Posts Tagged ‘caricature’
“What’s in a name?”*…
Familiar to many will be that exasperating feeling that arises when accused of being that very thing you pride yourself on not being. It’s a feeling the English artist William Hogarth evidently felt acutely when critics derided him for being a mere “caricature” artist. So moved was he by this ongoing slight, that he produced this 1743 print explaining the difference between characters and caricatures — which Hogarth saw as radically different — and demonstrating his style as being firmly aligned with the former. For Hogarth the comic character face, with its subtle exploration of an individual’s human nature, was vastly superior to the gross formal exaggerations of the grotesque caricature…
More on Hogarth’s defense of his self-perception at “Characters and Caricaturas.”
* Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
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As we lament labels, we might recall that it was on this date in 1972 that Vesna Vulović entered the Guinness Book of Records. A stewardess for JAT Airlines, she survived a fall of 33,330 ft. when (what is believed to have been) a briefcase bomb exploded on her flight, and she was sucked through the resulting hole i the fuselage. She was the sole survivor of the incident.
“The world is a perpetual caricature of itself”*…
Lilian Lancaster was 15 when she drew a collection of 12 anthropomorphic maps of European countries to amuse her ailing younger brother. They were published in 1868 as Geographical Fun, with notes and an introduction by “Aleph” (the pseudonym of William Harvey, a City Press journalist, antiquarian, and family friend).
Take the Grand Tour with Lilian in the Library of Congress’ collection; read her fascinating story (she became an actress, and continued her cartography) at Barron Maps.
* George Santayana
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As we peruse personifications, we might note that, while folks in the U.S. are celebrating the signing, on this date in 1776, of the Declaration of Independence of the U.S. from Great Britain, it is also a day to spare a memorial thought for two of the drafters and signers of that document, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (respectively also, of course, the second and third Presidents of the United States); both died on this date 1826.
Adams and Jefferson
Out, out, damned spot…
As The Raw Story reports, newsstands in Poland now offer Egzorcysta:
With exorcism booming in Poland, Roman Catholic priests have joined forces with a publisher to launch what they claim is the world’s first monthly magazine focused exclusively on chasing out the devil.
“The rise in the number or exorcists from four to more than 120 over the course of 15 years in Poland is telling,” Father Aleksander Posacki, a professor of philosophy, theology and leading demonologist and exorcist told reporters in Warsaw at the Monday launch of the Egzorcysta monthly.
Ironically, he attributed the rise in demonic possessions in what remains one of Europe’s most devoutly Catholic nations partly to the switch from atheist communism to free market capitalism in 1989.
“It’s indirectly due to changes in the system: capitalism creates more opportunities to do business in the area of occultism. Fortune telling has even been categorised as employment for taxation,” Posacki said…
Turn on all of the lights, then read the whole story here.
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As we wonder where we can find Max von Sydow, we might send an ironically-drawn birthday card to George Cruikshank; he was born on this date in 1792. The “modern Hogarth,” Cruikshank was a caricaturist, cartoonist, and illustrator who worked with his friend Charles Dickens (Sketches by Boz, The Mudfog Papers, and Oliver Twist), Lawrence Sterne (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman), and many others.
Cruikshank’s “Fagin in his cell”
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