Steve Bell Launches Windsor Tapestry At Cartoon Museum (Video)

Posted in: Comics, Current News | Tagged: cartoon museum, steve bell

Steve Bell launches The Windsor Tapestry at London’s Cartoon Museum, talks about being cancelled by the Guardian newspaper (Video)

Steve Bell is one of my favourite cartoonists. He was certainly my first favourite, and I have talked about how some of my earliest cartooning was tracing his If… strips in The Guardian newspaper over forty years ago. And I’ve been following his career and work since through highs and a couple of lows, including being dropped by the Guardian after forty years over the belief that a cartoon of Benjamin Netanyahu was anti-Semitic—despite the Israeli Cartoonists Association declaring that it was not.

This was something Steve Bell brought up last week at the London Cartoon Museum for the launch night of his Windsor Tapestry, for its first exhibition in England after previously being seen in France. It is a compilation of Steve Bell’s work over the forty years for the Guardian that has involved King Charles III and, formerly the Prince Of Wales, in the fashion of the Bayeux Tapestry, with a narration by Bell that transforms these cartoons into a very long comic strip or, indeed, a comic book as evidenced by the Exhibition book of the show, which arranges the cartoons into the same narrative. And it is accompanied in the exhibition by other examples of his work, his first kids comic book work, his sleeve notes for The Clash albums and his own art materials on display, the Windsor Tapestry exhibition runs until the 22nd of March. Even if the Guardian newspaper is pretending it isn’t happening by not mentioning the existence of this exhibition, mostly made up of Guardian cartoons, in its pages or its pixels…

Here’s a walk around the Private View… you may also note Mark Stafford and David Hine in attendance.

The exhibition is described thus;

“Join us this Winter a very Royal new exhibition looking back at the life of King Charles III, as told through the sharp pen of Steve Bell! For the past forty years, legendary British political cartoonist Steve Bell has been caricaturing Charles and the Royal family. Steve Bell’s The Windsor Tapestry brings together 98 of these cartoons into a 28-metre long fabric tapestry telling a visual history of Charles III (in the same way the Bayeux Tapestry told the story of King Harold II and King William I, but with a lot less arrows through eyes) from 1980 to the present day, and will exhibited alongside original artworks from Steve’s career, and other artists’ depictions of King Charles, including Gerald Scarfe and Kathryn Lamb. The tapestry was originally exhibited in October 2023 was part of the 42nd annual Festival of caricature at the Centre International de la Caricature, du Dessin de Presse et d’Humour in St Just Le Martel near Limoges in France.  Steve Bell is one of the most revered figures in British cartooning, with a career spanning more than four decades and a wealth of iconic images, strips and caricatures of famous public figures, most prominently politicians, behind him. He is notable for his long-running If… strip for The Guardian, which ran from 1981 – 2021. He has produced illustrations and comic strips for many different magazines including Whoopee, Punch, Private Eye, the Radio Times, The Spectator and The Guardian. His work has been published and exhibited all over the world and he has won numerous awards, including the Political Cartoon Society Cartoon of the Year Award in 2001 and 2008 and Cartoonist of the Year in 2005 and 2007, the British Press Awards Cartoonist of the Year in 2002 and the Channel 4 Political Humour Award in 2005.”

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