Tate Britain: Rude Britannia-British Comic Art

For my research paper, I decided do write about the Cartoon Museum. The paper will mostly be about the museum itself, the library, and the services they provide, but I also wanted to write some history about British cartoons. Just my luck, the Tate Britain was having an exhibit called "Rude Britannia-British Comic Art". I went and paided the £8 to get in, and I thought it was worth it.

The exhibit was broken up into six different rooms with different areas of cartoons. They had regular british comic art, social satire, politcal cartoons, sexual cartoons, and the absurd room. I enjoyed the politcal cartoon room, because they had several World War II cartoons that were for or against the British or Germans. The sexual cartoon room was different, but in the US, we don't see strong sexual content for cartoons. My least favorite room was the Absurd Room because it had to do with modern art cartoons. There was a film of a man in a bad gorilla suit jumping around for four minutes, and I didn't see the point. He just jumped around; that was it. There was also a huge, black peeled banana in the room. I didn't get that either. They also had a seating room where people could read different cartoons.

For me, I enjoyed it and I got some more background information on British cartoons and humor. Walking around the exhibits, I saw four pieces on loan from the Cartoon Museum. At least I could add that into my paper that the Cartoon Museum does loan out their pieces for other people to view. I know some people don't like British comedy and humor, but I think anybody would enjoy this exhibit if they went to the Tate Britain.

To learn more about the Tate Britain and the exhibit "Rude Britannia-British Comic Art", please visit www.tate.org.uk

Photograph provided by www.shear.nagaokaut.ac.jp/England/Photo/Museum/TateBritain.jpg