No offensive prominent, well-known world citizen or tricky topic, but ordinary people play the leading role in the print that was awarded this year's Inkstspot Prize. The prize for the best political cartoon published in the national and regional press in the past year goes to Pieter Geenen. He drew a comic entitled 'Daredevils' for Vrij Nederland. In the drawn story, we see five daredevils performing tricks in the everyday circus: the gullible, naive citizen on the tightrope, with his head in a lion's mouth or blindfolded on the trapeze. Pieter Geenen received the prize today from jury chairman Kees van Kooten at the opening of the Politics in Print 2012 exhibition.
"In a deceptively naive puppet show manner, Geenen analyses the delusion of the week and the hype of the day," the jury said. "He comments on current affairs from the simplified point of view of the ordinary man, who doesn't understand it all either but nevertheless keeps bravely running after everything, thinking he knows it all, but in the meantime is being conned with his eyes open."
According to the jury president, Geenen's humour is "razor-sharp, but curiously hopeful above all else. This completely original form of social satire puts the watching reader back on his feet time and again. Then prevails the humour that knows how to put things into perspective."
Other major contenders for the prize this year were Marco Lap with a print on sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, TRIK with a print on the euro crisis in Greece, Merijn Beeldverteller on China's blockade of the NY Times website and Siegfried Woldhek on the Catshuis deliberations.
More information at www.pers-en-prent.nl.
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