Modern art

A cartoon about David Hockney and his landscape paintings of the East Yorkshire wolds.

Cartoon. Since his move to Bridlington artist David Hockney has been painting in the East Yorkshire wolds, studying and capturing the changing light and colour through the seasons.
His paintings are to be displayed in a major exhibition of his work, The Bigger Picture, at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, between January and April 2012.
The exhibition includes Hockney’s recent experiments in digital painting on an iPad.
The cartoon shows a series of David Hockney paintings of the same group of trees at different times of the year, spring, summer, autumn, winter, with the differing light and the different appearance of the trees. The final painting shows the trees burnt down due to a fire caused by a discarded cigarette end.
David Hockney is famous for his commitment to the freedom to smoke cigarettes.
The joke is that one day his enthusiastic smoking habit may have a down side (although Hockney would argue that that’s his business, not yours).

A cartoon about David Hockney, cigarettes, smoking bans, freedom to smoke, fag ends, cigarette butts, the tobacco industry.
This cartoon first appeared in Private Eye magazine.

Cartoon drawn: 2012

Cartoon reference number: hoc003

A cartoon about David Hockney and his landscape paintings of the East Yorkshire wolds.

Cartoon. Artist David Hockney’s paintings of the East Yorkshire wolds since his move to Bridlington are amongst his most popular images.
The cartoon shows the East Yorkshire wolds renamed David Hockney country – a common marketing or branding strategy employed by parts of Britain that can be associated with famous artists or writers (Robin Hood country, James Herriot country and Bronte country are other examples).

A cartoon about David Hockney, tourism, tourist branding, popular art, regional identity.

Pablo Picasso cartoon
Modern art cartoon

Pablo Picasso creating a sculpture of a woman’s head (Tete du Femme), while saying to the woman that the work will make her so famous that soon everyone in the world will recognise her when she walks down the street. The typically Picassoesque sculpture is so abstract that the person it is modelled on is unrecognisable in the work

A cartoon about modern art, cubism, cubist art, abstract art, portraiture, sculpture, portrait art, artist’s muse, model.

Cartoon drawn: 2011

Cartoon reference number: art004x

Another version of this cartoon is available:
Pablo Picasso cartoon

Surrealism cartoon
Salvador Dali cartoon

Cartoon based on Salvador Dali; The Persistence of Memory

Salvador Dali floppy watch painting, in which the palette that Dali is using is floppy like the watches in the painting

Cartoon drawn: 2006

Cartoon reference number: dali002

Surrealism cartoon
Salvador Dali cartoon: Lobster Telephone

Cartoon showing surrealist artist Salvador Dali’s Lobster Telephone – and his less well known Shrimp Cell Phone (or in Britain, Shrimp Mobile Phone)

Dali’s Lobster Telephone is also titled Aphrodisiac Telephone
The joke of course is that a shrimp is to a lobster as a cell phone is to a landline phone (especially an old fashioned one as in Dali’s lobster phone)
Just to clarify things – I made the shrimp phone up

Cartoon drawn: 2007

Cartoon reference number: art001x

Contemporary art cartoon heading illustration

An illustration featuring a sculpture of the words contemporary art

In this drawing the words contemporary art are depicted as sculptural letters in the self consciously naive crude artless style of some contemporary art

Good art and bad art cartoon.

The cartoon shows an artist who is not very talented and who produces second rate work.
He thinks his work is really good though.
This could be because he has little insight into his work and is unaware of its low quality.
The other artist is very artistically astute and therefore is very critical of her own work and sees the shortcomings in it, even though it’s very good.

Please note – this cartoon holds attitudes to art that I don’t necessarily hold myself!

Cartoon drawn: 2019

Cartoon reference number: art046

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