Chris Madden Cartoons

A searchable archive for licensing

Carl Andre obituary cartoon

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pollution cartoon
Karl Andre obituary cartoon - minimalism

Carl Andre obituary cartoon.

The minimalist artist Carl Andre, who died on 24th January 2024, became famous for his work composed of arrangements of bricks and similar construction materials.

Andre became famous in Britain when the Tate Gallery purchased one of his minimalist grids of bricks titled Equivalent VIII. The bricks became known popularly as The Tate Bricks.
Drawn: 25th January 2024
Cartoon reference number: a960

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Banksy cartoon

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Banksy cartoon
Banksy cartoon

Banksy cartoon.

A cartoon featuring a queue for a Banksy exhibition, one of whom is a girl who features in several of Banksy’s stencil artworks (In the cartoon the girl is also a stencil on the wall).

The cartoon was created at the time of the Banksy exhibition in the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) in Glasgow, 2023.
Drawn: July 2023
First published: The Critic magazine. July 2023
Cartoon reference number: a958b

Banksy cartoon

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Banksy cartoon
Banksy cartoon

Banksy cartoon.

A cartoon showing a queue for a Banksy exhibition. One of the people in the queue is a girl who features in several of Banksy’s stencil works (In the cartoon she is actually a stencil herself, on the wall in the cartoon).

The cartoon was drawn at the time of the Banksy exhibition in Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), summer 2023.
Drawn: July 2023
First published (colour version): The Critic magazine. July 2023
Cartoon reference number: a958

Banksy exhibition

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Banksy exhibition Just Stop Oil protest - cartoon

Banksy exhibition disrupted by Just Stop Oil protester – cartoon.

The cartoon shows a Just Stop Oil protester disrupting the Banksy exhibition in the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Glasgow.

The Banksy exhibition is titled Cut and Run. 18 June – 28 Aug 2023.
Drawn: July 2023
Cartoon reference number: a949

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Tate Modern and the luxury apartment windows row.

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Tate Modern and the luxury apartment windows - cartoon

Tate Modern and the NEO Bankside apartment windows.

Tate Modern in London has been fighting a planning battle with NEO Bankside, a block of nearby luxury flats, concerning the fact that an observation gallery at Tate Modern overlooks the flats.

The owners of the NEO Bankside apartments claim that the view from the observation gallery affects their privacy – even though the flats were designed with huge ceiling to floor windows.
Drawn: 7th February 2023
First published: Private Eye, February 2023
Cartoon reference number: a943

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Art gallery repatriation cartoon

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Museum repatriation cartoon

A cartoon about repatriation and reparation by art galleries and museums.

A cartoon concerning the return of works and items from the collections of museums and art galleries that are now judged by some to have been obtained by inappropriate means.

The cartoon is about the fact that the definition of ‘inappropriate means’ can be widened until it encompasses almost all transactions.
Currently it is chiefly applied to works that fall into the decolonisation category.
Drawn: 24th December 2022
Cartoon reference number: a939

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Decolonisation and repatriation of museum collections

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museum repatriation cartoon

A cartoon about the move to repatriate items from museum collections.

Cartoon about the growing demands for museums to reassess their collections in the light of issues around decolonisation, racism and other social justice tenets.
The cartoon specifically highlights the concept of guilt as directed towards museums and other cultural institutions in the West due to the perceived unique nature of the West’s history of imperialism and colonisation.
Here in the Uk the phenomenon can be observed inn the debates concerning the Elgin Marbles and Benin Bronzes in the British Museum and in the overall philosophy of the curators of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

Drawn: 4th December 2022
Cartoon reference number: a936

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Return the Elgin Marbles – cartoon

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Return the Elgin Marbles (Parthenon Sculptures) cartoon

A cartoon about the campaign to return the Elgin Marbles, or Parthenon Sculptures, to Greece.

It’s argued that the Elgin Marbles or Parthenon Sculptures should be returned to Greece because of the much debated manner in which they were removed from Greece by Lord Elgin.

This cartoon points out that the Parthenon sculptures were created in the first place by a civilisation that was heavily reliant on slaves.
In the current political climate there have been many statues linked to slavery that have been pulled down.
The comment about returning the sculptures to the bottom of the Aegean is a reference to the throwing of a statue of Sir Edward Colton in to the sea in Bristol here in the UK
Drawn: 8th January 2023
Cartoon reference number: a934

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Art gallery self-censorship

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Art gallery self-censorship cartoon

A cartoon showing an art gallery removing ‘inappropriate’ art from its displays.

The cartoon comments on the way that in recent years art galleries have started to display works on an ever decreasing number of subjects and by an increasingly narrow range of types of artist (although in the past there were definitely too many works created by other types of artist).

The currently preferred themes for works are those associated with the social justice, or woke, movement – predominantly race, slavery, gender and sexuality.
The cartoon depicts the way in which artworks that are interpreted as going against the ethos of the social justice movement are being removed from galleries.
Drawn: 1st October 2020
Cartoon reference number: a932

Just Stop Oil cartoon

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just stop oil cartoon

A cartoon about the Just Stop Oil campaign.

