Patrick Bruce Oliphant ("Pat")

Patrick Bruce Oliphant (“Pat”) was born in 24 July 1935 in Adelaide, Australia. He is a journalist, fine artist, and one of the world’s most influential political cartoonists, noted for his caricatures of seven American presidents, including Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.

Oliphant is the son of Donald Knox Oliphant, who was a cartographer for the Ministry of Lands of Australia, and Grace Lillian (Price) Oliphant, a homemaker. The family’s home was located up in the hills, about an hour from Adelaide by train. Oliphant disliked the lonely, solitary life his family’s home imposed, although it encouraged him to develop his imagination. During the early 1940s he attended a one-room schoolhouse, but at age eleven he began commuting to Adelaide to go to school. His father encouraged his interest in drawing.

In 1953 Oliphant took a job as a copyboy for the Adelaide News, where he was able to observe the political cartoonist Norman Mitchell at work. Cartooning looked like fun. After four months at the Adelaide News, he took a job at the Adelaide Advertiser. For a year he worked as a copyboy in the photographic department and then became a press artist, working on images for advertisements and illustrations for articles. He also touched up photographs and drew weather maps for the newspaper’s agricultural supplement, the Chronicle.

When the Adelaide Advertiser‘s political cartoonist left the newspaper in 1955, Oliphant got the chance to be the new political cartoonist. He quickly chafed under the conservative policies of the newspaper’s management. He found that he was not supposed to offend people with his cartoons. Therefore, he invented Punk, a little penguin who always appeared in a corner of an Oliphant cartoon, making barbed comments about the subject of the cartoon. Punk quickly became a favorite of readers, and through Punk’s asides Oliphant was able to insert caustic commentary in his cartoons without running afoul of the tastes of his bosses. On 11 January 1958 Oliphant married Hendrika DeVries, with whom he had three children. They later divorced.

In 1964 one of America’s most admired political cartoonists, Paul Conrad, left his job at the Denver Post to work for the Los Angeles Times.Oliphant, who had immigrated to the United States that same year, applied for and got Conrad’s old job. He found working for the Denver Post to be liberating, and his work soon showed signs of maturing into the classic form that would make him one of the world’s most influential cartoonists. He eschewed labels and trite symbols; he expected his caricatures of public figures to be good enough to be recognized by the public without labeling them. Oliphant’s drawings of President Lyndon B. Johnson began with Johnson appearing as a tall, strong, erect figure. In Oliphant’s cartoons, Johnson might be the only fully drawn character, with all other figures flat, giving the effect of Johnson’s personality dominating whatever else was depicted in a cartoon. Oliphant almost immediately opposed U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and as the country became more deeply enmeshed in the conflict, his depictions of Johnson became more savage. Yet unlike most of his contemporaries, he sometimes captured the sad, injured humanity of Johnson. His sharply biting commentary can be seen in a cartoon called “Frazzled,” in which a standing Johnson holds several phones to his ears, while others ring, and he says, “Yes, General Westmoreland, we’re working on your quota—Hello Detroit, how many hundred thousand troops?—hold it, there—Hello, Minneapolis? …” At the time, race riots had broken out in American cities, and the cartoon depicts Johnson desperately trying to keep up with events that have spun out of his control. This portrayal contrasts with another Oliphant cartoon of the same period, “Night Reading,” in which Johnson is carefully drawn, his face deeply careworn, his body slumping over a desk, his big hands holding open Dr. Benjamin Spock’s book, Baby and Child Care(1957), while on his desk are scattered official reports on crime, the Middle East, and Vietnam. Johnson’s first grandchild was about to be born, and Oliphant’s cartoon is a reminder of the humanity of Johnson. Johnson’s hunched, sad figure holds in it the president of the Great Society, who had wanted to be the president who did the most for the helpless since Abraham Lincoln. Punk stands beside the desk and asks, “Isn’t Dr. Spock in the Peace Moveme …?” Another little figure holds out his hands to Punk and cries out, “Shaddup!” It is as if Oliphant is telling himself to lay off Johnson for this one moment of humanity. Oliphant won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons, possibly for his consistent ability to go beyond the joke or gag in his drawings to convey the deeper meaning of the toll government policies, bureaucracy, and leaders exacted from humanity. Upon winning the Pulitzer Prize, he criticized the awards committee for favoring cartoons that depicted America in a favorable light (they had liked his cartoon of Ho Chi Minh‘s unwillingness to make peace), probably killing his chances of winning another award.

The election of Richard M. Nixon to the presidency in 1968 was a boon to political cartoonists; his bushy eyebrows, shifty eyes, and prominent jowls were captured by many cartoonists, including Oliphant. Nixon’s administration seemed filled with eccentric characters to be caricatured in cartoons. In Oliphant’s cartoons Nixon started out as a boldly drawn figure, a master at political infighting, a man skilled at handling the powers of the presidency. In one early Nixon cartoon—”Low Profile?”—Oliphant depicts the president as a big, scowling bomber dropping explosives over North Vietnam, with Punk saying, “Please! Don’t call it bombing—call it protective reaction,” a sly comment on Nixon’s penchant for manipulating the English language to soften the impression his actions would have on the public. By 1970 Oliphant’s depictions of Nixon used fewer lines than before, and the lines were thin, not thick, even for Nixon’s eyebrows, and like Johnson before, Nixon appeared increasingly overwhelmed by events; in “Security Blanket,” Nixon sucks his thumb and holds the blanket “Sensitive National Secrets” around him while menacing eyes glare out of darkness at the president; Punk, too, hides in the blanket.

Oliphant’s style was imitated by innumerable cartoonists in the 1970s and beyond; sharply drawn figures with detailed faces and clothing, the use of a little figure like Punk to make additional comments on the subject of a cartoon, and the uncompromising criticism of public figures all became parts of American cartooning. Oliphant always said he disliked being imitated, that younger cartoonists should find styles of their own, but no one can be blamed for using the devices of an acknowledged master of the art. Besides, few cartoonists managed to combine Oliphant’s biting commentary with the depth of humanity found in his best cartoons.

Oliphant’s papers are in the Library of Congress. Oliphant and Wendy Wick Reaves, Oliphant’s Presidents: Twenty-five Years of Caricature (1990), includes a memoir by Oliphant and an appreciation of his art by Reaves. Jean W. Ross, “Oliphant, Patrick (Bruce),” in Contemporary Authors, vol. 101 (1981), includes an interview with Oliphant. Patrick Butters, “A Serious Side: America’s Premier Political Cartoonist Also Is a Fine, If Mischievous, Sculptor,” in Insight on the News14, no. 17 (11 May 1998): 38, offers an appreciation of Oliphant’s fine art.