Chris Madden Cartoons

A searchable archive for licensing

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.

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.

The art of sculpture – cartoon

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Sculpture already in the stone cartoon

The sculpture is already in the stone, trapped.

A cartoon about the concept sometimes voiced by sculptors, that when they are working with a block of stone or wood the sculpture is already inside the block, and it’s the sculptor’s task to release it.
In the cartoon the sculptor is working on a huge block of stone, maybe marble or granite, which he gradually chips away to reveal the sculpture that is trapped inside it.
The sculpture turns out to be a very small work.

Cartoon drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art091
This cartoon features in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.
How to search for cartoons by subject

Art education cartoon

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Art education cartoon

Artistic validity within the zeitgeist

The cartoon shows an art college student creating an artwork.
The tutor is criticising the work because the student is artistically independent minded and the art she is creating doesn’t adhere to the artistic principles that he or the college believe in.
He is saying “You can’t just go off on some crazy idea of your own.”
It is a cartoon about the fact that the wrong art education can stifle a person’s artistic vision rather than expand and encourage it. It is about the role of art educators.
You may notice that the art that the student is creating is in a style that is currently seen in contemporary art galleries. This means that either the cartoon is set in the past before this type of art was adopted (and thus the student was very much justified in going off in her own direction) or the art college is a bit more conservative than it thinks it is.

Cartoon drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art096
This cartoon features in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.
How to search for cartoons by subject

Masculinity and modern sculpture cartoon

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Modern sculpture cartoon with testosterone

Masculinity in modern sculpture cartoon

A cartoon about modernist sculpture that displays a noticeable masculine bent.
Typical of this type of sculpture is hard-edged welded steel sculpture, as shown in the cartoon.
As is figurative sculpture featuring thrusting muscular males of course.
Sculptures that are a bit on the large size may fit the bill too.
The label on the sculpture in the cartoon informs us that the sculpture is composed of steel, granite and testosterone.

Cartoon drawn: 2019
Cartoon reference number: art081
This cartoon features in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.
How to search for cartoons by subject

Modern art cartoon – pop-up book of modern sculpture

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Modern art cartoon pop-up sculpture

Modern art cartoon – pop-up book of modern sculpture.

The cartoon shows a man in the bookshop of an art gallery opening a book.
The book is a pop-up book of modern sculpture.
The sculpture is unfolding in the manner of a children’s pop-up book.

The cartoon is partly a comment on the gimmicky merchandising of art as found in art gallery gift shops (I quite like some of this merchandise – I have a Mona Lisa tea tray and a bar of chocolate with Munch’s Scream on it amongst others).
It is also a comment on the welcome move away from stuffy elitism that used to make art intimidating and inaccessible to many people.
The sculpture in the cartoon is of the modernist variety that includes constructivism and industrial steel plate sculptures – genres that lend themselves well to the pop-up treatment.

Cartoon drawn: 2019

Cartoon reference number: art075
This cartoon features in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.
How to search for cartoons by subject

Art gallery sculpture cartoon

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Art gallery sculpture cartoon

Sculpture displayed in an art gallery – cartoon.

The cartoon shows a row of busts displayed in an art gallery or museum.
The busts all rest on plinths, as is conventional. However, one of the plinths has feet below it as well as a head above it.

Cartoon drawn: 2019

Cartoon reference number: art074
This cartoon features in my book of cartoons about art.
See the book here.
How to search for cartoons by subject

Museums and art galleries removing art and exhibits due to student grievance – cartoon

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student protest cartoon

A cartoon about hypercritical student attitudes demanding the removal (deaccessioning) of artworks from galleries.

A cartoon about woke culture and the trend for students’ grievances and dissatisfactions to be translated into action, such as in the form no platforming or the demands for statues of out-of-favour people to be removed.

The action is often seen by some as self-righteous, self-indulgent, censorious and intolerant (ironically, as the students often think that they are acting for the greater benefit of others).
The cartoon shows the danger of the students adopting a feeling of over-entitlement and thus taking their attitudes out into the wider world beyond their colleges.
The inspiration for this image was a news story about students disapproving of a sculpture by Henry Moore, and demanding that it wasn’t displayed on their university campus.

The cartoon was drawn in 2016, but it seems even more relevant in 2020 with the woke culture on the ascendency. There are lots of statue removing campaigns going on at the moment (August, 2020) and there’s a bit of a campaign to have a mural by Rex Whistler in Tate Britain removed because a detail of it depicts a black person in chains.
In 2018 a painting, Hylas and the Nymphs by J W Waterhouse, was removed temporarily from Manchester Art Gallery as part of an art event by Sonia Boyce as a comment on what some people view as inappropriate art for the modern age.

Drawn: 2016

Cartoon reference: a734
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