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Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Ronald Searle

All Acting Regiment

16:25 / 26.02.06

Having watched a TV program on him, this is kind of an open thread on Ronald Searle, cartoonist and survivor of the Japanese prisoner of war camps. Who likes him, what do you think?

What shocked me was to see the violence in his St Trinians cartoons compared to his observational drawings from the camps- having not known he'd been interred there it was quite troubling.

02:11 / 27.02.06

Have you got a good reference we can look at?

All Acting Regiment

05:07 / 27.02.06

21:31 / 27.02.06

Was that programme on BBC4? If so I saw that and thought it was incredibly interesting. His drawings of the camps were incredible, and even more so when you consider that being found with them would have meant execution.
I did find the guy who turned out carbon copies of Searle's work rather strange, though there was no denying he knew his stuff.
Considering Searle's popularity it seems odd that he has been almost completely forgotten. I'd love to see a gallery do a retrospective on him. Perhaps the new Museum of Cartooning in London?

All Acting Regiment

01:01 / 28.02.06

I think the guy copying out the cartoons was a cartoonist, and he was just showing how Searle might have worked.

00:22 / 01.03.06

His work on Molesworth was utter genius, and somehow looked like doodles on jotters instead of pain-staking illustration (which it was, clot)