Article: Ronald Searle’s Work Influenced By Time As A POW In WW2

I'm not certain how ultimately truthful it might be, but the general assertion in this article that the British arts were shaped to significant effect by the time a generation of artists, actors and writers spent in POW camps appeals on any number of levels, including but not limited to novelty (I'd never heard it before, anyway). For comics fans, this piece includes an analysis of Ronald Searle's St. Trinian's cartoons as a funhouse mirror of one of those POW camps, including the utility of violence as a way to negotiate one's restricted circumstances. They quote one expert as saying, "In the cartoons some girls are hung upside-down by their ankles, others are stretched on the rack and one of his pictures, showing pupils' decapitated heads on a shelf comes directly from a scene witnessed by Searle himself, of shelves of heads of executed Chinese prisoners." The wartime experiences of artists like Jack Kirby had a deep and significant impact on their art for decades to come, so it makes sense that a POW's experience would have a similar effect; still, I'm not sure I would have ever thought about it otherwise.
 
posted 7:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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