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Against Daumier. A Revision of Early French Caricature and Social Graphics
-abridged version- L’imagination au pouvoir – Imagination to power (Charles Fourier) One has settled down comfortably with Honoré Daumier. “There is hardly another artist who has become such an epitome of an entire art genre,” (1) Thomas Gaehtgens wrote in his text on the French illustrator published in 1979, and what he meant was the […]
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Émile Cohl: Ils sont passés devant les nez déconfits (They pass by the depressed noses)
The MePri-Collections holds the original of a coloured poster, signed by Emile Cohl. Pierre Courtet-Cohl, the grandson of Emile Cohl was so kind to examine this large cartoon (84 x 49 cm) and it turned out, that the drawing was not only authentic, but also – as far as known – the only surviving example […]
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The Art of Émile Cohl
Émile Cohl (born as Émile Courtet) had a preference for the graphic depictions of metamorphoses and puzzles of all kinds. His best cartoons are included in the caricature magazine “La Nouvelle Lune”, which was founded by Cohls friend and mentor André Gill. After Gills mental breakdown in 1880 Cohl took on the editorship.He also contributed […]
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The Empty Image as Weapon. Charles Gilbert-Martin´s Anti-Censorship Campaign
Charles Gilbert-Martin, along with André Gill, Alfred Le Petit and Thomas Nast, counted as the main protagonists of the second wave of the caricature movement. What lent them unparalleled popularity in the field of art was less the graphical brilliance and enormous richness of ideas in their works than the back-breaking campaigns and skilful ambages […]
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Some Frightful War Pictures , London 1915
The art of William Heath Robinson can be qualified as an anarchic heightening of the inventions of the early masters of science fiction cartooning, of George Cruikshank and Albert Robida. In this collection of war cartoons, which appeared during the early stages of WWI, when the Trench warfare had just begun with its poison gas […]
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The birth of the artistic avant-gardes out of the spirit of salon caricature. A draft.
Not translated: Die Erfindung archigenetischer Gründungsmythen scheint eine der eigentümlichsten und nachhaltigsten Leistungen der Moderne gewesen zu sein. Schaut man sich die Entwicklungsstränge der Kunst des frühen 20. Jhds. aus der Perspektive des Sonnendecks gängiger Kunstgeschichtsschreibung an, dann erweist sich das Auftauchen anarchischer Gruppierungen wie der Dadaisten und Surrealisten als ein schockierender Einbruch aus heiterem […]
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Karagoez, Turkish Cartoon Magazine
The newspaper archive Horst Moser, Munich, holds several examples of early issues of the satirical magazine “Karagöz”, which bear witness to the high graphic quality of Ottoman caricature at the beginning of the 20th century. The attraction and popularity of caricature magazines continues unabated in Turkish society today. The two protagonists of the satirical magazine, […]
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Van Goghs Favorites III: Arthur Boyd Houghton – Our One-eyed Artist in America
«Until now I never knew Boyd H[oughton] was so interesting (…) Very strange. (…) After you have seen my Boyd Houghtons from the first year of the Graphics you will understand more clearly what I wrote about the importance of this master’s work.» Vincent van Gogh to Anton van Rappard, February and April 1883 (Letters […]
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Thomas Nast: «Dead Men´s Clothes Soon Wear Out»
This drawing by Thomas Nast, in the MePri-Collection, is a very precise preliminary study for one of his best-known political cartoons. The wood engraving made from this 18 x 22.5 cm sketch filled a large-format double page spread in “Harpers Weekly”, the most widely circulated American illustrated magazine of the time, on 10 September 1870. […]
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A Pre-modern History of the Culture of the Unfinished and the Discarded Drawing
The following text was commissioned by the Spanish artists magazine Centro de Bajo Rendimiento“ for proyecto editorial No.1, 2008 www.centrodebajorendimiento.com Special thanks go to Toni Crabb. I. Unfinished The first drawing ever published in a state of declared unfinishedness appeared on November 28th, 1891, in the globally distributed magazine „The London Illustrated News“. In his […]