CSotD: Clay Bennett honored with Lurie Award
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Clay Bennett is a longtime favorite of mine, both for his clean style and for his ability to reduce things to the simple concepts a political cartoon must contain, but without oversimplifying a complex issue.
Well, I'm not his only fan. Bennett has just won the Ranan Lurie award from the United Nations for this cartoon, which manages to express something fundamental about the Middle East clearly and economically, without casting blame or suggesting idealistic solutions. And, of course, takes off on a popular, recognizable illustrator.
That makes it a nice triple play — getting Clay Bennett, Ranan Lurie and MC Escher into the same moment.
(Bennett explained the genesis of the prize-winning cartoon to Alan Gardner over at The Daily Cartoonist. Gardner also notes that Yanks did well overall: Rick McKee placed second, while Jimmy Margulies, Robert Ariail and Ed Gamble received citations of excellence.)
Lurie is the first syndicated cartoonist I ever had a conversation with. This was nearly 20 years ago, when by happenstance we were both trying to create publications that would teach kids about political cartoons. Since, unlike me, he didn't need to find funding for his venture, it was already off the ground and I called him to try to figure out a way to get it affordably into the hands of students.
The magazine-style piece he had created was, unfortunately, too pricey for most classrooms, which was most likely a result of his having piloted the concept at a private school in his hometown of Greenwich, Connecticut. But we had a nice conversation on the phone and I sent a colleague who did educational programs for the newspaper in Danbury over to talk to him and see what we could come up with.
The venture never came about, but it was worth the attempt just to hear her report on their meeting. If you ever need a definition of "stunned," send a Jewish former art teacher from Brooklyn to a meeting with a former Irgun activist, unit commander in the Six Days War and now the most widely syndicated cartoonist in the world, and let her see how many pictures of him with world leaders are festooned about the walls of stately Lurie manor.
And then have this courtly gentleman and supremely talented artist serve her coffee and cookies and listen to her opinions and share his own. The phone call I got from her as soon as she got back to her office was so over the top that I actually had to interrupt and ask, "Barbara? Barbara. Did you talk about the project?"
Lurie has continued to make a significant effort to foster the art of political cartooning, and it's good to see a personal favorite win the award, but it's also good to see the breadth of winners and runners-up over the years and to see how vital the medium continues to be around the world at a time when American editors have, for the most part, become layout specialists, fad-followers and grammatical nitpickers who don't understand metaphor or nuance and have reduced much of American graphical "commentary" to cheap Jay Leno-style gags.
Bennett won a Pulitzer in 2002. That one is for a body of work over the preceding year, and his portfolio of entries is here. And my favorite from that portfolio is here:
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