President-Setting Art : Oliphant, Whose Work Is Set for O.C. Show, Wants to Draw Criticism

Pat Oliphant, who has been called the country’s wittiest political cartoonist as well as the most influential, has taken aim at six Presidents during the past quarter-century. All six are represented in a traveling exhibit of his working sketches, finished cartoons, posters and sculptures that opens next week at the Fullerton Museum Center.

“Oliphant’s Presidents: 25 Years of Caricature by Pat Oliphant,” features Richard M. Nixon, shifty-eyed, with jowls the size of pancakes and a nose like a hot dog; Jimmy Carter, distilled to hardly more than a fat face with a Cheshire cat grin; a wimpy George Bush toting a purse; and Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan. Oliphant will be at the museum center March 21 for a lecture and book signing.

A Pulitzer Prize-winner whose syndicated cartoons appear now in about 500 newspapers worldwide, the Australian-born Oliphant, 56, has been working in the United States since 1964, commenting on national and world events. As an artist, he is largely self-taught (his idol is 19th-Century French caricaturist Honore Daumier) although he attended art school for a while before working full time as a political cartoonist.

In a wide-ranging phone interview from his studios in Washington, Oliphant spoke recently about such topics as free speech, which Presidents were easiest to draw and which were toughest, and how he developed Punk, the tiny, irrepressible, opinionated penguin that has become his trademark.

Though genuinely modest about his achievements, and somewhat reticent to talk at first, he readily conversed with the same dry wit and candor that pervades his caricatures.

Question: Describe your daily working routine.

Answer: I get up around 6, I read the papers (the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post) and get coffee, and watch the overnight developments on TV. Then I start formulating some sort of idea of what (cartoon) I’m going to do, then I go to the drawing board about 8:30 or 9. I give myself a deadline of getting it done by midday, then I transmit it (via computer) from my studio to Kansas City, where it’s syndicated. . . . I do four cartoons a week, Tuesday through Friday. The rest of the time, I’m doing sculpture, painting, lithographs, things like that.

Q: How do you develop ideas for cartoons?

A: You’re just feeding yourself information all the time, trying to keep up with what’s going on, looking for the odd angle on it. I don’t know actually where the ideas finally come from, but it’s a routine you do every day, and from the information you’ve given yourself, you just do it.

Q: Do you ever hit creative blocks?

A: Now and again you can have that happen. Usually it can be in times like this, now, where (the news is) starting to be (repetitive).

Q: Do you mean we need a war?

A: Cartoonists always need something like that. What’s good for the cartoonist isn’t always good for the country. It’s an art that feeds on conflicts.

Q: What is your political affiliation?

A: I’m independent, not aligned. What would I be aligned to?

Q: Do you consider yourself a liberal?

A: In some things, though liberals tend to infuriate me just as much as conservatives.

Q: Who was the easiest President to draw?

A: Nixon. I think we’d all vote for Nixon. The thing is, he never really went away. He’s always been on the periphery, hanging around in the semi-darkness there waiting to get back in again. He writes one book, then another, and he’s become the elder statesman of the political world, and eventually we’ll forget Watergate, I suppose, and he’ll be on his way to reinstatement.

Q: Who was the toughest President to sketch?

A: Ford was the toughest, because he wasn’t (in office) long enough. An eminently decent man, I think, but not one you could really get your teeth into. He was out of office before we (got to know much about him).

Q: When did you start drawing George Bush with a purse?

A: Back in his wimp era, when he was running for the presidency (the first time in 1988). He always wears glasses in my cartoons, though you notice he dropped them for this campaign. . . . He thought it looked wimpy to wear glasses.

Q: So the purse represents his wimpiness?

A: Yes, (but) I was getting all sorts of flak from women’s groups who said, ‘What’s wrong with carrying a purse?’ and the same (reaction came) from homosexual groups, and I couldn’t win. Then it started to become a symbol which may have gotten self-defeating. During the Gulf War, he was riding high in the polls, and it did no good to (draw) him with a purse, so I put it up on a high shelf, I retired it for a while, but now I’ve brought it back.

Q: You’ve done a sculpture of Bush as a reed-thin man throwing horseshoes. How did that image come about?

A: I wondered at first at how to treat Bush (in sculpture). I had no handle on how to do him, and a group of us cartoonists went to lunch with him at the White House. . . . He’s much taller than you’d expect and he’s very thin and spare, so immediately I went back to my studio, and it came out as a sort of Giacometti-type of thinness, which not only said a lot about his physical appearance, but a lot about his programs and political attitude. He’s a minimalist President, meaning he lacks substance.

Q: How does sculpture compare to drawing?

