Poland 1948

The year after their trip around Yugoslavia Searle and fellow illustrator Paul Hogarth visited Poland to record the post war devastation.

'In August 1948, Searle was traveling across Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland where he and Paul Hogarth, with a small group of sketchers, were sneaked in the Intellectuals’ Congress for World Peace at Wroclaw.'

-ECC

'In the summer of 1948 I arranged a trip to Poland.  Besides Ronald Searle, I invited the art historian, Millicent Rose.  Ronald again displayed incredible versatility in tackling a wide variety of subject matter.  We stayed in Prague en route for several days and drew the picturesque lanes of the Mala Strana below Hradcany Castle.  We visited in succession Warsaw, Gdansk, Cracow, Zakopane and Katowice, ending our stay in Wroclaw'  -Paul Hogarth

'The offer of another trip to Eastern Europe came as a most welcome interruption.  Czechoslovakia and Poland were the destinations this time.  To Searle it was a revelation just to get as far as Nuremberg and form, in the ruins of the city, some idea of the European conflict he had missed.  Czechoslovakia proved frustrating.  Searle did meet the sculptor Franta Belsky there, and made another great friend, but the queues for Polish visas in Prague were impossibly long.  Searle and Hogarth might have spent their whole time waiting had they not met a film-maker called Ludwik Perski - a friend of their common acquaintance, Feliks Topolski - who happened to be shooting some footage inside the Polish Embassy. He inventively proposed to the bureaucrats a flattering scene wherein the visas of some distinguished visiting artists would be stamped; and so Searle made his European film debut in the act of 'being offered a cigarette, being shaken warmly by the hand, and miming the reception of a visa from the hand of the Vice-Consul'.  The real visa came two days later, and Searle and Hogarth continued on their way. . . '    (-Russell Davies)

'. . . they both worked very hard on this journey.  Hogarth had an assignment from Coal magazine, so they went down the mines in Silesia.  They toured Krakow and Gdansk, and witnessed a Warsaw that 'didn't exist'; and they were sneaked in, along with a small army of sketchers, to witness the Intellectuals' Congress at Wroclaw, an event attended by an odd troupe of international talents, from Picasso to Ehrenburg, Fadeyev to A.J.P.Taylor.   Since the Soviet Union was at that moment breaking off relations with the United States over an extradition matter, the proceedings were more notable for controversy than enlightenment, but the sensation of standing on a political and philosophical borderline was exciting.  Searle returned to England feeling that the journey had been the most important thing to happen to him intellectually since his imprisonment, an experience he could now place in a fuller cultural context.  Having visited Auschwitz and seen what intelligent, cultured members of the European tradition were capable of, he came to distinguish in his own mind between excusable and inexcusable barbarity.  'Scientific elimination,' he decided, 'is quite different from someone beating a thousand people to death because they can't communicate.  It's not the same attitude.  And so the preference was there: I'd rather have Japanese fascists than Nazis.'   (-Russell Davies)

'The extent of the destruction in Poland stunned us.  In Warsaw, the Old Town's once-exquisite churches and grandiose palaces - indeed, any buildings of distinction - lay in ruins.  Yet Ronald executed a series of dramatic scenes drawn on the spot in his famous 'ink', which wasn't ink at all but Stephen's Liquid Stain!  He may have sounded like the British actor, David Niven, but ih his company I witnessed at first hand the degree of creative interpretation that only the artist can bring to pictorial reporting. '  -Paul Hogarth

'You and Ronald Searle went to Poland in 1948 and were astounded by the extent of the destruction. At the Congress of Intellectuals for Peace, you drew luminaries ‘making fools of themselves by siding with the Soviets against the Americans’ – as you put it. Did you write that with hindsight or had disillusionment with Communism begun even then?


That’s hindsight. What I did see and what I remember feeling was that these people who were communists has so much vanity, the same amount of vanity and egotism as anybody else, and that was quite a revelation.

You speak of Searle with admiration as by far the superior craftsman, and you hoped that travel would bring out the artist in you. You say at one point: ‘Like a Christian pilgrim of old, i sought spiritual adventure.’ Can you explain what you meant by ‘spiritual’ in that context?

I tried to find things that would move me. I tried to find issues that I could draw, and dramatize, but it wasn’t until I went to Greece during the general’s regime that I found a theme which I could interpret – the scenes of suffering outside the prisons in Athens, the political prisoners, and the lines of women carrying food parcels.  Communists had done terrible things in Greece, but the generals were also very harsh and I only saw that one side. Experience of life, that’s what I was seeking, so that I could develop as an artist.'

Interview with Hogarth

'At Janov, near Katowice, we entered the grimy world of the Silesian coalfield, where fiercely mustached miners hacked and shoveled in almost total darkness.  The air was thick with coal dust and the temperature well above 80°F.'

-Paul Hogarth

View of Wieczack Mine, near Silesia, Poland 

Searle told me they didn't quite get to meet their idol Picasso although Feliks Topolski was able to get close enough to dash out some sketches of the artist.

Happy New Year 2013!

Welcome to 2013 folks!  As a special New Year treat for all you Searle fans I'll post one month a day from Searle's 1960 calendar . . .

Happy Holidays!

This lovely Christmas card must've been the inspiration for the Puffin Songbook or vice versa.

Beastly Books

'Beast Friends Forever' is available from U.S. publishers Overlook Press. I'm assuming it's the American edition of 'Beastly Romances' ?

ROBERT L. FORBES AND RONALD SEARLE (Overlook Duckworth £12.99)

It is one the biggest scandals of our Honours system that Ronald Searle was not knighted. I suppose the bureaucrats in Whitehall thought he was ‘only a cartoonist’. Yet he was on the high shelf with graphic satirists like Hogarth, Gillray and Cruikshank.

Searle was a major artist - a million times superior to Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin or any of those. I am proud to say the cover he did for my book What Am I Still Doing Here? was his final commission. In a typically generous gesture, he gave me the original painting.

As for this particular book, all we are told is that ‘the drawings happily were completed a while ago’. What a delight they are. Flirting elephants, strutting peacocks and blushing peahens, intertwined snakes, a boar serenading a simpering sow.

The drawings are so sunny and romantic - amazing to think that Searle was in his 90s when he died, and had once been a Prisoner of War in Singapore, witnessing and enduring the worst Japanese atrocities. He had every right to be bitter and twisted, but was the opposite. A genius.

Daily Mail

Remembering Ronald Searle pt2

In February 2008 Ronald had agreed to meet me in a couple of months but the Searles' annual visit to Paris for health treatment postponed this to September. I was of course very excited to finally get the opportunity but it also impressed upon me just how frail they may be at this late stage of their lives.

The date in September came around and one Saturday morning (all meetings with Ronald were on Saturdays-he was busy with work during the week) I once again made the not un-pleasurable drive from the Cote d'Azur up to the Var.

I arrived in Tourtour maybe an hour before our scheduled appointment and walked around the village rehearsing what to say to a legend when he opens his front door.  In the event it wasn't Ronald who answered my knock but a French lady who I took to be the Searles' home help.  She led me through to the kitchen in the back.  The walls were modestly adorned with artwork-not too many pieces and not Searles' own.  Just a small collection of historical caricatures by Gillray and Cruickshank.

I stood in the kitchen and waited.  Chez Searle was a warren-like abode, expanded over decades by combining four adjoining properties. Ronald entered the kitchen descending a short flight of steps that dropped from the lounge area at a higher level. He was immaculately dressed, his head of silver hair neatly brushed and sporting his trademark beard, now silver. "Hello Mr Searle" I smiled and as we shook hands I noticed his hands twisted by age, years of drawing and injury sustained as a POW.

We sat together at the kitchen table and started the type of conversation that comes easily between creative types; he knew I was a professional cartoonist and trusted me and indulged my sincere interest in his work and career.  I was surprised that he was interested in my work and was happy to browse my portfolio-he was honest and held little regard for computer created design work!  He much preferred the looser, hand drawn sketchbook work and drawings from life.

