christophermadden

  • Cartoons

    A selection of cartoons

    I’ve been drawing and publishing cartoons since the late 1970s, on subjects such as the environment, politics, the arts, science, philosophy and current events.

    They have been published in the Guardian, Private Eye, The Spectator, Prospect, Philosophy Now, BBC Focus, Chemistry World and New Scientist among others.

    Below is a small selection of my cartoons.

    Cartoons about art

    Sculpture cartoon -  self portrait in infinite regression
    Contemporary art humour - Andy Warhol soup tins cartoon
    Sculpture cartoon – the human condition
    Contemporary art humour cartoon
    Malovich black square cartoon
    Artist's muse cartoon
    Photography in art galleries cartoon
    Rodin Thinker cartoon

    Cartoons about the environment.

    pollution cartoon
    tree of life cartoon

    waste land builders skip boat - cartoon

    deforestation cartoon

    water wars cartoon

    Other cartoons

    Domino effect cartoon
    queue cartoon

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  • Sky Mirror 1970

    contemporary mirror art reflections

    Contemporary mirror art

    Parabolic mirror. 21cm diameter About 1969

    These photos show one of my early artistic experiments using mirrors while I was still at school. My apologises for the quality of the images – they are quite old and I developed the negatives and printed them myself.

    I think if I were give this work a name now I’d probably call it Sky Bridge or something similar, because it links the earth to the sky. The name Sky Mirror also comes to mind, but Anish Kapoor’s already used that.

    The concept behind the mirror actually bears several similarities to Anish Kapoor’s Sky Mirror, in that it’s a concave mirror that reflects the sky, although Kapoor’s Sky Mirror is thirty times the size and cost about a million pounds more. I think I probably paid for this one from the money from my paper round. Anish Kapoor wasn’t yet a student at Hornsey College of Art at the time of these photos.

    The mirror is an eight and a half inch parabolic mirror for a Newtonian reflecting telescope which I constructed as a teenager in the late 1960s. My ambition then was to become an astronomer, not an artist. I ground the parabolic surface of the mirror myself.

    As you can see from the first two photos, I’ve positioned the mirror in front of a rubbish bin (of a type that was used in the 1970s) in the least aesthetically pleasing part of my parents’ garden.

    The second photo, below, (which is massively underexposed in order to show the mirror, which would otherwise be just a disk of burnt-out white), shows the mirror propped up against the rubbish bin. You can see the sun and the sky reflected in the mirror. This is perhaps meant to show the contrast between the beauty and purity of the sky in contrast to some of the rubbish created by human society. It’s probably also meant to show that ultimately everything is connected, the beautiful and the ugly, the transcendent and the mundane.

    contemporary art mirror sculpture reflections

    The photo below shows the mirror on the ground amongst some trees. This is probably meant to show the link between the earth, the natural world and the sky, and by extension the cosmos.

    contemporary art mirror sculpture reflections

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  • Fire Circle – art in the environment

    contemporary art in the environment - fire circle

    Fire Circle – art in the environment,

    Burnt vegetation. 2003

    The results of a fire made of green wood.
    The wood at the centre of the fire has been consumed by the intense heat of the fire.
    The wood at the edges of the fire remain unburnt, forming an almost perfect ring of twigs and small branches around the ash core.
    The work invokes issues conncerning both the constructive and destructive effects of fire, and by extension of human activity.

    contemporary art in the environment - fire circle

    I’ve been creating environmental art and art based on environmental issues since the 1970s.

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  • Ceramic: many hands

    Ceramic form with multiple arms

    Ceramic 10x11x12cm 8 Jan 2001

    A semi-abstract ceramic form consisting of a hemisphere with four arms and hands.

    contemporary ceramics multi-armed form
    contemporary ceramics multi-armed form
    contemporary ceramics multi-armed form

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