ACEC
It's nothing personal. Well, maybe it's a little bit personal. The Toronto illustrator has been commissioned to "do" Bush by Mother Jones, the lefty American magazine that's shown little affection for Shrub over the years. The cover will go with "Mean politics," an article for the November issue by Molly Ivins, the funny and gnarly Texas columnist who was among the first to dub Dubya "Shrub." From what Kunz knows about Ivins' piece, out on the stands by mid-October, it will deal with the Bush administration's rich-get-richer vision of social policy.

" The question is, does Bush understand how the average American lives?" says Kunz. "He only understands the life of the privileged."
But how appropriate is it for Kunz to savage the president of the United States while a solo show of her illustrations is on at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. from next Thursday to Jan.3?

Should this be a worry to her? The exhibition, "Canadian Counterpoint: Illustrations by Anita Kunz," does indeed sound a faint anti-establishment (read: anti-Bush) tone. In the U.S. capitol it could hardly be taken otherwise. As a true blue, cottage-going Canadian — the first Canadian to be given a Library of Congress show — Kunz remains part of the coalition of the unwilling in Washington's eyes.
Then again, the keyword here is "faint." This is not a time to go charging over the ramparts for Kunz, the Library of Congress or illustration in general. The big chill is on when it comes to political satire south of the border. Even someone with Kunz's track record — her work has been on the cover of The New Yorker, Fortune and Time — is not immune."Since Sept.11, everyone is more nervous," she says, "particularly illustrators. They know there are certain Web sites that out people for being anti-American. They've seen Susan Sontag vilified and The Dixie Chicks."

In recent weeks, an American Secret Service officer tried to visit the offices of the Los Angeles Times because of a drawing by Michael Ramirez, the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist. Based on the well-known Vietnam-era image of an officer pointing a gun directly at the head of a suspected Viet Cong fighter, Ramirez's drawing shows a figure of a man with the word "politics" on him, pointing a gun at Bush. The word "Iraq" looms behind. A Times' lawyer was able to keep the agent out of the newsroom.
" Magazines in general are more nervous," says Kunz. "I am more nervous. And it's not just me. (Illustrator/author) Jules Feiffer was telling me a while ago that it's like the age of McCarthy again. When people as distinguished as he is feel this way, it makes you think."Solo exhibits at the Library have been more about exceptional careers completed than exceptionally shocking statements made. Kunz's sly, non-confrontational style is in this mould. Then again, her prospects for a show were no doubt improved by her donation of 22 paintings to the Library as part of its extensive Prints and Photographs Division from where the 15 images in the show come.
Past Library solo shows have tended to celebrate cartooning and familiar caricature — the likes of Feiffer, Herb Block and Al Hirschfeld — more than any degree of satirical savagery. (Ralph Steadman probably hasn't got a chance.) And although Kunz's politics would more likely be in agreement with the NDP than the Young Republicans, her work has a dreamy, detached air to it at times, and is anything but nasty.

It can still get her into trouble. Her caricature of Michael Jackson for a Rolling Stone cover casts him as some sort of Disney character, more early Mickey Mouse in his Steamboat Willie days than today's Lion King. But British readers thought she was referencing the racially charged golliwog character. No matter. When it comes to edge, racial or not, Kunz's Jackson send-up has nothing on American artist Kara Walker's hyper stereotypical racial cut-out silhouettes."Still, this isn't as bad as it was for an illustrator friend of mine in New York who had Martha Stewart yelling at him on the phone for 10 minutes for what he'd done," says Kunz. "I'm never sure of how exactly my work will be received. I've done pictures that I think are perfectly innocuous and they'll be perceived as being particularly vicious. With every picture I do I'm really aware of who the audience is. I think, `is (the picture) too emotional or what?' You get in a kind of dialogue with the reader."

But even knowing in advance the sympathies of a typical Mother Jones reader — someone for whom must-reading was a recent special report in the magazine warning of "The UnGreening of America" — does not make it any easier for Kunz to skewer Bush. In the early sketches she's been working on, she has him on a horse — "he's sort of a cowboy" — but in this instance, he's wearing the blinkers, not the horse.But maybe she'll do a more straightforward portrait of him, she thinks, "only with his eyes closed. I'm going to have to have my hand held (by the magazine) a bit on this. They may be concerned."

In fact, Kunz and Dubya have done this dance before. A recent Bush-whacking in The American Prospect, another leftie magazine, was given a hearty send-off via Kunz's cover illustration showing a somewhat scowling, moderately befuddled Bush in Arab headgear."But even though they ran it I was nervous," she says. "The picture was so charged. There really is a sense out there that `either you're with us or you're against us.'"

A quick glance at her work makes it difficult to image Kunz might be against anybody. Now 46, "I'm trying to be as immature as possible."

Even in her nastier pieces — a mean-looking pistol replacing a figure's nose and mouth for Vibe magazine — you can find something of her beginnings as an illustrator of children's books shortly after she left the Ontario College of Art in 1978. Her figures have a pudgy, toy-like plasticity that's almost tangible, a style that works best with subjects whose bodies have endomorphic tendencies — like Elton John or the monster baby for The New Yorker's Mother's Day issue. Her lines are fluid, her colours mostly sombre. Together, they're better at signalling pain than anger. Bill Clinton riding off into the post-presidential sunset for a New Yorker cover is a still-petulant little kid who might be about to cry or might be about to spit in your eye — or most likely, both.Most of the faces she draws reference her own face — at least, her face in her self-portraits — with her slightly prominent cheekbones and wide non-committal eyes. What doesn't get into her work is her quick sense of humour. An Anita Kunz cover can throw a scare into you. It can sure make you feel. Few will ever be called knee-slappingly funny.

But these are not the times for knee-slappingly funny, she believes, at least where she gets most of her business these days, in the United States.

" I came to admire illustrators whose work wasn't just decorative," she says, "people whose work had some substance whether that meant social comment or not. Ten years ago we all were getting away with everything. Satire was flourishing. Not now. No one in the U.S. wants to make fun of politicians — celebrities, yes, but not politicians. I think even Canadians make more fun of us than Americans do."
Dark days for political cartoonists
 PETER GODDARD
THE TORONTO STAR -- August 30, 2003

Anita Kunz has this problem with George W. Bush. Like, just how nasty can she get with the guy?
Source: The Toronto Star