Martin Rowson, lead editorial cartoonist for The Guardian, will talk about how visual satire works as an intersection between art and politics in a lecture on “Mocking The Preposterous: How to Taunt Tyrants and Survive – A Short Guide to 45,000 years of Visual Satire,” at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino on Thursday, Sept. 15.
Rowson will discuss how visual satire relates to political power in holding it to account and how political power responds, through the law and every other weapon available to it.
The talk will be fully illustrated with examples from cave art onwards, concentrating particularly on 18th century British visual satirists William Hogarth and James Gillray, but also Rowson’s own work and that of his colleagues who work in far less forgiving or tolerant climates than he does.
Note that Rowson’s work sometimes involves explicit imagery that may not be suitable for all audiences.
This talk is part of the conference “Law and New Media” on Sept. 16 to 17, which turns the spotlight on recent thinking about art, legal evidence, media, and history. For more information about the conference, visit www.huntington.org/law-new-media.
Rowson’s lecture, from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at Rothenberg Hall, is free to attend.
For more information, call (626) 405-2100 or visit www.huntington.org/mocking-preposterous?sd=1663295400&ed=1663300800.
Funding for this event is provided by The Dibner History of Science Program at The Huntington.
