The Illustrator - Steve Bell
The path that Steve Bell took to become a successful cartoon artist was a lengthy one. He says “there is no defined career path to becoming a cartoonist. I came to it almost in reverse” Bell studied art at university and after this decided to become a teacher. However, he was soon to realise that this was not something that he wished to pursue as a career. Even though he had always loved comics it wasn't till a lot later on that he realised a career could be made from drawing comics and caricatures.
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| Steve Bell, The Guardian, 20 August 2010 |
Upon leaving his job as a teacher, he had sent work to many different newspaper companies, magazines and comic book industries, including Beano, however, he was not successful with them. and it was clear that a job within children's comic books was not the career path he was going to take.
In Steve Bell’s early career he drew comic pages for children’s comics, “including Whoopee, Cheeky and Jackpot”. He has also produced illustrations and comic strips for many different magazines including Social Work Today, Punch, Private Eye, New Society, the Radio Times, the New Statesman, the Spectator and the Journalist.
Whilst working at a left wing publication called the Leveller, he created the character, Lord God Almighty, an obnoxious being. Even though he had created this character, he wanted to be drawing comics about politics.
It wasn't till after the election of Margaret Thatcher that he got the opportunity to draw comics related to politics. From this, Maggie’s Farm was born, animals where people and the farm management were the government. With this came the regular production of work as the publication wanted something every fortnight. This was a huge break for Steve Bell, however his work needed improving as caricatures was not something he was used to.
His first caricatures of Margaret Thatcher were simply “press photos rendered into line drawings”, his drawings didn't quite have a personality yet. However, once going to a Conservative conference, he was able to inspect her in more detail from a first hand point of view. He says, “she was deranged, but in a controlled way, and this was expressed in her eyeballs”. This can be clearly seen with many of his pieces of art that include Margaret Thatcher.
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| Steve Bell, The Guardian, 2008 |
Bell’s work is extremely humorous. He has been described as “Hogarth and Swift with a touch of Peter Sellers and a sprinkling of Orwell.” His work is praised by many as they see him as “outrageous, anarchic, brilliant, sometimes inexplicable” . The public like his work because he is not necessarily putting this images out there to please anyone. He is simply choosing what new story he wishes to put into a cartoon an putting his views across that way.
The political figures that he chooses to depict are enormously blown out of proportion, picking out something from their personalities and then just going making that the main feature of the images. However, with this, he is still able to depict the people in such a way that you immediately know which politicians have been drawn.
With his cartoons, he really doesn't hold back with how he decides to caricature the politicians in question. They are brutal and honest. Like mentioned with Margaret Thatchers “mad eye”, every little imperfection of the person are scrutinized and blown up with hilarious results. In addition, the ridiculous, sometimes surreal themes adds to the humourous feel. His style is quite crude. This again adds the humorous elements of these cartoons.
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| Steve Bell, The Guardian, 2013 |
November 1981, the first If… strip appeared. Within six months of this, the Falklands war had broken out. With this, it gave Bell an opportunity to create “surreal graphic speculation” as at the time all imagery was controlled by the Ministry of Defence.
In a interview about an exhibition about his work, 30 Years of Steve Bell, he mentions that he has always loved Beano comics and as mentioned earlier would have loved to have been a children’s comic book artist. The work that Bell does now is political and so is not aimed at children as his main audience unlike the popular comic book Beano. However, he enjoyed the that the illustrations that came with the Beano comics because he believed they were rude and funny. Also, that the characters had riots and were anti authority.
Also, within this interview about his exhibition, he mentions that Toulouse Lautrec was an artist that he admired. He commented saying that Toulouse Lautrec could, “capture character with a flick of his pen” . Even though there are no similarities between the two of them in their artwork, Steve Bell is similarly trying to capture the characters and their personalities within his caricatures like Lautrec and his images of women at late night shows.
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| Steve Bell, 30 years of Steve Bell, 2011 |
The image above shows a painting that Steve Bell did as a tribute to Toulouse Lautrec. Bell mentions that Lautrec was good a drawing prostitutes in Paris. In this image, he has chosen to draw all the prime ministers that he has dealt with. They include Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron. He has even drew himself into the picture, sitting at the back with his sketchbook.
He says that he wasn't really someone who had an “easy, natural talent for quick caricature, as Gerald Scarfe and Martin Rowson do.” With his caricatures, he has to discover the character behind the face. With his cartoons, he finds something with the person that stands out to him and then just exaggerates on that particular thing he has chosen to draw.
