Cartoonists’ commentary

Press, 6 September 1980, Page 17

Cartoonists’ commentary

The Unauthorised Version: A Cartoon History of New Zealand. By lan F. Grant Cassell (N.Z.), 1980. 234 pp. $18.95.

. (Reviewed by

A. K. Grant)

That this book :-. a good idea is evidenced by the extraordinary amount of media attention devoted to’it. It has been the subject of radio and television programmes and newspaper articles. But- acknowledging that the book is a good idea, one th has to ask whether it is a good book. To that question the answer must be a firm and unequivocal “Not entirely.” In the first place the quality of the reproduction of the cartoons leaves something to be desired. This presumably has to do with technical problems on which 1 . am not competent to pronounce, but the result is that the work of nineteenth-century cartoonists such as Blomfield and' Hunter, although valuably revived, is done less then justice. And there are some curious decisions over the work of modern cartoonists. On page 212, for example, a cartoon of Tom Scott’s which contains a great deal of detail is reproduced at about one quarter the size of a cartoon on the next page by Bromhead. Bromhead relies on line, not detail, and it would have been much more sensible to allot the larger space to the Scott cartoon and the smaller space to the Bromhead one. This has nothing to do with the respective merits of the cartoons, merely with their suitability for being “boiled-down.”

In the second place, the book confirms that although New Zealand has produced numerous cartoonists who are gifted draughtsmen, their attitudes have generally been as conservative as those of the press in which they appeared. The dreary procession of anti-union cartoons by Minhinnick,. one of our most

artistically-gifted cartoonists, fails to lift the spirits, and the general impression is of cartoonists who have reflected the spirit of their age without enlivening it. Things have got a bit better in recent times, with the work of people like Brockie, Bromhead and Scott, but curiosities occur again in relation to the selection of the work of the modern cartoonists. In the part of the book covering the period 1973-79 the work of 16 cartoonists is represented, and Mr Grant has selected their work as follows: Bromhead, 19 cartoons; Brockie. 15: Scott. 10; Evans, S; Wrathall. 7; Lodge, 6: Heath, -5; Minhinnick, 3; Scales. Gibbard and Lee, 2 each: arid Gorman, Silver, Henshaw, Fraser and Walker, 1 each.One can admire the work of Bromhead without agreeing that it justifies a representation of almost a quarter of the cartoons .selected to represent the period, and 15 cartoons seems a generous allocation to Brockie, (who also gets a colour reproduction on the, back of the book), particularly in view of the fact that he is* resident: cartoonist of the “National Business . Review,” in which Mr Grant is a moving force. I do not suggest that Mr Grant is pushing his own house cartoonist’s barrow, but a more even selection would have avoided any such uncharitable suspicion. Mr Grant has had to write a . potted history of New Zealand in general, and also of particular issues, in order to place the cartoons in context. It is adequate without being sparkling, an observation which also applies to many of the cartoons. The book’s title, “The Unauthorised Version” is somewhat inapt, since with some all-too-rare exceptions, the authorities in office over the last 100 years or so are unlikely to have been troubled by much of the work of our local equivalents of Tenniel, Vicky ‘ or Scarfe. - : . - -