He is a cartoonist, caricaturist, and beneath we read his interview about something that most cartoonists face these days.
If you used to read newspaper, you can see that the number of papers and the political cartoonists are going to be reduced.
Critic is an important issue in every society; the cartoon can criticize and at the same time lessen the bitterness of critic.
Although cinema, music, theater and literature are instruments to express social issues, caricature is working more and understood by everyone, and some call it The Eight Art.
Finding subject and creativity are the bases of this field of art, and as it has a simple language to express what it means, it is understandable for all kinds of audiences; public, intellectual, politician…to understand it one just needs to have information about everyday news.
Caricature has played a significant role in the absence of social Medias, not long time ago. Papers had allocated their last page to caricature. Till the last years, caricature had its constant fans; some just had bought paper to see the caricatures.
The truth is that nowadays societies face the old difficulties and even more, but there is no good cooperation between artists and papers, so the caricaturists prefer to post their pieces on their social media pages.
cartoonist: Javad Alizade
Amini explains some reasons for this issue:
What does the caricature like in our country?
Let me give you an example. Imagine a tree with leaves and branches. It takes a seed many years to become a grown tree normally, unless some outside factors impact the process of growth artificially. To become an artist one needs to go through a process, but we see many artists have gone through that abnormal process and they have borne too early than usual. Their artworks lack the features of a real art: creativity and originality.
Take a look at social media, you can see many caricaturists, who are the same as that artificial tree, this would cause many problems, the abnormal grown tree would take the real ones' place, and as a result the outcome would be unacceptable. In future we will see what happened to our caricature art. Many may consider Iran as a center for caricature, but for the reason I mentioned I don't believe on that.
Another event that has received less attention is decrease cooperation of cartoonists with the press. Would you mind talk about this?
It is true. One of the main reasons is that the artists had their own opinion in past, they were independent and this is not the case now. Unfortunately, we hear artists are on the side of different factions, I personally try to avoid it. These categorizations and tendencies toward different branches are harmful and affect the type and quality of the artist's work. I believe that an artist should keep away from any faction and classification, and try to use his/er art to express injustice…If something wrong happened, no difference that who has done it.
Unfortunately being in one's side affected the art too
Totally. This is one of the reasons that affected the political or editorial caricature. The caricaturists have become a soldier of political faction; this is true to most of artists, celebrities also take benefit of being on one's side. Artists should be on people's side.
This explanation and analysis shows that you are aware of the details of artists and, of course, cartoonists and caricaturists' works. Don't you want to do your mission as artists in editorial caricature?
I am an active artist in social and cultural fields, and welcome cooperation with papers, but due to the reason I mentioned, I prefer not to cooperate with papers. Doing whatever someone dictates to you, questions your loyalty to the art.
As an artist I may critic Principlists or Reformists, no difference to me. I should feel free to express my ideas, when there is no such a room, I decide not to cooperate with papers. And this condition pushes more artists to use social media to present their works.
It is usual that some caricaturists cooperate with papers in order to be known, like a signer of a title sequence. Can we say you have no editorial caricature?
No. I only sent 4 or 5 pieces to papers like Jam-e-Jam, and they published them with no payment. I just wanted them to be published.
A socio-political cartoon on the subject of chicken prices in recent months
other cartoons by Amini:
