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 comment:

U Smech said...

It is unfortunate that such sites are closed. In Ukraine in 2013 closed the satirical magazine "Pepper". Caricature is going through hard times. There was a lot of people who consider themselves cartoonists. Professional cartoonists became more paint posters without words and logical sense. All you better!