Australian-American political cartoonist
Patrick Bruce "Pat" Oliphant (born 24 July 1935) is an Australian-born American artist whose career spanned more than sixty years. His body of work primarily focuses on American and global politics, culture, and corruption; he is particularly known for his caricatures of American presidents and other powerful leaders. Over the course of his long career, Oliphant produced thousands of daily editorial cartoons, dozens of bronze sculptures, and a large oeuvre of drawings and paintings. He retired in 2015.
Early life and education.
Oliphant was born on 24 July 1935, in Maylands, a suburb of Adelaide, Australia, to Donald Knox Oliphant and Grace Lillian Oliphant (née Price) of Rosslyn Park. He was raised in a small cabin in Aldgate, in the Adelaide Hills. His father worked as a draftsman for the government, and Oliphant credited him with sparking his interest in drawing. His early education took place in a one-room schoolhouse, followed by Unley High School.
Career.
In 1952, while still a teenager, Oliphant began his career in journalism as a copy boy at Adelaide's evening tabloid newspaper, "The News", which had recently been inherited by Rupert Murdoch. He had no interest in attending college, as he had an ambivalent relationship with formal education and already knew he wanted to be a journalist. In 1955, he moved to "The News"' rival, "The Advertiser", a morning broadsheet with 200,000 subscribers.
Before long, editors noticed his interest in drawing, and he began producing both cartoons and illustrations. However, the paper's conservative editorial policies frustrated him, and after frequent vetoes of his commentaries on Australian politics, he learned that cartoons on international affairs were less likely to be censored. During this period, he found inspiration in the work of English cartoonist Ronald Searle, Western Australian cartoonist Paul Rigby, and the political commentary in "Mad" magazine, which he described as a "shot in the arm."
"The Denver Post".
In 1959, Oliphant traveled to the United States and Great Britain to learn about cartooning in those countries. He decided he wanted to move to the United States, but he had to wait five years until his contract with "The Advertiser" expired. In 1964, while preparing to move without a job, he learned that cartoonist Paul Conrad was leaving the "Denver Post". Oliphant sent a portfolio of work to the "Post" and was hired over 50 American applicants. He moved to the United States with his wife, Hendrika DeVries, and their two children. The "Post" featured a small snippet of Oliphant's cartoon on the front page as a "teaser" for what would be found on the editorial page.
Announcing his arrival, "Time" magazine stated, "Few U.S. cartoonists have so deftly distilled the spirit of [Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater] as Australia's Patrick Bruce Oliphant, 29, a recent arrival who has not yet set eyes on either Johnson or Goldwater." Less than a year after Oliphant began working at the "Denver Post", in April 1965, his work was syndicated internationally by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. Oliphant's reputation grew rapidly, and in 1967, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning for his 1 February 1966 cartoon "They Won't Get Us To The Conference Table... Will They?" In this cartoon, Ho Chi Minh is depicted carrying the body of a dead Vietnamese man in the posture of a "Pietà". Oliphant had intentionally submitted what he considered one of the weakest cartoons he had published that year. When it won, he criticized the Pulitzer board, stating that they had selected the cartoon for its subject matter rather than the quality of the work. He refused to be considered for the award again and became a regular critic of the Pulitzer.
According to Ralph Steadman, Oliphant would have been Hunter S. Thompson's "first choice of a 'cartoonist collaborator.'"
"The Washington Star".
In 1975, Oliphant moved to "The Washington Star", attracted by editor Jim Bellows. In 1980, he switched syndication companies, joining Universal Press Syndicate. The "Star" ceased publication in 1981.
Independent work.
After "The Washington Star" folded, Oliphant received offers from other newspapers but chose to remain independent, relying on the earnings from his extensive syndication. He was the first political cartoonist in the twentieth century to work independently from a home newspaper, which provided him with unique independence from editorial control. By this time, he had become a nationally recognized figure. In 1976, a survey of 188 cartoonists found that fellow professionals regarded Oliphant as the "best all-around cartoonist" on the editorial pages. A decade later, a similar survey reached the same conclusion, noting Oliphant's original and influential aesthetic. By 1983, Oliphant was the most widely syndicated American political cartoonist, with his work appearing in more than 500 newspapers. His work influenced the field's overall appearance. For example, when he stopped using Duoshade, a chemical process for creating textured backgrounds, in the early 1980s, other cartoonists followed suit. In 1990, "The New York Times" described him as "the most influential editorial cartoonist now working."
In 1979, Oliphant was naturalized as an American citizen. In 1983, he married his second wife, Mary Ann Kuhn, but they divorced in 1994. He married Susan C. Conway in 1996, and they remain married today.
By 1995, Oliphant had reduced the frequency of his daily cartoons to four days a week. At this time, he began submitting his cartoons in digital form as scans of his original drawings. By 2014, he was submitting three cartoons a week.
In 2004, Oliphant moved from Washington, D.C. to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In 2012, Oliphant was the Roy Lichtenstein Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome for three months.
In January 2015, Oliphant retired from publishing syndicated cartoons. However, in February 2017, he came out of retirement with two cartoons for "The Nib" featuring Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. One cartoon depicted Trump as a childlike member of the Hitler Youth, asking a ghoulish Bannon what he thought of his outfit.
Style.
