The Art of the Political Cartoon

It’s an election year, and that means everyone is going mad with political fever. All of your more vocal friends and family members are probably sharing thoughts and opinions on every social media platform and in real life. As we all know, this can be warranted, or not. These people may be blowing up your newsfeed with political gifs, videos, memes, articles, or anything else that could possibly relate to national or international politics, and you really have no way to avoid it. Sure, their opinions are important, but isn’t the same edited gif of Bernie Sanders scaring Donald Trump at a rally getting a little old? (Probably not; it’s always hilarious.)

It’s time to take a look at the meme’s ugly step cousin, the political art of yesteryear, the cartoons you see in your parents’ real newspaper when you’re home for the weekend that don’t feature a fat orange cat that hates Mondays. It’s time to re-appreciate the political cartoon.

Political cartoons take the extremes and exaggerations and turn them into messages for people to look at and interpret. Like all art, political cartoons are subjective, and the viewer will always bring his or her own biases to the cartoon. Unlike all art, however, the political cartoon asks for heightened biases in its very nature. People have strong opinions on politics that, more often than not, do not change. Political cartoonists do everything they can to use their art to encourage discussion from both supporters and opponents, knowing full well that not everyone who sees their art will agree with or understand what they are saying.

I’ve chosen the three political cartoons I’ve included in this post to highlight the differences and similarities found in many cartoons of this nature. Each of these cartoons takes a current event and interprets it in an artful manner so the event is easy to identify and understand. Sometimes cartoons have lots of words, but most limit text as much as possible, letting the images speak for themselves. Words can add to the image, but even without words, these cartoons speak to an audience in a clear and concise manner.

You don’t have to agree with them, but political cartoons are an extremely efficient way to make a strong statement using nothing but the powerful tools of art and wit. A political cartoonist has limited space to say what he or she wants to say; yet somehow, they say it.

So, this election year pay attention to what the artists of the world are saying. Just like those friends and family members who seem to just go on and on, political cartoonists have thoughts and opinions that are important and worth listening to. They just say them in a different way.