Bell also does many images parodying celebrated paintings. Examples include his parody of Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, in an editorial cartoon about the UK Independence Party. Also, William Hogarth, J. M. W. Turner and Gustave Doré to name a few..
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| Steve Bell, The Guardian, 2011 |
Steve Bell, as mentioned previously, has worked at a number of newspapers and created a number of comics. However, it would be the work that he has produced for The Guardian that is his main source of income. He has worked at the newspaper for 30 years and has produced thousands of cartoons
The readers and the target audience of his work are going to be mature individuals. His work is certainly not aimed at children as the subjects within his drawings have little to no meaning at all tot them. An individual that is interesting in politics would obviously find his drawings interesting.
His cartoons appear in The Guardian. They, the newspaper, target an educated, middle-class, left-leaning, 18+ audience. Therefore, his cartoons have to correspond with this target audience of the newspaper.
However, there is a growing shortage in people going out to by a newspaper in todays society and therefore, a knock on effect of this is that less and less people will be seeing Steve Bell’s work. The internet now gives the opportunity for people to read their favourite newspapers online.
However, Steve Bells work can still be viewed on The Guardians online site. The If… cartoon strips are available to view online. This does mean that if people wanted to view the cartoons, they would have to search the website to find them. Whereas in the newspaper, the cartoons are almost “forced” upon the reader. Obviously the reader of the newspaper could make the decision to completely skip the page that they are on however they would have ultimately seen the image. On the online site, the reader has to make the effort to find his images. Therefore, his images are probably get less and less attention as people are unlikely to search for them.
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| Steve Bell, The Guardian, 2013 |
In an interview, Steve Bell shows a number of sketchbooks that are taken with him when going to different press conferences. He does a lot of drawings from a first hand experience with the different politicians that he decides to put into his cartoons. From seeing these characters first hand, he is able to see if there are any things in particular that stand out to him. If so, he can then use that and exaggerate it in his caricatures.
For example, when it came to drawing Tony Blair,“It wasn't until stalking him at the Labour conference in Blackpool in 1994 that I noticed he had a little mad eye of his very own: politically and visually, he was channelling Thatcher.” This can be seen in his cartoons of Tony Blair.
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| Steve Bell, The Guardian, 2003 |
As the cartoon shows above, Bell has decided to play on this idea that Tony Blair is “mad”. Like he had said about noticing that he had a mad little eye of his own, he has depicted this by simply making his right eye smaller that the left. Also, he decided to give Blair a split personality in this cartoon. This can be seen first with the text and secondly with the use of the colour red on his face in every other image.
Political caricatures are usually controversial in that there is always going to be someone viewing the artists work that will take offence from it. because of this, many of Steve Bell’s work has been seen as controversial.
One of Bell’s cartoons was seen as “Anti - Semitic”. The cartoon in question was a cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as puppet master. The two puppets being UK Foreign Secretary William Hague and Former British PM Tony Blair.
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| Steve Bell, The Guardian, 2011 |
The image above shows the Israeli Prime Minister leaning towards the reader in quite a aggressive manner with the two puppets. In the background are missiles coloured in the Israeli flag colours and the words “VOTE LIKUD”, the Israeli prime minister party, are scribed across the top.
It was seen as controversial as critics also believed it “echoes the anti-Semite rhetoric according to which Israel and Jews secretly control western decision-makers” . The newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, opened a debate on its website. However, the comments soon had to be taken down because of “netizens' fury and insulting remarks.”
Bell did respond to the comments that were made on this particular cartoon. He did this by commenting that the cartoon was about "the cynical manipulation of a situation by a specific politician" and "NOT about cynical manipulation by 'the Jews’.” With these drawings and cartoons, the artist uses a limited amount of text on the page. Because of this, it leaves the reader to interpret the piece of art how they want to. The problem that this causes is that some of the readers or viewers of the artwork are going to simply assume the artist is trying to suggest something when this is not the artists intention at all.
With political cartoons, the artist is sometimes trying to get there point of view across or counter arguing a point that has been made through the cartoons. This is always going to cause controversy. The ideas that someone has are not going to correspond with the ideas of an another individuals.
Steve Bell’s cartoons are, as mentioned, part of If… These cartoons can be viewed online and then the website leaves the comments open so that a debate can take place on the subject of the cartoon. Because of this, there is going to be controversial comments made. Again, it is the case that everyone is going to have an opinion on something, whether it be agreeing with the artists message or intentions with the cartoon or the opposing view.
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