In 1977 I placed a round yellow and black sticker on the back window of my first car. It showed an illustration of a ferret, under which were the words: ‘Lean and nosy like a ferret’. The newspaper it advertised was Nation Review, an ‘alternative’ (whatever that means) weekly.
The sticker was illustrated by Michael Leunig who was cartoonist for the newspaper. Later he moved to The Age, under legendary editor Graham Perkin, when the newspaper was judged one of the ten best in the world.
Leunig’s cartoons were whimsical but savage; gentle but scathing; soothing but undermining: everything, in fact, a woke society could many years later not bear. Hypocrisy hates a mirror. Leunig’s mirror was a fine point pen, a genius line and nothing else. The Age sacked him, obviously preferring him to stick to the annual calendars, anthologies, mugs and other middle-class decor which Leunig’s gentle illustrations so admirably suited but which may have become a millstone around his neck had he not retained his savagely perceptive intellect.
Last time I saw Michael Leunig, a few weeks ago, he was sitting, looking quite well, at a table at Brunetti’s, the Italian coffee and cake palace in Lygon Street. Appropriate. The building was originally the Paramount pram factory which in the 1970s became a theatre space the Australian Performing Group which ‘presented alternative, experimental, avant-garde and radical plays, musical comedies, vaudeville, stage shows, street theatre and circus acts, using comedy, drama, music and dance to entertain and, in some cases, to turn the spotlight on its concerns about social, political and feminist issues’. (Wikipedia)
Comments
Post a Comment