you will be unsurprised that Bloghorn thinks comics, and cartooning in all its forms, are all too readily undervalued in the UK.

It is more acceptable in the cultures of Japan, the US and across Europe to consider the narrative techniques and visual artistry employed by commercial artists as a powerful form for  business and personal communication as well as entertainment and teaching.

The best single piece of evidence we offer is the attitude of the UK arts funding body – The Arts Council –  towards the national Cartoon Museum* which despite its popularity, and the long history of the form in the UK , receives no central funding. We wrote about this here.

Of course, there are some exceptions in this country – political cartooning, for example, tends to receive grudging respect for its obviously satirical and “real-world” relevance. But all too often, the “cartoon” and “comic” are used here as catch-all terms for anything that is unsophisticated, childish or tacky.

Dundee University is launching a degree in comic books. That'll show those who say degrees are being dumbed down!

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@TomHarrisMP

Tom Harris

Another political figure, the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, did exactly that last week. Criticising the Daily Mail, he described the paper as a “sexist, racist, bigoted comic cartoon strip”(Bloghorn is only interested in the second half of that assertion, which we feel is a little unfair).

Academic appreciation of cartooning is, in fact, not new: since 1973, the University of Kent has hosted the British Cartoon Archive, a collection of more than 150,000 pieces intended to encourage the study and appreciation of cartoon art, including comic strips. The Cartoon Archive is freely open to those wishing to carry out research, and is actively involved in promoting the art form – often in collaboration with the national Cartoon Museum, the PCO and its fellow cartoonists organisations, the BCA and the CCGB.

Bloghorn is made by Matthew Buck, Royston Robertson, Alex Hughes and Rob Murray on behalf of the UK Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

* We say please consider becoming a member to help fund them

PCOer and Bloghorn contributor Adrian Teal writes:

Some of you might remember me banging on like a girly bubble-brain about how delighted I was to be contributing cartoons to the QI spin-off books a couple of years ago. Things have moved on a little, and I have now contributed some illustrations to the TV show itself. I attended a recording with a friend on Friday, and probably lost any semblance of coolness when mingling with Messrs Fry, Davies, Clarkson, and Mitchell in the green room. It’s always fantastic to find new markets for your work, and cartooning has taken me to some interesting places. And it’s always nice to deal with people who are friendly, appreciative, and creative, which the QI crowd certainly are. It was their 100th show on Friday. Happy birthday, QI. Here’s to the next 100.

QI is set to return to our screens with a new series later this year whilst episodes from previous series are being shown on BBC2 currently. The QI Annual 2010, with artwork by Adrian Teal is out now.

David Levine, since 1963 caricaturist for the New York review of Books, has died. You can read an obituary from the New York Times and scroll through a short slideshow about him here. The Review of Books has an excellent archive of his work from the 1960s to the present day available here.

Updated: 31st Jan 2009. Bloghorner Steve Bell has a tribute to Levine published in The Guardian.

Bloghorner Tayo Fatunla is interviewed by the BBC World Service about his reports from the recent Pan-African Cultural festival in Algiers. The main clip starts at 16.15 in and Tayo takes some questions from about 26.00 in.

John Roberts is our Artist of the Month for July so we asked him which other cartoonist’s work he admired.

The cartoonist whose work I most admire has to be Holte (Trevor Holder) who I understand is now fully retired. (Why does a cartoonist retire….?) His line and colour work was amazing and I think quite beautiful. Every artist I’ve met (as well as cartoonists) has said that they wished that they could draw in a more ‘loose’ style – Holte always did this quite effortlessly. Of course there are many, many more cartoonists whose work I am in awe of but Holte has to be the one whose artwork I never tire of looking at. Not the funniest cartoonist that’s ever walked the Blue Planet but gosh that artwork…

James Gillray - The King of Brobdingnag, and Gulliver, 1803

An exhibition of classic English caricatures opened this week in Germany. The Arena of Ridicule – English Caricatures 1780–1830 celebrates the ‘golden age’ of English caricature and features the likes of James Gillray, George Cruikshank and Thomas Rowlandson and is at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg until the 27th September.

Bloghorn: Graham Fowell Red_Nose caricaturist

PCOer Graham Fowell will be drawing caricatures of all-comers for just £5 per head on Comic Relief Night this Friday (March 13).

The caricaturist, known professionally as the Hit Man, will be doing his five-hour stretch of drawing crowds at The Trent Inn on his home patch near Nottingham. Graham told the Bloghorn: “We want to raise loads of cash for Comic Relief.”

Caricaturist Adrian Teal writes about the paralysis of analysis:

A PhD student phoned me yesterday, wanting to pick my brains. She’s doing research into politicians and how political cartoons are perceived, and emailed me a list of searching questions which she’ll be putting to me in a telephone interview in a day or so.

I’m happy to help, though she tells me she has already spoken to Steve Bell and Martin Rowson, so I’m not sure I’ll have anything more insightful and enlightening to offer than these two giants of the Comment page.

And so to confession time …

The problem is that I tend not to think too deeply about what I do – at least, not that often. Analysing the cartoonist is like taking a butterfly apart to see how it works. I don’t draw because I think I can change the world, or to destabilize governments, though it is highly rewarding to have a pop at a venal politico now and again. I draw because I have to. At 34, I can’t see myself doing anything else. It is as much a part of my life as shaving, or yawning. The actual process can be agonising, although the labour pains are usually forgotten when the artwork turns out well. Sure, I like to be praised when I do a good job, but if I’m honest, I don’t even enjoy cartooning 100 per cent of the time. I suspect most cartoonists are the same.

Correct me if I’m wrong.

PCOer Adrian Teal (click to enlarge his Daniel Craig drawing, above) discusses the neglected art of the caricaturist:

If press cartoonists are feeling neglected, press caricaturists are feeling doubly so. The PCO is pursuing an admirable policy of singing the praises of the cartoon to anyone who’ll listen. The highly specialized trade of caricature is even more threatened, however, and I humbly submit that this noble profession should be given equal standing in the campaign.

Perhaps it’s the caricaturists’ fault. The standard (and standing) of British caricature has been in steep decline since the press lost interest in it after Spitting Image’s demise, and really good caricature is hard to find these days. Unless we can show the world how potent the art form can be, we will perish, and deservedly so.

When faced with something humorous and visceral, people often overlook the care and thought which has gone into a drawing. To a large extent – and I know I’m treading on a few corns here – cartoons are the fast-food of journalism; enjoyed briefly, and then discarded. But good caricatures have a staying power, which is lacking in pocket cartoons. They usually do not have the luxury of a caption to help them along. And the sheer amount of work which goes into them can be out of all proportion to the attention (and fees) they are given.

It is this kind of attention to detail, and plain hard slog, which marks the caricaturist out as the sturdy, muscular workhorse of cartooning, and I urge the PCO to help the journalistic world recognize his worth.

Thanks to Adrian Teal. Bloghorn says: Click T for Teal

UPDATED 28th April 2008: Some responses to Adrian’s opinion can be found in the comments section immediately under this edit

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