Introductions accomplished and aware of the short time frame I steered the conversation to his work-I had prepared questions and had a lot to get through. One hour turned into two and his already rasping voice became hoarse.  As the clock ticked I felt guilty encouraging him to tell more wonderful tales and inevitably he called time saying that his wife Monica was ill upstairs and needed his attention.

I had brought a stack of his books with me that we had examined with my specific questions.  I asked him to sign only one-trying to maintain a professional cartoonist stance and suppress the rabid fan!  (There were instances while we talked where I squealed inside "I'm talking to Ronald Searle!!" but kept it checked knowing I must concentrate on memorising everything he says because I'd have to write it all down later).

As he led me to the front door I told him that I maintain a website dedicated to his artwork and he made a note of the address-I couldn't quite figure out at that point if was online or not.  Being a very private individual and wanting no distraction from his work he was known to be only contactable by fax or written correspondence.  Although he had said he finds dip pen nibs on Ebay.  I would later realize he was entirely connected with the world via the internet.

We waved good bye and I was regretting not being able to get a photo with him-if only to prove to myself that this meeting with a legend had occured.  As I walked away from his house he touchingly said "I'm always here".
I had been living in France two years at that point and left a few months later. I wish that I had met Ronald earlier and been able to visit him more often when I lived 'locally'.  However we continued our old fashioned correspondence by written letter and the day before I left for the UK I received a package from him.  Knowing my interest in animation he had made duplicates of photos of him working on Energetically Yours and a vhs tape of animated spots he made with Ivor Wood. Gold!

The exact details of that first encounter with Ronald Searle can be read here  and here

Part 1 of Remembering Ronald is here

In part 3 I'll write about 'Lunch with the Searles'!

Off Piste

To mark the Thanksgiving holiday and the approaching ski season let's look at the various depictions Searle made over the years of those dedicated to flinging themselves down a mountain slope- an endeavour Searle himself avoided. He was content to observe and record the spindly figures, their poles and skis make perfect spidery  members of the Searle universe.

These colour compositions from the mid 60s are delightful-Searle reduces his linework and the figures approach the more Abstract-Expressionist style of the 'Baron Munchausen' period.

The following are from 'Skiing in Europe' for Travel & Leisure October/November 1971

This is from a later series for an Aspen, Colorado Chamber of Commerce advertisement published in the autumn of 1991 where we see Searle gently ribbing the Aspen ski set.

'Aspen Nights'

 "Sightings (It's Jack!')"

'Powder Skiing'

'On Corkscrew Mountain'
18 x 14" image size on a 19.5 x 15 sheet

'Great Bumps'

'Ski School'

And the inevitable casualties . . .

'I have never taken an interest in skiing.  I am not a skier, and I can imagine nothing more unlike me than slipping down a slope with a board on each foot for the sheer pleasure of it.  The sight of people deliberately setting off for ski resorts for the enjoyment of that sport had previously convinced me that a fair proportion of the population was seriously out of its mind. . . '

'I still feel that I am not entirely wrong, but I have revised my thoughts about the sport from the visual point of view.  I had never seen anyone ski until it was suggested that I make my way to New England, take along a sketchbook and, with it, a slightly less idiotic frame of mind . . .'

'Bruegel has always been one of my favourite artists and he was the last person I had expected to be invoked on that trip.  But he was there, with all his grotesquery,  all his color, all his comicality and all his little people, animating and sporting themselves against crisp landscapes. . .'

'Visually ski slopes have captivated me, and I have decided that there are few things more beautiful than the colourfully packaged human frame silhouetted against the snowslopes- except the sight of a fair share of them falling flat on their colourfully packaged behinds!'

R.S. Vermont Life Magazine 1966

(Thanks to Stephen Nadler for additional info & pics)

When it came to animation projects Searle's favourite collaborator was British animator Ivor Wood. He later became known for stop-motion puppet series such as 'Postman Pat' but was a skilled draughtsman and could mimic the Searle line accurately with multiple animation drawings.  They animated Searle's spindly legged skiers for a French commercial promoting a petroleum company.