Rude Britannia: British Comic Art, Tate Britain

2:43pm Wednesday 28th July 2010

By Theresa Thompson

with some surprising ‘facts’: the Russians are, apparently, averaging up to ten jokes a day (OK, this written by a Russian); on another site I read it was Sagittarians; then, overweight people; then, philosophers. But many argue it’s the British who are known for their humour; indeed, the 19th century actor and biographer Hesketh Pearson said our true patron saint should be Sir John Falstaff, not St George.

Curated with the help of the Viz magazine team, cartoonists Steve Bell and Gerald Scarfe, and comedian Harry Hill, Rude Britannia: British Comic Art takes us on a tour of comic art from the 1600s to the present day: from satires of Georgian society, via George Cruikshank’s huge Victorian polemic The Worship of Bacchus, past centuries of savage political cartoons, all the way to bare backsides, bosoms and saucy seaside postcards.

Well, the comic art they show comes in many forms, if mainly graphic — prints, drawings, some paintings, comic strips, sculpture, topical pottery, film and photography. Tate’s aim is to “explore the role of humour in British visual culture”, and to “encourage debate around the wider role of humour in British life”.

It wants us to ask questions like “Are some things in life beyond a joke?” and “What role have cartoons played in spreading and reinforcing prejudice?”.

So, it has its serious side; historical and sociological observations are here for the taking.

With so broad a brief there will be omissions. There is only one Max Beerbohm, for example, and two David Low cartoons. However, a trip to the Cartoon Museum in Bloomsbury can fill in gaps. But, hey it’s summer and most of us are going to go along to have some fun. Visitors’ faces tell the tale: the smiles, smirks, stroked chins and ‘aahs’ as recollection dawns, the odd guffaw — imagine! In an art gallery!

In the ‘Politics’ gallery we once again see John Major’s underpants on fire (Steve Bell’s cartoon, 1997), and other exploits of the hapless ‘superhero’; and dear ole Maggie in her Spitting Image incarnation (see above), frozen mid-harangue; Gerald Scarfe’s Ptorydactyls flying above the actual image (1989); and Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps’s infamous photo-montage Photo Op (2005) showing a grinning Tony Blair taking a picture on his mobile of a burning oil field.

There are almost 70 works in this one gallery; the natural home of the political caricature that has flourished in Britain since the 18th century. Celebrated satires by Rowlandson and Gillray, for instance, and masses of caricatures of Fox, Pitt, Napoleon, Gladstone, Disraeli and so on right up to the present day (if not yet Cameron or Clegg — quite a task for cartoonists, I believe).

A giant copy of Viz magazine dominates the ‘Social Satire and the Grotesque’ room. It’s open at a page satirising Rowlandson and Gillray themselves, titled ‘Satirical Shenanigans with the Regency Twosome’, while opposite is an idea about how to recreate Anish Kapoor’s sculpture (Shooting into the Corner, not long ago at the Royal Academy) in your living room using Vaseline and strawberry jam!

However, this and the amusing commentary from Viz’s Roger Mellie (The Man on the Telly), using cartoons on the wall by each picture, seriously upstaged the exhibits.

The curators obviously did too. They use all sorts of comic devices to signpost the show. A red warning triangle on the wall marks the start of the ‘Bawdy’ room celebrating robust sexual humour, for instance.

But a sculpture from Sarah Lucas, a fist on a spring gently moving up and down, does this rather more explicitly. The room’s milder end is where you see Donald McGill’s postcards (Want a Stick of Rock Cock? for example), plus how his work came under scrutiny from the Director of Public Prosecutions in the 1950s; then Beryl Cook, and Viz’s Fat Slags, Sid the Sexist and so on. Further inside are Aubrey Beardsley’s erotic pen and ink drawings, and more innuendo from Sarah Lucas.

The exhibition closes with the ‘Absurd’ (defined in the OED as ‘out of harmony with reason’).

Silly, in other words! The room was curated by Harry Hill, who said: “We have all laughed at art for one reason or another. This time, it will be for the right reasons!”

An anvil is suspended above the room’s entrance with Hill’s scrawl on the wall promising “it won't fall on your head”; further in, a false door opens on to a wall.

We meet the Fascist Fruit Boys too, a fight between chips and fruit (who wins?), a giant banana, a tent-like bear’s head, and a taxidermy kitten holding up a sign (see above) saying “I’m dead” (David Shrigley’s).

And these are just the exhibits on the floor; there are tons more on the walls, by the Chapman brothers, by 18th-century Paul Sandby, by Heath Robinson, Tenniel, Spike Milligan . . . It’s a real pick and mix.

Tate has thought of that and provides a Sitting Room. I didn’t have time to make use of it, but it looked great, a real sitting room complete with comfy armchairs, lampshades, jokes, magazines, comics, Beano and Viz albums. Have fun!