Page 32 - Studio International - May 1966

Scarfe the reluctant satirist

by John Berger

I don't think I was influenced In recent years satire has often been used, not so much as
by any artist when I began an aggressive weapon, but as a means of storming the
to draw cartoons. It was only
when a certain similarity of Establishment—in order to gain entry. This does not
purpose was pointed out that apply to Gerald Scarfe. Scarfe will probably remain a
I began to look at Gillray. satirist, will probably continue to bite the hand that
For one reason and another I
had not seen much of his work offers to feed him.
until about a year ago, and Or at least that is my guess on the evidence of his draw-
have since grown to admire it. ings. They suggest that he is that very rare thing—a
In the same way I admire
Daumier. Beyond this and in natural satirical draughtsman. Gillray was one, Row-
a more general way I receive landson wasn't. George Grosz was one, but Low wasn't.
most stimulation from Goya, The supreme examples are Goya and Daumier.
Grunwald and Bosch.'
Such artists are not illustrators of ideas, however bril-
GERALD SCARFE
liant. They are only occasionally witty. What is essential
to them is that they draw faithfully—and with pain—the
ghosts that crowd in upon them. There is nothing im-
provised about their work, and the stylization of the
drawing, however extreme, is never self-conscious, be-
cause they draw what they see.
The ghosts have real faces and sharp social, contem-
porary relevance. They are the ghosts of the unhappy
possibilities of their time. They do not come from the
dead, but from the about-to-be-born. And they are con-
jured up, these ghosts, by the artist's comparative inno-