Join us for a conversation between celebrated political cartoonists Steve Bell and Patrick Oliphant. Cynthia Roman, Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Paintings at the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, moderates the discussion.
Steve Bell has been drawing political comic strips for a living since 1977. He is a proponent of the short form cartoon, typically four frames, and since 1981 he has written and drawn the If … strip in the Guardian, with no end in sight. Since 1990, he has been drawing four larger-format political cartoons a week for the same paper. His work is unashamedly comic, but many of his cartoons are deliberately serious.
Pulitzer Prize–winning political cartoonist and Andrew Carnduff Ritchie Artist-in-Residence Patrick Oliphant was born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1935. In 1964 he moved to the United States to take a position at the Denver Post, and his cartoon strip was internationally syndicated the following year. Oliphant’s achievements as a cartoonist, painter, and sculptor have been celebrated in solo exhibitions in major museums throughout the world. His numerous awards include the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning; he was selected to be Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in 2012; and in 2014 he received Australia’s highest honor, the Order of Australia (a knighthood), for his lifetime work.
On view at the Gallery are 36 of Oliphant’s political cartoons, generously loaned by the artist, as well a bronze sculpture titled Nixon on Horseback, which is part of the Gallery’s collection of the artist’s work.
Seating is limited. Please meet in the Gallery lobby.
Presented in collaboration with the Lewis Walpole Library.