4.1.15

The end of the Arab Cartoon House website / Nedal Hashem

Like all beautiful ideas, there is always an end, and this is the end of the Arab Cartoon House website.
The site will halt due to the lack of usefulness, and poor attention of professional cartoonists. In a time when the beginning was modest in terms of services provided, there was broad interest from professional cartoonists, which formed our identity as a site specialized in professional caricature. However, with the spread of social networking sites that have become a strong competitor to various types of sites, we have become in front of a strong octopus which we cannot resist, especially with the great desire for sites such as Facebook to monopolize the cyberspace.
The site will halt because we are not an organization that has the necessary potential to implement the tasks of archiving and posting news specialized in the Arabic caricature art, although we have made efforts of this kind with individual potential and without any financial support.
The site will halt because of the level of bathos in cartoons published in some Arabic newspapers, which do not deserve the price of its ink, so how it could deserve my effort in saving and archiving it.
The site will halt because of the level of trauma caused by the institutions which supposed to be a cultural lever, but it turned out to be speculation centers which value the culture only at the level of interest generated by some stock.
The site will halt because I left my professional specialty in engineering, thinking that it is more important to be a cartoonist, then I was spending long time in following up site affairs more than the time I was spending in drawing, thinking that it is more important to perform this task that it is performed by none in the Arab world.
The site will halt because I have other ideas hoping that I will be able to achieve them before they become obsolete.
This is a message of apology to whom it may concern, including a number of friends and great cartoonists whom I could not know without this site.
I hope that the Arab Cartoon House website has contributed to the development of this art during the past nine years.
Author: Nedal Hashem
October 27, 2014.
Source: arabcartoon.

1.1.15

New Year 2015 : Ivan Hanousek

Umoristi A Marostica becomes biennial

After 46 years’ edition of the competition, the group graphic organizer of the event, has decided that it is time to re-think the most current key in the mode of the event.
Since the birth of the competition to date the social reality, Italian and international, has changed dramatically. Was 1969 when a group of university students, in the wake of the movements of the ’68 proposed a manifestation of complaint is not with protest signs, but with humorous cartoons. They chose the graphics in the belief that it was an international language suited to overcome political barriers, language and culture. We added the humor that for them meant not to laugh and just, but most do reflect, often throwing a critical message on existence. Over time the quality of the works, the honest intent, the seriousness and the quality of the jury, the freedom of choice of themes, the independence from political strategies and/or commercial as well as the passion of the group, have meant that the competition has imposed among the most important in Italy and abroad and is still very popular with artists from around the world.
But the rapid transformation that are affecting the cultural field is changing rapidly forms of production, distribution and consumption of culture in each country, and the forms of cultural exchanges that can take place between countries. Digital culture is causing revolution of all target reference points for human growth social and mental.
This rapid spread of social communication is transforming the quality of virtual information and creates new challenges for art in general, but especially for graphics. In recent years, the group graph has made a considerable effort in this area with results undoubtedly significant, but not optimal yet.
Then to reason with serenity and attention has decided to bring the competition every two years.
However, we will keep the focus on the graphics in the year proposing a “pause”, an exhibition of graphics of great artists in the industry, but we would have so more “time” to re-think our competition in a modern both in structure and in the mode of participation and proposition to the public that has always faithfully followed.
See you in the competition in 2016!
Gruppo Grafico Marosticense
Source: http://www.umoristiamarostica.it/?p=53.

New Year 2015 : Milenko Kosanovic