Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

provided by

This clip shows an excerpt from an animated colour cartoon by Bruce Petty. Successive cartoon figures are depicted observing a painting. A narrator explains that everyone experiences art differently and gives a number of examples. As these responses are described, they are visually portrayed by cartoon personifications. An animated party scene follows in which two voices debate the meaning and usefulness of art. This is accompanied by a series of images from famous artworks with which Petty’s personification of art interacts.

Educational value points

• The broadcaster Phillip Adams described Bruce Petty as contributing as much to Australian cultural life as Sidney Nolan (1917–92) or Arthur Boyd (1920–99). Petty was born in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1929 and was at various times an animator, satirical cartoonist and illustrative journalist. He has contributed to international magazines such as Esquire, the New Yorker and Punch as well as to The Australian and Bulletin, and is a regular contributor to The Age newspaper. Petty conceived, drew and directed the film Leisure, which received an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1976.

• The clip takes a humorous perspective on the meaning of art. A single, authoritative voice introduces the topic of the human response to art and a number of possible reactions are defined and visually described. Two voices then debate issues of exclusivity in art with one point of view contending that art is for the educated and wealthy elite and the other that 'ordinary eyes, ordinary ears and ordinary curiosity’ are needed to appreciate art.

• Petty’s sharply drawn cartoons are constructed of strong, single, squiggly lines drawn with a pencil or pen. Elements such as setting, perspective and shading are generally absent. A signature element in Petty’s work is his machines, which are often top-heavy and out of control, and used as concrete embodiments of otherwise intangible or complex concepts such as society, the state, art or human rights.

• The combination of simple, almost amateurish drawing style and sharp political observation has lead to Petty’s cartoons being called 'doodle-bombs’. Petty refers to himself as being 'equally unfair to everyone’.

• Cartoons, from the Italian word for paper, cartone, are best described as sketches or drawings that satirise or symbolise a person, event or situation of current interest. The first examples of political cartoons were used in the satirical London magazine Punch in the 1840s. Cartoons as a medium of delivering a biting and immediate commentary on events and political figures continued with the growth of newspapers.

• In general, cartoons have remained a static form, but with the advent first of film, then of video and lately of the Internet and specifically Flash technology, more and more cartoonists such as Petty and contemporary Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig (1945–) are animating their work.

• Petty uses 'cut-out’ animation, in which still cartoons are animated by moving them under a fixed camera. Composing different sections of one cartoon on two transparent layers and moving these independently provides a slightly more sophisticated sense of movement such as the party scene. Moving animation involves filming a succession of slightly different images or altering one image by degrees and filming each change. Sound effects support the visuals and the narration provides the context.

This clip starts approximately 3 minutes into the documentary.

This is a hand-drawn illustration of the artist represented by a human-like figure that follows along with the narration of the clip. The artist is confronted by modern and historical ideas of art. The art is also depicted by human-like creatures and cut-outs of people from the art world: they appear from behind a door on the right. The artist seems surrounded by chaos. A mash-up of percussive instruments, animal noises, opera and jazz music surrounds the action.
Narrator Different humans see art in different ways. Some humans see the psyche struggling with the cosmos. Some humans see a misfit struggling with his brush hand. Some human souls are bared by art. Some are seduced by the primitive urge. Some have chords struck deep in their egos, are moved by elegant brushwork, are moved to wonderful word-work, are spiritually released, are emotionally transformed, stunned, outraged, illuminated, bored. Some humans are moved to ecstasy by art. Some humans aren’t moved anywhere near ecstasy by art…
Male voice I mean, what has art ever done for the man on the street?
Female voice …and art has put the man on the street within mindful reach of the divine. That’s what art has done.
Male voice To have a mind with a reach, you need the right parents and the right income and the right suburb.
Female voice Oh, you need ordinary eyes, ordinary ears and ordinary curiosity.
Male voice Hey look, art is rare. Rare things go to the top people.
Female voice But feeling is common, isn’t it? Feeling goes to everybody.
Male voice Yeah, yeah. If he’s got money, if he’s got class, he’s got art. Or exclusive possession.
Female voice Or universal expression.
Male voice Art is elitist.
Female voice But to reject art is defeatist!
Narrator …towards a conceptual outer inwardness, or an underlying overplayed up-down-ness.