A: It’s fulfilling in a different way. For one thing, it’s a three-dimensional approach; you can walk around it, get at it from all angles. And there’s something tactile and organic about it, just the modeling of clay and the modeling of wax, and working surfaces and textures. Those are some of the minor or major delights of the whole thing.

Q: Have you ever received calls or letters from any of the Presidents?

A: No, usually these people don’t react in that manner. . . . I’m not looking for their approval (and) they probably don’t want to be seen reacting. Bush, I believe, does not like (political) cartoons, he doesn’t like derogatory things said about him. I hear he’s thin-skinned, which is delightful.

Q: Have you had any problems with the newspapers that carry your work?

A: I’ve had papers run my cartoon, then get so much flak (from readers) that they apologize to readers for running it, and that’s a terribly chicken attitude. In cases like that, it’s a form of censorship, yes. I take the (rights to use my drawings) away from those people.

Q: Why did you sign on with other cartoonists as a friend of the court to help defend Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt in a 1988 Supreme Court case against Jerry Falwell, founder of the now-defunct Moral Majority? (Falwell had sued Hustler after it printed a graphic satire of Falwell that the religious leader charged caused him “emotional distress.” The court ruled unanimously in Flynt’s favor.)

A: You’re forced into bed with very strange people when you believe in the right of free expression. . . . Newspapers and cartoonists and writers, we all had to go to bat for Larry Flynt--not that we wanted to, and you felt like (you needed) a shower afterward--but you just couldn’t let these right-wingers take away your rights of expression, just to punish some sleaze bag like Larry Flynt. The right is too valuable to let it get away from us.

Q: Would you say your cartoons reflect an overriding attitude of delight at human foibles, or rather one of anger at the world?

A: I think you have to bring yourself to the boiling point every day. I do like the human foible part of it, but I think you have to maintain a good outrage in this business to be effective. . . . I think political cartoons could be a lot more savage than they are--except for (The Times’ political cartoonist) Paul Conrad.

Q: Why do you think today’s cartoonists aren’t “more savage”?

A: I think maybe there’s a generation of editors who don’t want controversy, who don’t want trouble and don’t want to stir it up. That started about 10 to 15 years ago.

Q: How did you develop Punk, the penguin who interjects biting postscripts in your cartoons?

A: I was working for a very conservative paper, the Advertiser (in Australia), and I developed that as a vehicle for my own ideas . . . because I used to be subjected in my early years to cartooning by committee--and that’s no good. So I developed a penguin, and everybody likes a penguin. They’re black and white and already integrated, so you don’t have to fight that one. He took off and he’s just been with me ever since.

Q: How do you regard your 1967 Pulitzer Prize?

A: I think it carries more weight than it should. I’m not really in favor of awards, as I think you’re (only) as good as you were yesterday, and all the awards in the world are not going to keep you there, unless you work at it.

Q: Do you believe that, as an editorial cartoonist, you can affect public opinion?

A: I’d like to think that through the use of humor and satire and proper delivery, a cartoon can make some difference in people’s opinions, (although) there’s the other theory that maybe it just reinforces people’s prejudices. It’s very hard to quantify and measure. What a cartoonist has to do is not draw for the audience, but draw for himself, and if the audience likes it, that’s good.

Q: At a time when some theorize that newspapers will be replaced by electronic news media, do you believe the future is bright for political cartoons?

A: Cartooning is made to be held in the hand and looked at. Everyone understands and reads at a different pace, so it’s very difficult to transition it to TV or another medium. It’s a 19th-Century business and it’s going to stay that way, but as long as there are newspapers, there will be cartoonists, and I think there will always be newspapers.

Q: Which presidential candidate do you want to win in November?

A: I want Patrick Buchanan for President. A cartoonist would be crazy not to want Buchanan. That would be wonderful. Where do you find a bog-Irish face like that anymore? He’s got the face of an Irish thug. It’s wonderful, in this world where every politician looks the same and sounds the same. I don’t subscribe to (his views) at all, but I’d love to have him in office for four years, or until he’s impeached. Maybe Bush could get him as vice president--he said he’d do anything he could to get reelected.

“Oliphant’s Presidents: 25 Years of Caricature by Pat Oliphant,” a traveling exhibit originated at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, opens March 14 and runs through April 25 at the Fullerton Museum Center, 301 N. Pomona Ave., Fullerton. Hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday; 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday. Admission: $2; $1 students and seniors. Oliphant will lecture at the museum center on March 21 at 1 p.m. and sign copies of his books at 3 p.m. Lecture admission is $20; book signing is free. An adult’s and children’s caricature and cartooning workshop led by a museum educator will be held on March 28. Two sessions: 10 a.m. or 1 p.m. Admission: $10. Information: (714) 738-6545.