Drawing a Line: The Art of the Political Cartoon

On the latest Charlie Hebdo magazine cover, Muhammad is crying. He holds a ‘Je Suis Charlie’ placard. The magazine’s surviving cartoonist Luz has turned the prophet into a Parisian protester, one of the 3.7 million that marched against the terrorist attack last weekend. Muhammad stands under a message ‘Tout est pardonné’, 'All Is Forgiven'.

Just a joke?

It is this image -more than the drawings which provoked the massacre - that reveals the nature of political cartoons: that, beyond the silliness, they are a way of coping and a way of asserting strength.


Charlie Hebdo Magazine Cover

Worth a Thousand Words

The image is simple. It is defiant, but it isn’t funny. There is no joke, no cackling glee, no Parisian ‘gouaille’ or ‘esprit frondeur’: the anarchic cheek that characterised Charlie Hebdo. Luz explained “The only idea left was to draw Mohammed, I am Charlie. Then I looked at him, he was crying. Then above, I wrote: “All is forgiven”, and then cried.” Words wouldn’t cut it; the only thing the cartoonist could do was draw. This cover is a way of managing the horror, of surviving; and the picture is more eloquent than a thousand press conference platitudes.


The Mighty Pen 

Political cartoons have long been a means of grappling with forces bigger and scarier than ourselves. Each one points something out: a single statement, made with humour, shock, wry observation or sadness. They undermine power, dismantle egos and repackage something terrifying into something that tickles, or gives us pause. Using exaggeration, artistic skill and visual metaphor, cartoonists hurl cream-pies at the faces of power and threat. They puncture the boom of rhetoric with sharp ridicule or needling insight; deflating grown-up braggadocio with classroom hijinks.


Mockery as a Weapon

For all their childishness - the crass jokes, the playfulness, the association with comics and storybooks - the provocation of the editorial cartoon and the release of tension it allows, are very real weapons. The events of the 9^th of January prove this. Hitler threw a temper tantrum whenever he was caricatured. Napoleon said that cartoons “did more than all the armies in Europe to bring me down”.

Humans rarely laugh alone. It is this fact that transforms a few scribbles and wry remark into a rallying force for the weak and a nightmare for the aggressive.

Below is our selection of some of the best political cartoons in history:

James Gillray, 'The Plumb Pudding in Danger' (1805)



Gillray was the finest caricaturist of the Georgian period, the forefather of the Ediotorial Cartoon and the bane of Napoleon's life. In this satirical on the Napoleonic wars, his best-known, British Prime Minister William Pitt and Napoleon slice up the globe for supper.


Leonard Ravenhill, 'The Gap in the Bridge' (1919)




This cartoon appeared in Punch magazine in 1919, coinciding with the theTreaty of Versailles. American congress voted against America's entry into the League of Nations: a devastating blow. 


Naji Al-Ali, 1980s



The Charlie Hebdo massacre was not the first instance of cartoons proving lethal. Naji Al-Ali was the most popular cartoonist in the Arab world; his work starkly examined the effects of USA, Arab and Israeli governments upon Palestine. He was assassinated in London in 1987. In this cartoon, we see a Palestinian dreaming of home, the keys that would grant him access hang on barbed wire, high above him. 


Joe Sacco, from 'Journalism' (2012)



Joe Sacco is the king of graphic journalism: he combines cartoon image with words, and in doing so, has created a style of reporting never before seen. Sacco visits a war-torn place, interviews locals and sketches out their narratives into comic book sketches. The result is remarkable. Incidentally, his cartoon on the Charlie Hebdo massacre was the final word on the matter, check it out here. 


Chris Britt


This piece from American cartoonist Chris Britt sums up the wilful impotence of The West in Darfur.


Matt Diffee, (2004)




This New Yorker cartoons makes a wry comment on the youth's appropriation of Che Guevara: his face is on a thousand T-shirt and he has come to symbolize cool, instead of revolution. Guevara himself wears a Bart Simpson T-shirt: the two are compared. 


Plantu, 'I must not draw Muhammad' (2006)



In this Le Monde cartoon, a giant hand holds a pencil, which becomes a minaret - out of which a turbaned figure surveys. The hand writes lines, 'I must not draw Muhammed'- which congregate to form an image of the prophet.


Steve Bell, 'I lied in Good Faith', (2009)





Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell depicts Tony Blair as Pope Innocent X and comments on his role in the Iraq war.


David Shrigley, (Men Are Fools)




Turner prize nominee David Shrigley is a wonderful cartoonist: his badly drawn creations always hit the spot. Here, the intended glory of Mount Rushmore - where humans have carved images of their politicians, grandiosely, into a mountainside - is undermined by the stark statement 'men Are Fools'.


Charlie Hebdo, 'Love is Stronger than Hate' (2011)





This cartoon appeared on the Cover of Charlie Hebdo in 2011, after the office was petrol-bombed for depicting Muhammed. 'Charlie Hebdo' passionately kisses a Muslim man, whilst the office crumbles behind them.