The cartoon shows a Just Stop Oil protester in an art gallery being removed by a person wearing a ‘Just Stop Just Stop Oil’ T-shirt

The cartoon is a comment on the fact that, despite the worthiness of the cause, some of the campaigners’ chosen modes of protest – such as the throwing of tomato soup over valuable artworks in art galleries – can have an alienating effect on the public.
Drawn: 21st October 2022
Cartoon reference number: a931

Child drawing – art education cartoon

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children's drawings cartoon

Art education cartoon

A cartoon showing a child drawing.

The child is drawing very well, but the teacher is encouraging her to draw in a more childish way. A cartoon about the holding back of talent.
First version drawn: 2006
Cartoon reference number: a155b

Bowdlerisation cartoon

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bowdlerisation cartoon

Bowdlerisation cartoon

A cartoon about bowdlerisation – the rewriting of text to remove material that is considered offensive or objectionable, especially when directed at children.

Bowdlerisation is named after Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), who published an expurgated edition of Shakespeare.
Cartoon drawn: Jan 2012
Cartoon reference number: a927

‘Is it art?’ cartoon

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is it art cartoon

‘Is it art?’ cartoon

A cartoon about the debate concerning what constitutes or defines art.

The cartoon uses an image that is generally accepted to definitely be art as a way of questioning the question itself.
First version drawn: 2006
Cartoon reference number: a727

Infinite regression in art

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Sculpture cartoon - self portrait in infinite regression

A cartoon showing an artist creating a self portrait.
The self portrait sculpture looks exactly like the artist.
The cartoon is partly about the self-obsession of (some) artists and about the introspection of artists and the self-referential nature of art.

Part of the joke in the cartoon is that not only is the sculptor carving a statue, but the the sculpture (the self portrait) is also working on a self portrait too (that is just protruding into the right hand side of the cartoon).
It is a cartoon about infinite regression, where the artist is creating a self portrait that is creating a self portrait… and so on.

Cartoon reference number: a158c

Filed Under: ART

Frieze contemporary art fair

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Frieze contemporary art fair cartoon

Frieze art fair cartoon

A cartoon about the Frieze contemporary art fair.

Frieze art fairs are held in Los Angeles, New York, Seoul and London (where I live). They display cutting edge contemporary art. Sometimes the visitors are as interesting as the art. I’m a regular visitor myself, but not one of the interesting ones.
Drawn: October 2022
Cartoon reference number: a926

Book of ART CARTOONS

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modern and contemporary art humour and jokes

A book of humour about the visual arts.

Over a hundred cartoons about art

The targets of the cartoons range from artists themselves to the audiences in art galleries, and from art classes to art techniques.
There is humour aimed at contemporary art and at modern art along with humour directed at traditional art.
There are jokes about specific artists such as Picasso, Dali, Magritte, Mondrian and Vermeer and there are jokes about the art market, about art criticism and about art theory.
See my cartoons about art here.
Order it from your local bookshop or buy it through Amazon:

Cartoon – what art is offensive?

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Offensive art cartoon

To what extent should art galleries reflect contemporary concerns?

A cartoon about changing the exhibits in art galleries and museums to reflect contemporary society and to avoid offence.

It’s quite common in art galleries that exhibit contemporary art for the art to reflect contemporary concerns (or at least the contemporary concerns that concern the art world).
This cartoon shows a historical artwork being judged by contemporary mores (or rather, the mores of a particular sector of society that embraces ‘woke’ values).
Drawn: August 2020
Cartoon reference number: a841

Christo cartoon

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Christo

Cartoon about the artist Christo

A cartoon about contemporary artist Christo Javacheff, who died on 31st May 2020.
The cartoon shows a young Christo wrapping sweets.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude (his wife and collaborator) were famous for art installations that involved wrapping things up – usually buildings.

The caption of the cartoon is : Famous Artists in Their Student Days: Christo’s Holiday Job
This version of the cartoon was drawn at the time of Christo’s death. The original version was drawn about twenty years before.
Drawn: 1st June 2020
Cartoon reference number: a779
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Where do artists get their ideas from?

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Where do artists get their ideas from?

Contemporary art concepts cartoon.

A cartoon about a website from which contemporary artists can download concepts for their artworks.
The artwork in the cartoon is a piece of performance art, in which the artist covers himself or herself with ticks which then suck the artists blood – as a metaphor for the exploitative workings of capitalism.

Cartoon drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art108

See my book of cartoons about art here.

Trompe l’oeil cartoon

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Trompe l'oeil cartoon

Trompe l’oeil cartoon

The cartoon shows an artist painting the walls of his studio so that the window looks like a painting on a canvas.
Part of the joke is that as a result, the only ‘real’ thing in the cartoon is the one thing that is meant to look like a painting.
A cartoon about trompe-l’œil and optical illusions, referencing works such as Rene Magritte’s The Human Condition (La condition humaine).

Cartoon drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art105
This cartoon features in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.

