Putting delegates at their ease...

Low Manners.jpg

Title

Putting delegates at their ease...

Description

The commingling of bodies at international conferences, and the riot of opportunities it presented for social faux pas, was the stuff of political artists' dreams. Caricaturist Emery Kelen made a career out of them, depicting clashes and contrasts of political figures in Geneva, Berlin and London. From 1927 the New Zealand cartoonist David Low established his name via the cartoon strips of the Evening Standard, rising to fame in the mid-1930s for his depictions of the personalities and policies of German dictator Adolf Hitler, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, and other leaders of his times. Here he satirises the perils of imperial hospitality, with British politicians unable to resist the allure of Round Table delegates' eastern bodies, to devastating effect: complimenting the Maharajas of Patiala and Bikaner on their hair; misreading Indian clothing (confusing Kashmere and cashmere, Burmese dress for pyjamas); and joking with the Muslim Aga Khan about bishops and barmaids. Readers of the Evening Standard would have been familiar with many of the Indians depicted here. They were heavily featured in the newspaper’s gossip column, ‘Echoes of the Town’, which reported on everything from the triumph of the Aga Khan’s horses at the races, the Maharaja of Bikaner’s dining and dancing, to the spending habits of the Maharaja of Patiala.

Source

Reproduced with permission of David Low / Solo Syndication

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Citation

“Putting delegates at their ease...,” Spaces of Internationalism, accessed March 28, 2024, https://spacesofinternationalism.omeka.net/items/show/49.