cartoon -
A kind of drawing done to get
people thinking, angry, laughing, or otherwise amused, often accompanied
by a caption. A cartoon
usually has simple lines,
uses basic colors, and tells a story
in one or a series of pictures
called frames
or panels.
Examples of cartoons in this first sense:
Count de Meurs, (Netherlandish), Drawings in a Letter, 1493, Library of
Zutphen, Netherlands. Manuscripts
dating back to the Middle
Ages often used sequential
pictures accompanied by
text, or sometimes
even used text-balloons for captions
as in this example. See Dutch art.
Charlet (French, 1792-1845), My dear children I carry you all in my heart
(Mes cheres enfants Je vous porte tons dans mon coeur),
c. 1820. Following the French Revolution and Napoleanic rule,
the monarchy was restored once again. Charlet's cartoon suggests
the actual place where Louis XVIII's would carry his subjects.
Honoré Daumier (French, 1808-1879),
Rue
Transnonian, le 15 Avril 1834, published by the Association
mensuelle July 1834, lithograph
on paper, 17 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches
(44.5 x 29.0 cm). Victims of senseless viloence are sensitively
modeled.
Honoré Daumier, I have three cents! (J'ai trois cents),
from the series "Parisian Emotions", c. 1843, lithograph on paper.
Artists have paid the poor little attention at any time in hisory.
Daumier often made them central figures in his editorial caroons.
This impoverished fellow looks on as bourgeois
citizens enjoy the luxury of dining out. See caricature and Realism.
Thomas Nast (American , 1840-1902)
Scott Adams (American, contemporary), Dilbert, a strip which first appeared in 1989, printed in 50 papers then, and in 1,900 by 1999. Scott Adams was the first cartoonist to put an email address in a comic strip.
David Horsey (American, 1952-), Todays News Quiz, The President is Marshalling
. . . , 2002, ink on paper, published by the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer. Horsey has won two Pulitzer Prizes for
his cartooning, in 1999 and 2003.
A political cartoon may caricature
current public figures or issues symbolically
and often satirically. Animated films are also
called cartoons.
There is an older sense in which
a cartoon was a preliminary drawing made the size
of the final work. Michelangelo transferred the images
of his cartoons onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the
making of his fresco.
Other examples of cartoons in this last sense:
Leonardo da Vinci (Italian, 1452-1519), Virgin and Child with the Infant John the Baptist
and St. Anne, National Gallery, London, sketch
for the Madonna
and Child with St. Anne and John the Baptist, often identified
as the Burlington House Cartoon. Leonardo's later treatment of
the same subject (without
John the Baptist): The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne,
1510, [200 k,] oil on wood
panel, 5 1/2 x 4 1/2 feet (168
x 130 cm), Musee du Louvre, Paris.
Federico Barocci (Italian, Urbino, c.1536-1612), The Flight of Aeneas, black chalk, heightened with white, on paper formerly blue, mounted on canvas, Louvre.
Charles Le Brun (French, 1619-1690), The Different Peoples of America, black chalk, with white heightening, on several pieces of buff paper joined together, 1.830 x 2.290 m, Louvre.
William Morris (English, 1834-1896), Guinevere and Iseult: Cartoon for Stained Glass,
1862, chalk, pencil
and watercolor
on paper, 61.0 x 685 cm, Tate Gallery,
London. See Arts and
Crafts Movement and stained
glass.
William Morris, Angel of the Resurrection: Cartoon for Stained
Glass, 1862, crayon,
pencil and watercolor on paper,
68.9 x 46.5 cm, Tate Gallery, London.
Also see animation, anime, cartoonist, deformalism, narrative art, Pop Art, satire, and sinopia.
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