Poignant
David Austin
Love All? Michael Heath's cartoons from the Guardian
(Blond & Briggs £1.95)
Michael Heath's book is about sex, but his is not the cheerful, vulgar world ol the picture postcard. No randy little men with pot-bellies chase jolly amenable blondes, pursued in their turn by for' midable and mountainous wives. No newly' weds innocently let slip smutty double entendre. There is not a mother-in-law to be seen. He is cabaret, not musical hall.
He broods over the bleak landscape modern middle-class sex and marriage,' Bored women, crushed women, frustrated women confront pompous men, pathetic men, arrogant men, despairing, drunken men. They are two ignorant armies in a perpetual cold war. They clash by flight (and day) to their mutual dissatisfaction. In the title picture, on the cover, tw° parents fling accusations back and fort!' across a table, while their child sits in his highchair, a disconsolate umpire. A 1.11, gard man in a bar asks for 'Marriage on wi rocks'. A talking doll warns a little girl the dangers of female role-play. A rler,'„, amgiasitnress accuses her lover of seeing his I am told that Spare Rib refused to review the book, presumably because it 04' i drawn by a man and features women. TbeY were mistaken in refusing it their PublictYt if it is their intention to demonstrate tha . relations between the sexes nowadaYs are difficult. Heath emphatically makes that very point. Indeed he seems to think taa they are impossible. It is certainly a mistake to think that he is prejudiced against women. Every eart°°• critical of female attitudes can be Matchecl, with one satirising males. Heath's dislike sl! even-handed. He dislikes people, or at leant, what they do to one another. He is mour ing the death of married love. In this collection he is an observer rather than a wit. He does not rely on the ar°: biguities and double meanings that P_ stitute the usual cartoon joke. situations, exaggerated to caricature, wbviler throw an unexpected light on the 13°, .01 play between the sexes, or, like a P°14,1,te cartoonist, creates scenes which encapsw" some aspect of sexual politics. their Cartoonists are accustomed to seeIt work smudgily reproduced on newsprint' d is good to see these drawings reproclu,ce
sible full-size on decent paper. It is thus his
He selec.;
dtoraaupgphrtescmiaatneshthe.paHrtiicsulastrylqeualiistiefsoofo r ip r almost calligraphic, yet free. BY ,ar,,tfile, distortions he effortlessly fills the by bringing the salient features to the fore.,„li altering perspective as in Egyptian
Paintings. The backgrounds, cunningly folded round the main protagonists, are full of telling detail. His observation of dress and manners is acute.
Heath's cartoons are oases of human despair in the Women's Guardian, that desert of cocky assertiveness. Taken all at °nee they are a strong draught, sharp, fun- ny and very poignant.
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