"I'm as liberal as the next man" John Glashan 1975
This stuck with me for half a century after it first made me laugh. Look at the way he leans forward to pronounce his authoritative inanity and the rapt (pissed) dinner party guests lapping it up. The faint suggestion "Peter de Wint" turns out to be hilarious (once I'd looked him up).
I thought of this cartoon after the discussion on whether we can separate art from the artist when their lives do not meet some modern standard.
You may think this odd, unconnected with the subject under discussion. However, this was my thought. There are so many levels on which to unpick what this cartoon expresses (part of John Glashan's genius). One is to see it as encapsulating a widespread outlook on art: as a canonised heritage or as "our history" or a series of "great artists".
It is in this context we found ourselves debating whether we should turn away from great art created by people we disapprove of, yet we quickly framed this as being about "cancel culture".
It struck me that generally "cancel culture" is the pejorative term we apply to people criticising artists who are mainstream, successful, vocal and influential. Instead, we should "not expect artists to be political", "separate the art from the person" or "not apply modern morals to historical people". "Statues are being pulled down" becomes a metaphor for wider disrespect for our dominant culture.
We are selective: poor old mild-mannered middle-of-the-road Sheeran, successfully touring and earning, has been "cancelled", without remarking that Macklemore was sacked by the tour sponsors for speaking against genocide and award-winning Israeli film-makers Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham are threatened with loss of citizenship, unlimited fines and death. Outside Bristol, who knew of Edward Colston, until his statue was toppled, daubed and dragged to the harbour? It was "woke gone mad". Yet now the recovered statue is in a museum, prone and disfigured, with a powerful story attached: is that not art?
In our mainstream culture we can deplore how some prominent and voiced people are criticised unfairly for not meeting some moral standard or other, while as for upstart others, "I'm as liberal as the next man, but let's face it, they just went too far."