IGI features
Distorting (for) the truth
Apr, 10, 2001Caricature brings together high and low, what we so often feel art should keep separate. Here Rory Campbell portrays for us an artist whom he considers an estimable caricaturist in a long, challenging tradition.
Satire has its limitations, “is unfruitful prayer.” the mere satirist eventually needs foolish or wicked targets, rather than developing a personal imaginative or celebratory world. The target is only absurd or wrong, two-dimensional; a satirist can quickly become a peevish mocker; a one-trick pony. Scepticism eventually leads to barrenness.
On the other hand, some caricaturists transcend the genre and accede to the ‘status’ of Fine Art- Daumier, Lautrec, Grosz, Heartfield, Scarfe. In Ireland there has been little tradition or appreciation of political cartoon. But the cartoons of Peter Hanan, manage to encapsulate and undermine superbly their victim and his or her more foolish tendencies. We see Charles Haughey scrabbling for a cheque, Michael Flatley’s chest glistening charismatically, Ronan Keating’s blithe self-satisfaction. His portraits of public figures are ludicrous yet perfectly recognisable, and funny to boot. He is creating a comic (ratherthan cruel) parallel world, with panache, artistry and a natural perfection of form. Growing up in South County Dublin, Hanan’s artistic development and education (always doodling faces, old men, devils, etc., and copying published cartoons) were fairly straight forward. Art at Leaving Cert was followed by Graphic Design at NCAD (including a thesis on photojournalism), where he began to have cartoons published in the Students Union magazine and D-Side. After graduation came caricatures in the Sunday Business Post, the Magill and the saturday Irish Times. He also illustrated book covers. In his own time he has worked for years on a ‘graphic novel’, prizing his complete control over the undertaking; he has also been building up a series of caricatures for a one person exhibition.
Influenced since early on by the photography and lighting in films, he uses lighting to heighten specific moods. Other influences include Asterix, Magritte, Steadman, Robert Crumb and Monty Python; also stand-up performers like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks. He admires the work of Ian Knox, political cartoonist of the Irish News.
Hanan gets his initial impression of a subject’s appearance from photographs. Then, hardly referring to those again, he recreates that person anew in mixed media. He starts simply, using coloured pencils and felt-tips. After transferring the figure(s) and attendant details onto computer, he builds up and composes the background using programmes like Photoshop, also bringing in images snapped with a digital camera. He alters and crops them to maximum effect.
Humour is a powerful weapon. “It’s always when a thing sounds not true that it is true,” Jean Rhys wrote. “You imagine the carefully-pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn’t. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic, it’s in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.”
Rory Campbell is an occasional cartoonist and illustrator.
(First published in Circa magazine Spring 2001 )