Oliphant's earliest cartoons in Australia often mimicked the style of his elders, but his mature style is easily identifiable and distinctive. His caricatured subjects are immediately recognizable and are made "grotesque" through "extreme distortion." He is recognized for his skilled drafting, and for his innovative use of the horizontal format in editorial cartoons. As Rick Marschall noted in 1999, "Oliphant offered a style totally his own and revolutionary in the field. The Oliphant look—long-faced characters, sparse use of icons and labels, arresting 'camera angles'—still dominates the field, at least in the minds of cartoonists who aspire to Oliphant's unflagging brilliance." Curator Harry Katz has called him "one of history's finest comic artists."
Oliphant has specialized in caricaturing American presidents, and multiple exhibitions have featured his work organized by presidential administration. He developed specific tropes for various presidents: His dark, brooding Nixon is sometimes depicted naked and ashamed, covering his privates like Adam and Eve, and at other times making the "Victory" sign. Oliphant regularly portrayed the accident-prone Gerald Ford with a bandage on his forehead. His fondness for Ronald Reagan did not prevent him from portraying the president as an oblivious buffoon in a parody of one of his films. George H. W. Bush sometimes appears clutching a handbag and at other times is swathed in cloth as "Bush of Arabia." During the Clinton administration, Oliphant regularly used Socks the cat and Buddy the dog as a sort of "Greek chorus" to comment on the events. He famously portrayed Barack Obama as an Easter Island head worshiped by voters. Oliphant found that it took time to find the right look for a new president, noting, "I hate changes of Administrations. It takes six months to 'get' a new man."
"Punk".
Early in his career, Oliphant began to include a small penguin in almost every one of his political cartoons. This character, which he named Punk, joined a tradition of such secondary figures, termed "dingbats" by cartoonist R. C. Harvey. These figures appear in the work of earlier cartoonists such as Fred O. Seibel of the "Richmond Times-Dispatch", whose cartoons featured a small, ironic crow, and earlier by W.K. (William Keevil) Patrick of the "New Orleans Times-Democrat" and later "Times-Picayune", who had a signature duck character. Punk was inspired by a penguin brought back by a colleague from South Australia's south coast, who delivered the penguin to the zoo. Oliphant decided to include a penguin in his cartoon as a result. Initially, Punk was depicted as an easily identifiable Adelie penguin, but he soon became stylized and remained so throughout Oliphant's career. Punk adds a layer of commentary to the subject of the cartoon, and is often placed in conversation with another tiny figure. Punk proved popular with both adults and children, who enjoyed the game of finding him in each cartoon. In 1984, Oliphant briefly drew a full-color comic strip featuring Punk for the Sunday funnies, titled "Sunday Punk", but found the work too laborious and soon discontinued the strip.
Oliphant originally created Punk as a space for subversion in the conservative editorial environment of the "Adelaide Advertiser". Punk provided a platform for Oliphant's own opinions, while the overall cartoon needed to align with the views of the paper's editors. Punk's perspective varies from cartoon to cartoon: sometimes bemused, sometimes ironic, and sometimes trenchant, and does not always represent Oliphant's personal viewpoint.
Courting controversy.
Oliphant's cartoons are rarely warm towards their subjects. He has often stated that his job is to criticize, and he deliberately avoids getting to know his subjects for fear of liking them. He intentionally courts backlash, saying in Rolling Stone in 1976, "This really isn't a business ... it's a cause. I'm an outcast because of it. A writer can’t really say, 'This man's an idiot,' because the law holds him back. We can say it."
Oliphant has often remarked on his intention to draw criticism from all political perspectives and has indeed received strong criticism from ethnic and religious groups for some of his cartoons. In 2001, the Asian American Journalists Association accused Oliphant of "cross[ing] the line from acerbic depiction to racial caricature."
In 2005, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee expressed concern that some of Oliphant's caricatures were racist and misleading. In 2007, two Oliphant cartoons produced similar responses. One cartoon about Israel's December 2008 offensive against Hamas in Gaza sparked criticism among some American Jews. The cartoon featured a jackbooted, headless figure representing Israel in a goosestepping posture, looming over a small female figure holding a baby labeled "Gaza." The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center said the cartoon denigrated and demonized Israel and mimicked Nazi propaganda. It called on the "New York Times" and other media outlets to remove the cartoon from their websites.
A 2005 cartoon showing Condoleezza Rice as a parrot perched on George W. Bush's shoulder was criticized by some readers for depicting her with buck teeth and exaggerated lips.
Oliphant's cartoons featuring Catholic scandals have also been controversial. The Catholic League has called him "one of the most viciously anti-Catholic editorial cartoonists ever to have disgraced the pages of American newspapers." On Christmas Eve 1993, Catholic readers were angered by a cartoon associating Michael Jackson and priests with child molestation. One of his most famous cartoons, "Celebration of Spring at St. Pedophilia's – the Annual Running of the Altar Boys," sparked nationwide debates in print, radio, and television when it was published on 20 March 2002. The New York Times and Washington Post, as well as other papers, chose not to include the cartoon online, while some did not run it at all.
In 1987, Oliphant protested the selection of Berkeley Breathed for the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. Oliphant's concern was that Breathed's work "has, so far as I know, not appeared on one editorial page in the country." Addressing the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention to hearty applause, Oliphant represented the views of many of his colleagues: that the seriousness of editorial cartooning as a journalistic pursuit was at risk and that the Pulitzer was encouraging the valuing of humor over political statement.
Non-newspaper drawings.
Newspaper editorial cartoons were not Oliphant's only genre. In his early days in Australia, he produced a wide variety of newspaper illustrations. Later in his career, he created illustrations for numerous books, and his work, often in full color, was featured in the pages and on the covers of many magazines. For a time, he drew cartoons for Rolling Stone; this body of work was intended for a different audience than his