This Wednesday, toonpool.com went to the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest trade fair for books. I stayed home, so I don’t have a clue what happened. For all I know Google could have bought the whole company. Max wrote blog entries about day one and two and I heard there might be a wrap-up entry tomorrow.
I would like to comment on Nobel prize related postings once again. There have been few cartoons about laureates other than Obama. No smiling Elinor Ostroms, overrated Charles K. Kaos or emotional Venkatraman Ramakrishnans. There wouldn’t have been any if it wasn’t for German writer Herta Müller. I don’t know if it is toonpool.com’s well-read community, some intricate visual appeal of Müller’s or the feeling that once more WE won the Nobel prize (this time “us” is both Romanians and Germans – hell, she even lives in Berlin-Friedenau). In any case, there are about fourteen caricatures of her. Unfortunately, no one could come up with a joke. When looking at the bunch of pictures, I felt reminded of the “Who will draw me?” thing and the different ways in which the artists dealt with the two photo references. Since I can get a little compulsive at times, I searched the web for the reference photos. Here’s what I came up with (I am not sure about the legal issues, so I only posted links to the photos).
Photo 1 (by David Gannon / AFP Photo) has been used by Geomateo, Nicoleta Ionescu, and Marian Avramescu (all from Romania). I think Sigrid Töpfer (Germany) combined the photo with this one (by wikipedia user Amrei-Marie). Photo 3 (Agerpress) served as a reference for works by Marian Avramescu and Kidor (also Romania). Saadet Yalçin (Turkey) used this photo (Jens Meyer /AP Photo) for her iconic interpretation while Zed (Croatia) probably used another one by the same photographer.
Cartoons of Interest
No favorite cartoon this week, but a favorite caricature: Manohead‘s take on the late Yasser Arafat. The way Manohead deformed the PLO leader’s head is striking and novel. I can’t think of another caricature that would just leave out his mouth like this. It’s not that his nose was really prominent, my visual memory even recorded his mouth rather than his nose but somehow this still works. Maybe it’s the brown spots on his skin that do the trick.
Finally, I would like to refer to Hezz’s last few cartoons. His graphic style may still not be everyone’s cup of tea, I still don’t like the occasional sexism but he seems to have found his calling doing burkatoons.
Paul Hellmich
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