Cartoon Museum and Cartoony Menus

We started our Wednesday with a visit to the Cartoon Museum. There was an exhibit called "The Inking Woman" on female cartoonists that we were excited to see, but it turned out that it had ended a few days ago. We were disappointed, but fortunately they had a booklet on the exhibit for sale in the gift shop.

There were two current exhibits: one on the history of daily newspaper comics, and one on caricature and satire. The "Daily Funnies" exhibit included classics we were familiar with, such as Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy, Beetle Bailey, and Doonesbury. In addition, there were a lot of strips featured that we hadn't heard of before (no photos in the museum, so I've found examples from online that weren't necessarily the samples displayed in the exhibit):

Polly and her Pals, Cliff Sterrett (click here for a larger image):

"'Polly' ran from 1912 until 1958. It is regarded as one of the most graphically innovative strips of the 20th century. Originally called Positive Polly, the star of the strip was a pretty young girl, a flirtatious child whose liberated attitude to life looked forward to the Jazz age. It was the first of a number of strips about flirty, pretty young girls. Over time, the focus moved from Polly to those around her, and the title changed to Polly and her Pals--though the 'pals' were in fact members of her family."

The Perishers, Dennis Collins, written by Maurice Dodd (the dynamic of the characters reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes):

"The strip is about a group of urban children who live in the dull fictional town of Croynge (sometimes Crunge), which seemed to be located somewhere in South London. The main character, Wellington, a somewhat philosophical soul, is a homeless orphan who lives with his dog called Boot in a builder's yard. The strip ran for nearly fifty years, from 1959 to 2006.

Doris, Ros Asquith:

"Asquith says: 'Doris cleaned for the chattering classes but never spoke herself. To me, she represented a figure in all of our lives: that of the barely visible worker, mother, grandmother, aunt, undervalued by society whose wheels she is oiling. Doris endured many insults, but perhaps her highest praise came from a reformed convict who told me: "I love Doris. My mother was a cleaner. I used to sit in the corner while she tied little Tarquin and Amanda's nursery. I couldn't wait to grow up and rob the lot of them." Doris appeared in the Weekend Guardian from 1988 to 1998.

Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel (I knew she was a cartoonist but didn't realize she had a comic strip):

"Alison Bechdel began drawing the strip Dykes to Watch Out For in 1983 when it first appeared in Womenews...Its take on the world, political and personal, gay and general, is highly regarded. Its cast of characters include Raffi, finance director of a charity who lives with her partner and their son, and Mo, who works at 'Bounders Books-N-Muzak' while training to be a librarian. The strip has won several awards, and has become a touchstone for both political cartoon strip artists as well as many in the gay community in the US and the UK."

And Simon's Cat, Simon Tofield, which began as "a short line drawn animation by Simon Tofield put out on Youtube. It attracted such a following that Simon's Cat was soon appearing in a variety of merchandise and in a cartoon strip":

Below are some highlights from the satire/caricature exhibit (although a lot of the things I took note of were not available online):

"Careless Talk Costs Lives" poster, Fougasse [Kenneth Bird]

"This is one of a series of six posters which Fougasse produced during WWII to aid the propaganda war. It reminded people to guard against 'careless talk' and avoid inadvertently passing on information which might be overheard by foreign spies. It is estimated that over two million of these posters were pinned up in tea shops, waiting rooms, and other public spaces."
We enjoyed the absurdity of a dozen Hitlers peaking out from behind a phone box.

Gerald Scarfe, "Prince Charles," c.1969
"Gerald Scarfe's skill as a caricaturist made him one of the most noteworthy artists of the 1960s and 70s. This lithography depicts Prince Charles around the time of his investiture as Prince of Wales in 1969."
The dragon is saying, "There'll be a welcome in the hillside for you alright Boyo!"

We encountered Ronald Searle's take on The Rake's Progress, which was a nice link to William Hogarth's series from the Picture Room of Sir John Sloane's Museum. In 1954, the editor of Punch commissioned from Searle a series of sixteen modern versions of A Rake's Progress (several of them can be found online).

We also learned about Antonia Yeoman, who went by "Anton." From the 1940s to the 60s, she was one of the few women cartoonists to appear in all the top magazines, including The Tatler, the New Yorker, Private Eye, and Punch. The comic strip of hers that was displayed featured a very pretty woman doing a provocative dance with large feathers in a restaurant, with one male customer off to the side angrily complaining to his waiter, "Waiter, there's a feather in my soup!"

There were several cartoons that took on current events:

Christian Adams, "In/Out," 23 June 2016
"The United Kingdom is at a crossroads. A colour version of this cartoon was published on the UK's big day of decision: 23 June 2016, when 33.6 million people voted in a referendum of Britain's membership of the European Union.
You know what happened."

Peter Brookes, "US Supreme Court Nominee..." The Times, 1 February 2017
"On 31 January President Donald Trump announced his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacant seat on the US Supreme Court. For eleven months the Republican Senate had blocked Barack Obama's attempts to nominate a replacement. Though Gorsuch is respected for his intellect he is expected to face filibusters from the Democrats who question his support for big business over worker's rights, opposition to abortion, and support for capital punishment."
Apparently they didn't feel the need to update this description after Gorsuch was confirmed.

Dave Brown, cover of Independent, 8 January 2015
"On 7 January 2015, two gunmen forced their way into the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Armed with assault rifles and other weapons, they killed 11 people and injured 11 others in the building. They also killed a police officer outside the building. The gunmen identified themselves as belonging to the Islamist terrorist group Al-Quaeda. A further five were killed and 11 wounded in related attacks."

The Cartoon Museum is really delightful; it has an almost homemade feel to its exhibits.

That afternoon we saw a matinee performance of Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour. Based on Alan Warner's 1998 novel The Sopranos, it follows a group of six Catholic school girls on a trip to Edinburgh for a choir competition. This is the warning that's posted as you enter the theater:

The man that sold Jon the tickets also warned him about "Thick Scottish accents."

The six actors also play all of the other roles in the play (many of those characters are gross dudes that they encounter in bars and clubs). There are no costume changes to distinguish the characters; they're all impressively done entirely through vocal and physicality choices.

The girls have many adventures throughout the day, and you learn about the different issues they're each dealing with, such as illness or unplanned pregnancy. It's also a musical--half the songs are the angelic melodies they sing as a choir, including Bartok, Bach, and Mendelssohn, and the other half are ELO songs. It was cool to hear these two contrasting music styles alongside each other, and the cast was equally adept at both genres. The story was funny and heartwarming, and it was also just awesome to watch an all-female cast for once (the three-piece band is also all women). We certainly didn't catch all of the dialogue through the Scottish accents, but for the most part it was easy enough to understand.

That night we had dinner at Savoir Faire, which was a favorite of ours from our 2015 trip. It's such a weird little place; the food is delicious, but you might not guess that by glancing at the menu because it looks like this:

Comic Sans font!

1990s Word Art!

The walls are decorated with a mural--the man at the top pouring the drink down into the lady's glass presented an interesting parallel with Chris Ofili's cocktail waiter in the sky in The Caged Bird's Song!

I asked Jon to duck down so I could get a photo of the walls. He still wanted to be in the picture.

And then there is a smattering of humorous (albeit kind of trite) quotes written on the ceiling:

"To err is human, to blame it on someone else, shows management potential."

Jon had the smoked salmon and beef bourguignon, and I had the goat cheese and pork fillet--all of it was excellent!

Today is our last full day in London. Tonight we're having a late dinner at Clos Maggiore, which was voted the most romantic restaurant in London! 😘

xo
Hannah