Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Pat Oliphant poised his hand briefly over the blank sheet, fingers dexterous with the ink they held. The hand descended, and an image whimsically sprouted: a smudge here, several strokes there and Sarah Palin’s grinning face materialized. A few more swipes produced a huge moose looming behind her. The audience guffawed and applauded simultaneously.
The camera trained upon Oliphant’s drawing sheet allowed the packed room of onlookers to watch every flick of the artist’s wrist on a large viewing screen. Seeing Oliphant draw was essential to this event — “A Conversation with Pat Oliphant” — because Oliphant’s dialogue takes place as much on paper as it does in speech.
The world-renowned cartoonist held two such conversations during his visit last week to the University: one Thursday at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, and the other Friday at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. In both locations, audience members filled the rooms and spilled out into the adjacent lobby. At the Miller Center, George Gilliam, assistant director for public programs and Forum Program chair, directed the conversation with Oliphant; at the Special Collections Library, painter William Dunlap and satirist P.J. O’Rourke led the discussion.
Oliphant’s visit kicked off the opening of an exhibit at the University of Virginia Art Museum called “Leadership: Oliphant Cartoons and Sculpture from the Bush Years.” The show features roughly 100 of Oliphant’s satirical drawings, caricatures and sculptures. Alongside his work stands “With the Line of Daumier,” an exhibition of lithographs, paintings and drawings by the 19th-century French artist whom Oliphant cites as one of his heaviest influences.
Oliphant has been drawing since the 1950s, and his cartoons — now the most widely syndicated in the world — have won him not only a Pulitzer but numerous other journalism awards. The New York Times has labeled him “the most influential cartoonist now working.”
His now-famous drawings, however, began on the other side of the world.
Oliphant is an American, but not by birth. He was born and raised in Adelaide, Australia, which he called “a pleasant-enough place to be.”
After school, Oliphant began working as a copyboy for the Adelaide News.
“I’ve always liked to draw [but] I didn’t think you could make a living at it,” he said in an interview.
Eventually, however, staff members noticed his creative talent, and he was hired as the paper’s cartoonist.
Oliphant moved to the United States to further his cartooning career in 1964 — an opportune time for budding political cartoonists, he said.
“Everything was happening: civil rights, Vietnam ... everything was heating up,” Oliphant said. “The country was beautifully polarized.”
Oliphant began working at the Denver Post, and his cartoons proved very successful — in 1967, he won a Pulitzer for editorial cartooning.
Oliphant did not gain such success by staying safely within political and social boundaries, Gilliam noted, saying Oliphant has “walked so close to the line that he got some chalk dust on his shoes.”
Take, for example, the cartoon Oliphant drew several years ago called “Running of the Altar Boys.” Around the time of the running of the bulls in Spain, and in response to charges against Catholic priests of child molestation, Oliphant drew a stampede of Catholic priests chasing eagerly after frightened, fleeing altar boys.
Another controversial cartoon, “Dominatrix,” appeared during the scandals about prison torture in Iraq. Condoleezza Rice, towering menacingly in a solid black jumpsuit and brandishing a whip, challenges the reader: “The United States doesn’t do torture! Do I make myself clear?”
When Gilliam asked Oliphant how he produces such blazing opinions, Oliphant said it is a cartoonist’s job to express forceful opinions.
“You have to bring yourself to a boil every day,” he said.
In drawing controversial cartoons, Oliphant has encountered criticism from the public and his editors but he said he will not change a cartoon in response to public disapproval.
“If [publishers] don’t want to run [my cartoon],” the choice is theirs, he said.
Fifty years ago that same defiance led Oliphant to create one of his cartoon trademarks: the miniscule penguin “Punk,” who usually offers witty commentary on Oliphant’s drawings from a corner of the cartoon box. Oliphant said he created Punk when he felt stifled by the staff of a conservative newspaper he once worked for.
Punk’s pithy witticisms seem to resemble the ones Oliphant himself peppers real conversation with, and Oliphant acknowledged a bond between himself and the tiny ink figure he created.
When an audience member at the Miller Center questioned him about Punk, Oliphant replied, “I invented him or he invented me. He’s been with me ever since.”
Punk did not make an appearance to University audiences; Oliphant limited his cartooning “conversations” in Charlottesville to quick caricatures of presidents and politicians: Nixon’s brooding, Macbeth-ish glare; Jimmy Carter shadowed by his legendary killer bunny; Blagojevich’s enormous hairdo. Audience members applauded with each drawing he produced.
Wilson McIvor, a Charlottesville resident who attended Friday’s presentation, said he enjoyed watching Oliphant draw.
“I was very impressed with his talent and his ability to capture a character with just a few lines ... and the ability to do that impromptu in front of an audience like this,” McIvor said. “That talent has always amazed me.”
Although McIvor admired Oliphant’s improvised drawings, he said he could not choose a favorite. McIvor said his overall favorite of Oliphant’s cartoons is a recent image depicting former President George W. Bush riding into the sunset with a massive shadow behind him labeled “legacy.”
With a new president comes new fodder for cartooning. When Oliphant began to draw President Obama’s caricature, the crowd fell silent, then broke into laughter when Oliphant said, “thank God for the ears” and drew them enormously out of proportion.
Oliphant said he will miss the Bush presidency because of all the villains it allowed him to draw.
“Now they’re giving me this guy [named Obama] I might like,” he said. “I’ve never liked a president. It’s not my business.”
Read More
Fourth-year Bodo’s orders — creative or catastrophic?
By Lizzy Goldstein | May 18, 2024While this selection of bagels had winners and losers, it is safe to say that the Class of 2024 has taken full advantage of the Bodo’s menu over the years.
The naked party uncovered
By Mia Tan | May 18, 2024The naked party, founded by fourth-year Architecture student Wells Woolcott, is the first of its kind at the University in recent memory.
A second chance to dress for graduation
By Julianne Saunders | May 16, 2024I have learned to see my college graduation not as a way to make up for the past but as an event worth celebrating on its own.
