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Punch habitually ridiculed ‘modern art’. The whole movement was repeatedly treated as a joke. The hanging committee surely referred to the practice at the Royal Academy. Artists are free to submit their work for display at the annual summer exhibition. The point of that exhibition is that visitors are able to purchase work that they have seen. Before an artist can get his work accepted it has to be submitted. The hanging committee of the Academy will tend to have old fashioned ideas about art. The artist here shown looks exactly how ‘modern’ artists are expected to look. What we see of his work also conforms to the widely believed stereotype.
Here we see an attempted outside broadcast by the BBC. Capturing a ghost for the camera was being actively pursued by the Psychic Research Society. On the lookout for a scoop we see the cameras poised and the OB van outside the ancient building ready to witness the resident ghost taking his habitual walk. However, he is eagerly watching cricket on television. Emmett is again treating modern subjects with his own antique outlook.
Brockbank was a prolific cartoonist almost exclusively dealing with motoring. Here the tiny single passenger bubble car is being inaccurately denigrated. The angry pedestrian is shown larger than life whereas the bubble car is shown very much smaller than life. 1957 is just too early for the mini which was launched in 1959.
At that time intelligence testing was regarded as absolutely accurate. Later opinion is more divided. This was the time when the Eleven Plus test was used to decide who could attend Grammar Schools. This cartoon suggests a very suspicious attitude to the testing of children. The teacher looks just as much surprised as the children being tested.
Brockbank doesn’t like the big gas guzzling American imports. The hapless owner has to hurry and feed several meters owing to the length of his vehicle. Exaggeration of course but it makes its point.