Andy Warhol cartoon

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Contemporary art humour - Andy Warhol soup tins cartoon

Andy Warhol cartoon – Campbell’s soup

A cartoon showing one of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup silkscreen prints.
A gallery goer is saying that it was rumoured that Warhol had produced a series of Heinz soup tins too but that Campbell’s had bought them all up and they were never seen again.

Original version drawn: 2006
This version drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art103
This cartoon features in my book of cartoons about art.

Conceptual art cartoon

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Conceptual art cartoon

Conceptual art cartoon – unopened tubes of oil paint.

A tutor, lecturer or gallery guide showing a group of people an artwork in an art gallery.
The work is composed of a box of unopened tubes of paint.
The artist’s concept for the artwork is that the tubes embody the potential for art.
Following a comment by a member of the group the lecturer comments that great art has multiple resolutions. This may be true or it may be a cop out – multiple resolutions in themselves.

Cartoon drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art102
This cartoon features in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.

Sculpture cartoon

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Sculpture cartoon – the human condition

Sculpture cartoon.

Two sculptures of human forms in an art gallery.
One is titled Freedom, the other Trapped.
The Freedom sculpture is of a person in a flight-like dance pose on top of a plinth.
The Trapped sculpture is of a person embedded or enprisoned in the plinth itself.
A cartoon about art about the human condition.

Original version drawn: 2006
This version drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art101
This cartoon features in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.

Finding meaning in art – cartoon

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Finding meaning in art – cartoon

The search for meaning – cartoon.

This cartoon is superficially about finding meaning in art, but it is in fact about deeper issues of the search for meaning in life in general.
People are psychologically geared to seek meaning, purpose and agency in things, including phenomena that may lack all of these qualities. Some aspects of religion are obvious manifestations of this.
The artist in the cartoon is saying ‘My work is about the way that the human mind seeks meaning in the meaningless’.

Cartoon drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art112

See my book of art cartoons here.

An artist’s low income – cartoon

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A poverty stricken artist – cartoon

A poverty stricken artist – cartoon.

A cartoon about the very low income that many artists earn.
Many artists struggle to earn a living from their art.
Becoming an artist is not a good way to become rich (despite the obvious inflated incomes of the superstars of the art world).
The artist in the cartoon at least seems to have an agent or a gallerist who is interested in his work (still no guarantee of a good livelihood though!)

Cartoon drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art111

This cartoon is in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.

Magritte pastiche cartoon

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Magritte pastiche cartoon

Magritte: pastiche of The Treachery of Images.

A cartoon showing a Samsung mobile phone in the style of a Magritte painting, with the words ‘This is not an apple’ written under it. The phone is not an Apple iPhone.
The cartoon is a pastiche of Magritte’s painting The Treachery of Images (La Trahison des images), which is a painting of a pipe with the words ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ (This is not a pipe) written below it.

Original cartoon drawn: 2013
This version drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art110

This cartoon is in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.

Health and safety in the creative arts – cartoon

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Health and safety in the creative arts cartoon

Health and safety in the creative arts cartoon.

A cartoon showing a sculptor (in classical Greece?) at the top of a very precarious ladder carving a gigantic sculpture from a block of stone.
An official from Health and Safety wants a word with him about his working practice.
Health and safety is of course an issue in the creative arts, with issues such as the use of dangerous equipment (such as long ladders, sharp chisels etc) and toxic materials (such as some paints, glues and other chemicals).

Cartoon drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art109

See my book of cartoons about art here.

Cartoon – can art be too pleasant to be any good?

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Art that is too pleasant to be good – cartoon

Is aesthetically pleasing art too superficial?.

A cartoon showing someone being critical of a piece of artwork that he finds ‘too pleasant to be of any great merit’.
This cartoon could be about snobbery and elitism in the art world.

Cartoon drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art100
This cartoon features in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.
How to search for cartoons by subject

Filed Under: ART

Cartoon – contemporary art with a message

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Art with a political message – cartoon

Art with an obscure message.

A cartoon about art that tackles issues and asks questions, but that does so in such oblique ways that the ‘meaning’ of the art is too obscure for the audience to appreciate or understand unless they are highly informed.
I drew this cartoon while thinking about political art. Political art can sometimes be quite obviously didactic with an element of agitprop or propaganda, which some may argue makes it superficial. At the other end of the spectrum it can be so obscure that its meaning is only apparent to the initiated.
The man in this cartoon is either initiated or is posturing in order to impress his companion. I suspect the latter.

Cartoon drawn: 2019

Cartoon reference number: art098
This cartoon features in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.
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Cartoon – art that eats people

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Art that eats people cartoon

Art that eats people.

A cartoon showing an artwork in an art gallery in the form of a human hand that is positioned on the gallery floor so that it gives the appearance of belonging to a person who has sunk into the floor.
An observer of the artwork wants a closer view, so he decides to step across the line on the floor that separates the public from the art.
As a result he sinks into the ground and becomes part of the artwork.

Cartoon drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art094
This cartoon features in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.
How to search for cartoons by subject