Page 52 - Studio International - February 1969

standards erupted across the flesh as open rodent sniffing the wind, looks like a dis- and the tabloid dailies.
sores. Readers' reactions were inevitably jointed skeleton that has been lying in the Scarfe has arrived. Time takes him to New
strong. Scarfe departed the popular scene. desert sand since the war. (It is these which York to follow Presidential candidates from
He had, however, been recognized as an ori- are currently exhibited at the GROSVENOR.) whistle-stop to whistle-stop, the Sunday Times
ginal and highly gifted artist which, like all The Daumier connexion is immediately ob- continues to give him freedom from Vietnam
comedians aspiring to play Hamlet, all car- vious, and if Scarfe believes in anything, then to Westminster, and every now and again he
toonists secretly believe they are. John Berger it is in the greatness of this artist who also has his one-man shows in the general area of
(no less) wrote a glowing piece for the Observer broke through the iron-bound categories Bond Street.
which they refused to print and which later which say that a cartoonist can't be an artist. Since the days when he could only preach to
appeared in Studio, and other critics began Daumier could put across the whole range of the converted and shock everyone else, the
mentioning Scarfe in the same hushed tones human emotions, from tenderness to savage climate has changed. Looking back on his old
as Bosch and Bacon. hate, and Scarfe admits to being a little wor- drawings he finds it difficult to believe that
Although Scarfe continues to let his figures ried by his critics who accuse him of being they really shocked, that he was worried about
fart and blast their way across prominent brilliant at the disgusting bits but incapable putting in nipples or a wisp of pubic hair.
spreads in the Sunday Times, his range has of anything generous or polite. Satan always What once could only appear in Private Eye
widened. He now exhibits in galleries and gets the best lines, the critics go on, because now graces the tables of Sunday Times readers
although his drawings are never for sale (for the goodness of Adam needs a genius to put it in Cheltenham and even the arch-conservative
deeply personal reasons, although he claims into words. Time believes that a Scarfe on the cover is
it is because they are not good enough) a It does seem that Scarfe treats unimportant good for circulation. The figure of Governor
recent show in New York was enthusiastically people like Jean Shrimpton and Mick Jagger Rockefeller sold at the New York exhibition
acclaimed. with as much loathing as he does Wilson and was bought by Governor Rockefeller. It's not
What he did sell there were papier mache LBJ, but it's not because his style forces him that Scarfe's subjects have suddenly become
figures, three-dimensional free-standing cari- to see everyone the same way. Portraits of masochists. In a permissive society you can't
catures which are painted and clothed. Inside Muggeridge are almost sentimentally affec- shock theatre audiences by taking off all your
of the door of his studio David Frost grins tionate. What worries Scarfe is people with clothes, nor can you give matinee customers
lewdly with several inches of tombstone teeth power, and when he drew an emaciated traumas by stoning babies to death on the
and a pregnant Pope holds up a hand in a Shrimpton on the cross, he was trying to say stage. It may be that in the next few years to
gesture of blessing while grasping a packet of something about the influence she was exert- depict your subjects warts and all will be taken
pills. General Montgomery, head alert like a ing on taste, about her sanctification by Vogue to be a sign of affection. FRANK WHITFORD

3
Gerald Scarfe, lithographed poster
Grosvenor Gallery
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Gerald Scarfe working on a papier mache sculpture