Award-winning illustrator, caricaturist and journalist Steve Brodner, who has covered American politics and popular culture for over three decades, will deliver Carleton College’s winter term opening convocation address on Friday, Jan. 6 from 10:50-11:50 a.m. Entitled “The Art of Politics,” Brodner’s presentation is free and open to the public.
Brodner is best known for his iconic – and sometimes savage -- commentary on American politics; his work is credited with helping to spearhead the 1980s revival of graphic commentary in the United States. A long-time contributor to The New Yorker, Brodner’s work is featured regularly in a variety of publications, including the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Time, Mother Jones, Esquire, Newsweek, Playboy, the Los Angeles Times and the Village Voice. Brodner has covered eight national political conventions and has written profiles of the political campaigns of such figures as Oliver North, Bob Dole and George W. Bush. "The face that politicians present to the public is a mask," Brodner has said of his work. "Everyone knows it's a mask. The mask is what political cartoons comment on. You're never drawing the person; you're drawing the persona."
In addition to his visual essays on political campaigns and the struggles of everyday working people and their families, Brodner has documented cultural events such as the South by Southwest Music (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas, and produced several short political videos including a series for PBS’s “Need to Know.” He is the recipient of numerous awards from the Society of Illustrators and the National Cartoonists Society, as well as the 2005 Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. In 2004 he published “Freedom Fries: The Political Art of Steve Brodner” (Phantagraphic Books), featuring an introduction by Lewis Lapham, and in January 2011 Brodner published “Artists Against The War” (Underwood Books), inspired by the 2008 exhibition of the same name by the Society of Illustrators and featuring the work of 64 artists contributing art in opposition to war, especially to those in Afghanistan and Iraq.
After earning a BFA in 1976 from Cooper Union in New York City, Brodner became a freelance illustrator in 1977, first working for the New York Review of Books. After publishing a short-lived journal called the New York Illustrated News, Brodner began to get more work after, as he states on his personal website, “editors realized that Ronald Reagan was less like an Olympian god and more like a rotting puppet.” More information about Brodner and his work can be found at www.stevebrodner.com.
For more information about this event, including disability accommodations, contact the Carleton College Office of College Relations at (507) 222-4308. The Skinner Memorial Chapel is located on First Street between College and Winona Streets in Northfield.
