Hardeep Pandhal: The Beano and Viz

Artists influenced by British graphic traditions continue to emerge and as they do more and more complex interrelationships are revealed. In a multicultural society like the United Kingdom it is sometimes hard to realise how powerful children's culture is, especially for the children of different ethnic minorities, who will have had to reconcile the culture of their family with that of the place they find themselves growing up in.
I believe that there is a comic centred graphic culture that stretches from the Beano through to Viz that has had a particularly powerful influence on the visual imagination of British children. Leo Baxendale created an iconic visual language for The Bash Street Kids, Minnie the Minx, Little Plum, the Three Bears and other DC Thompson owned comics. Generations of British children would have the Beano or the Dandy brought for them every week and the surreal playful inventiveness of the imagery has engrained itself into many an artist's psyche; including I must say my own.

Leo Baxendale

As children we were brought up on these images of anarchy and inventive disruption. I still remember the visual complexity of Baxendale's ideas, the double page spread above being typical of his inventive style. I can still remember how my mind inhabited these scenes and how I loved looking at them over and over again. In particular the protagonists were often children versus authority figures such as the teacher, and the children were nearly always succeeding in their anarchistic ambitions by sheer inventive destruction. In the drawing below, I love the way the pocket naturally grows to accommodate the cascade of pop being poured into it. Arms can come from anywhere, nostrils can accommodate rockets and mashed potato can become a weapon of choice in this surreal world designed for growing children. 

Detail of a Leo Baxendale drawing

The Beano style was the dominant look for children's comics for years, so much so that when the satirical magazine Viz started up in 1979, it used the visual language associated with the Beano and the Dandy as a parody; Viz's diet of misogynistic toilet humour, surreal black comedy, and violent sexual storylines would instantly be appreciated by teenagers and young men who as boys had grown up with The Bash Street Kids, Denis the Menace and Desperate Dan. 

From Viz

For youngsters of the post 1979 Viz generation the Beano's comic style was now deeply associated with hard core satire and sexual violence that was the staple diet of Viz and it is no surprise therefore that as a new generation of artists emerged steeped in that tradition that they would reflect it in the work they did.

Viz

Viz was a comic that specialised in taking on and subverting stereotypes of British society. For youngsters coming from very conservative cultural traditions the anarchistic core of both the Beano and Viz must have been particularly powerful models. In the hands of Hardeep Pandhal this comic book tradition confronts and is merged with visual cultures from the Indian sub-continent. Hardeep takes on the language of Viz and pushes it further, embracing other narrative traditions and in the anarchistic spirit of his influences takes on elements of Sikh, Mughal and Rajput miniature painting and incorporates them into his own irreverent stories. 

Sikh miniature

 

Hardeep Pandhal

Hardeep was at one time working in Leeds and then moved to Glasgow; as soon as I saw his work I recognised the Beano/Viz linage of his visual languages and because these languages have a wide currency I would suspect his work will be accessible to people outside of the contemporary art world as well as his images re-invigorating the more traditional languages of fine art drawing.
Personally I'm not sure about the way the images work on a larger scale, I can see the need to appropriate the language of the gallery and more contemporary installation practices, but I feel that the smaller images on paper work much better for me. I can see the connection with the comics easier, their grubby creased surfaces, coloured in bits and passed around feel, seem so much closer to Hardeep's deformation of his Leeds Met BA certificate. Not that I'm advocating that you all to deface your hard earned certificates as soon as you get them, but there is a necessary irreverence when working in this territory.

Hardeep Pandhal

The sensibility of someone like Hardeep Pandhal is totally different to Shahzia Sikander. Sikander grew up in Pakistan, developed a contemporary miniature style whilst still living there, but then moved to New York. 

Click on this Shahzia Sikander image to enlarge 

Shahzia Sikander: Projection

When Sikander moved to New York she became immersed in the contemporary art world. Gradually her work developed a hybrid style of contemporary art practices mixed with the tropes she had brought with her from Islamic miniature painting. I personally feel that the 'art' style of the West has in this case overwhelmed her personal sensibility, but it could also be argued that in embracing contemporary art practices she has been able to demonstrate the continuing relevance of world wide cultural traditions within modern society. 

At its best art that works in the gaps between two cultures can shine an illuminating light on the sociological complexity of cultural hybridity in such a way that people from both cultures are asked to think again about themselves; Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' being one of the most insightful and imaginative books of the 20th Century, a book that shines a light on post-colonial history and in doing so establishes a type of writing that is both polemical and fantastic. Homi K. Bhabba's 'The Location of Culture' is the classic text if you want to read more around these issues in order to develop a more theoretical understanding. 

See also:

Drawing can be funny (Sometimes)

Children's drawings in an adult world

The portrait as stereotype