cartoon

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cartoon [Ital., cartone =paper], either of two types of drawings: in the fine arts, a preliminary sketch for a more complete work; in journalism, a humorous or satirical drawing.

Cartoons in the Fine Arts

In the fine arts, the cartoon is a full-sized preliminary drawing for a work to be executed afterward in fresco, oil, mosaic, stained glass, or tapestry. Glass and mosaic are cut exactly according to the patterns taken from the cartoons, while in tapestry the cartoon is inserted beneath the warp to serve as a guide. In fresco painting, the lines of the cartoon are perforated and transferred to the plaster surface by pouncing (dusting with powder through the perforations). Italian Renaissance painters made very complete cartoons, and such works as Raphael's cartoons for the Sistine Chapel tapestries (Victoria and Albert Mus.) are considered masterpieces.

Cartoons in Journalism

In England in 1843 a series of drawings appeared in Punch magazine that parodied the fresco cartoons submitted in a competition for the decoration of the new Houses of Parliament. In this way cartoon, in journalistic parlance, came to mean any single humorous or satirical drawing employing distortion for emphasis, often accompanied by a caption or a legend. Cartoons, particularly editorial or political cartoons, make use of the elements of caricature .

Political Cartoons

The political cartoon first appeared in 16th-century Germany during the Reformation, the first time such art became an active propaganda weapon with social implications. While many of these cartoons were crudely executed and remarkably vulgar, some, such as Holbein's German Hercules, were excellent drawings produced by the best artists of the time. In 18th-century England the cartoon became an integral and effective part of journalism through the works of Hogarth , Rowlandson , and Gillray , who often used caricature. Daumier , in France, became well known for his virulent satirical cartoons.

By the mid-19th cent. editorial cartoons had become regular features in American newspapers, and were soon followed by sports cartoons and humorous cartoons. The effect of political cartoons on public opinion was amply demonstrated in the elections of 1871 and 1873, when the power of Tammany Hall was broken and Boss Tweed imprisoned largely through the efforts of Thomas Nast and his cartoons for Harper's Weekly. In 1922 the first Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning was won by Rollin Kirby of the New York World. Other noted political cartoonists include John T. McCutcheon , C. D. Batchelor, Jacob Burck, Bill Mauldin , Rube Goldberg , Tom Little, Patrick Oliphant, and Herblock (Herbert Block ).

Humorous Cartoons

Humorous nonpolitical cartoons became popular with the development of the color press, and in 1893 the first color cartoon appeared in the New York World. In 1896 R. F. Outcault originated The Yellow Kid, a large single-panel cartoon with some use of dialogue in balloons, and throughout the 90s humorous cartoons by such artists as T. S. Sullivant, James Swinnerton, Frederick B. Opper, and Edward W. Kemble began to appear regularly in major newspapers and journals. The New Yorker and the Saturday Evening Post were among the most notable American magazines to use outstanding single cartoon drawings.

Single cartoons soon developed into the narrative newspaper comic strip . Nonetheless, the single panel episodic tradition has been retained, and is exemplified by the work of humorists such as Charles Addams , Peter Arno , Saul Steinberg, James Thurber , William Steig, Helen Hokinson, Mary Petty, Whitney Darrow, George Price, Edward Koren, Roz Chast, the Englishmen Rowland Emmett and Ronald Searle, and the French cartoonists André François and Bil.

Bibliography

See studies by D. Low (1953), O. Lancaster (1964); R. E. Shikes, The Indignant Eye (1969); J. Geipel (1972); M. Horn, ed., The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons (1980); A. Wood, Great Cartoonists and Their Art (1987).

cartoon (Italian: cartone, ‘pasteboard’, ‘stiff paper’). A full-size drawing made for the purpose of transferring a design to a painting or tapestry or other (usually large) work. The drawing can represent the whole composition or merely a part of it, such as a single figure. Cartoons were an essential part of the process of making stained glass, and it was perhaps from this art that painters borrowed the idea; they were certainly employed in painting by the late 14th century and by the middle of the 15th century they were used extensively by, for example, Piero della Francesca. The design was transferred either by pressing heavily along the outlines with a pointed metal implement called a stylus or by dusting powdered charcoal through a series of pinpricks—a process called pouncing (see also spolvero). Piero sometimes created mirror-image figures in a painting by pouncing through a cartoon from one side and then turning it over and repeating the process through the other side. The clearest example is in his Madonna del Parto (Madonna of Childbirth) fresco in the cemetery chapel at Monterchi, near Arezzo, in which the two angels flanking the Virgin are in exactly the same poses but reversed left to right relative to one another.

Cartoons were used for easel paintings as well as frescos. A celebrated example is Leonardo's Virgin and Child with St Anne and the Infant St John (NG, London), although a painting was never made from this. For tapestries, cartoons were made in full colour; famous examples are Raphael's series on the Acts of the Apostles (Royal Coll., on loan to V&A, London), made as designs for tapestries woven for the Sistine Chapel.

In 1843 designs submitted in a competition for frescos in the Houses of Parliament in London were parodied in the magazine Punch. From this the word has acquired its most common meaning today—a humorous drawing or parody.

car·toon / kärˈtoōn/ • n. 1. a simple drawing showing the features of its subjects in a humorously exaggerated way, esp. a satirical one in a newspaper or magazine. ∎  a comic strip. ∎ fig. a simplified or exaggerated version or interpretation of something: this movie is a cartoon of rural life in America. 2. a motion picture using animation techniques to photograph a sequence of drawings rather than real people or objects. 3. a full-size drawing made by an artist as a preliminary design for a painting or other work of art. • v. [tr.] (usu. be cartooned) make a drawing of (someone) in a simplified or exaggerated way: she has a face with enough character to be cartooned. DERIVATIVES: car·toon·ish adj. car·toon·ist / -ist/ n. car·toon·y adj.

cartoon. A full-size drawing made for the purpose of transferring a design to a painting or tapestry or other (usually large) work. Cartoons were an essential part of the process of making stained glass, and it was perhaps from this art that painters borrowed the idea; they were certainly employed in painting by the late 14th century and by the middle of the 15th century they were used extensively by, for example, Piero della Francesca. The design was transferred either by pressing heavily along the outlines with a pointed metal implement calleda stylus or by rubbing powdered charcoal through a series of pinpricks—a process called pouncing. In 1843 designs submitted in a competition for frescos in the Houses of Parliament in London were parodied in the magazine Punch. From this the word has acquired its most common meaning today—a humorous drawing or parody.

cartoon (1876–1973) Originally a preparatory drawing. Italian Renaissance painters made very thorough cartoons, such as Raphael for the Sistine Chapel. Its more common, modern usage in reference to a humorous drawing or satirical picture is derived from a 19th-century competition for fresco designs for Parliament parodied in Punch magazine. See also caricature

cartoon drawing made as a design for a painting XVII; illustration in a periodical as a comment on current events XIX. — F. carton — It. cartone, augm. of carta paper, CARD 2; see -OON.

cartoon. Full-size scale drawing on stout paper, for a work in, e.g., stained-glass, mosaic, etc.

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