online art gallery

Between the lines and words of the political cartoons

To understand the political caricature and its power over the people it is needed caricatures to be reviewed as whole. For that purpose it is required to go through the history of the caricatures from ancient time to present days and to point out the greatest political caricaturists and their cartoons. Most of the caricatures represent world history in extravagant or humoristic way. Their main subjects are certain situations and historical moments. The good cartoons are uncomplicated to understand and to leave long impression in the reader. The questions that have been assigned in the essay are: what is caricature; what is its history and how they developed though the years. Then it has been paid special and detail attention of political cartoons and how they have influenced over the people by sending political massage.

What is a caricature?
Firstly to answer this question I have looked at “Oxford dictionary of English” where it is described as “… a picture, description or imitation of a person or thing in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect”. In literature, a caricature is explained as a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others. Synonyms of caricature are: cartoon, burlesque, parody, travesty, satire and lampoon. These nouns denote artistic forms in which someone or something is imitated in an amusing and generally critical manner. Caricatures can be insulting or complimentary and can serve a political purpose or be drawn solely for entertainment. Caricatures of politicians are commonly used in editorial cartoons, while caricatures of movie stars are often found in entertainment magazines.

The word "caricature" essentially means a "loaded portrait". According to caricature teacher Sam Viviano, the term refers only to depictions of real-life people and to cartoon fabrications of fictional characters, which do not possess objective sets of physiognomic features to draw upon for reference, or to anthropomorphic depictions of inanimate objects such as automobiles or coffee mugs. On the other hand, legendary animator Walt Disney, equated his animation to caricature, saying the hardest thing to do was find the caricature of an animal that worked best as human-like character.
The meaning of cartoons is a very old, it is coming from a famous palette from the dawn of paranoiac Egypt shows King Narmer striking what appears to be a defeated enemy in front of Falcons’ symbol of the god Horus.

It is unlikely that Narmer personally dispatched all his enemies, and even more unlikely that he contrived to have a falcon present to watch events. It is much more likely that this was a true cartoon, making an important point of propaganda.
Four thousand years later, similar ideas were repeatedly put forward in the Byzantine Empire. To give one of many examples, a tenth-century ivory relief shows the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus crowned by Christ. As with the palette of Narmer, the artist did not suggest that the incident depicted actually occurred, and yet there are clear political implications that Constantine VII, like Narmer, has had divine support and is therefore invincible. So the mosaic also qualifies as a true cartoon.

Some of the earliest caricature of a politician caricatures are found in the works of Leonardo ad Vinci, actively sought people with deformities to use as models. The point was to offer an impression of the original, which was more striking than a portrait.