Pat Oliphant

Career In 1952, while still a teenager, Oliphant began his career in journalism as a copy boy at Adelaide's evening tabloid newspaper, The News, which had recently been inherited by Rupert Murdoch. He had no interest in attending college, as he had an ambivalent relationship with formal education and already knew he wanted to be a journalist. In 1955, he moved to The News''' rival, The Advertiser, a morning broadsheet with 200,000 subscribers.

Before long, editors noticed his interest in drawing, and he began producing both cartoons and illustrations. During this period, he found inspiration in the work of English cartoonist Ronald Searle, Western Australian cartoonist Paul Rigby, and the political commentary in Mad magazine, which he described as a "shot in the arm."

Announcing his arrival, Time magazine stated, "Few U.S. cartoonists have so deftly distilled the spirit of [Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater] as Australia's Patrick Bruce Oliphant, 29, a recent arrival who has not yet set eyes on either Johnson or Goldwater." Oliphant's reputation grew rapidly, and in 1967, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning for his 1 February 1966 cartoon They Won't Get Us To The Conference Table... Will They? In this cartoon, Ho Chi Minh is depicted carrying the body of a dead Vietnamese man in the posture of a Pietà. Oliphant had intentionally submitted what he considered one of the weakest cartoons he had published that year. When it won, he criticized the Pulitzer board, stating that they had selected the cartoon for its subject matter rather than the quality of the work. He refused to be considered for the award again and became a regular critic of the Pulitzer.

According to Ralph Steadman, Oliphant would have been Hunter S. Thompson's "first choice of a 'cartoonist collaborator.

The Washington Star In 1975, Oliphant moved to The Washington Star, attracted by editor Jim Bellows. In 1980, he switched syndication companies, joining Universal Press Syndicate. The Star ceased publication in 1981.

Independent work After The Washington Star folded, Oliphant received offers from other newspapers but chose to remain independent, relying on the earnings from his extensive syndication. He was the first political cartoonist in the twentieth century to work independently from a home newspaper, A decade later, a similar survey reached the same conclusion, noting Oliphant's original and influential aesthetic. By 1983, Oliphant was the most widely syndicated American political cartoonist, with his work appearing in more than 500 newspapers. His work influenced the field's overall appearance. For example, when he stopped using Duoshade, a chemical process for creating textured backgrounds, in the early 1980s, other cartoonists followed suit. In 1990, The New York Times described him as "the most influential editorial cartoonist now working".

By 1995, Oliphant had reduced the frequency of his daily cartoons to four days a week. At this time, he began submitting his cartoons in digital form as scans of his original drawings. By 2014, he was submitting three cartoons a week.

In January 2015, Oliphant retired from publishing syndicated cartoons. However, in February 2017, he came out of retirement with two cartoons for The Nib featuring Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. One cartoon depicted Trump as a childlike member of the Hitler Youth, asking a ghoulish Bannon what he thought of his outfit.

Personal life and death

Oliphant was the nephew of Sir Mark Oliphant, the Australian physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II and later became the Governor of South Australia.

In 1979, Oliphant was naturalized as an American citizen. In 1983, he married his second wife, Mary Ann Kuhn, He had three children, Grant, Laura, and Susanne Oliphant, and two stepchildren, Pauline and Daniel Conway.

Oliphant died at his home in Santa Fe, on 13 July 2026, at the age of 90 of age-related health issues.

Style Oliphant's earliest cartoons in Australia often mimicked the style of his elders, but his mature style is easily identifiable and distinctive. His caricatured subjects are immediately recognizable and are made "grotesque" through "extreme distortion". and for his innovative use of the horizontal format in editorial cartoons. Curator Harry Katz has called him "one of history's finest comic artists".

Oliphant specialized in caricaturing United States presidents, and multiple exhibitions have featured his work organized chronologically or respectively by presidential administration. He developed specific tropes for various presidents: His dark, brooding Richard Nixon is sometimes depicted naked and ashamed, covering his privates like Adam and Eve, and at other times making the "Victory" sign. Oliphant regularly portrayed the accident-prone Gerald Ford with a bandage on his forehead. His fondness for Ronald Reagan did not prevent him from portraying the president as an oblivious buffoon in a parody of one of his films. George H. W. Bush sometimes appears clutching a handbag and at other times is swathed in cloth as "Bush of Arabia". During the Bill Clinton administration, Oliphant regularly used Socks the cat and Buddy the dog as a sort of "Greek chorus" to comment on the events. He famously portrayed Barack Obama as an Easter Island head worshipped by voters. Oliphant found that it took time to find the right look for a new president, noting, "I hate changes of Administrations. It takes six months to 'get' a new man."

"Punk" Early in his career, Oliphant began to include a small penguin in almost every one of his political cartoons. This character, which he named Punk, joined a tradition of such secondary figures, termed "dingbats" by cartoonist R. C. Harvey. These figures appear in the work of earlier cartoonists such as Fred O. Seibel of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, whose cartoons featured a small, ironic crow, and earlier by W.K. (William Keevil) Patrick of the New Orleans Times-Democrat and later Times-Picayune, who had a signature duck character. Punk was inspired by a penguin brought back by a colleague from South Australia's south coast, who delivered the penguin to the zoo. Oliphant decided to include a penguin in his cartoon as a result. but he soon became stylized and remained so throughout Oliphant's career. Punk adds a layer of commentary to the subject of the cartoon,

Oliphant originally created Punk as a space for subversion in the conservative editorial environment of the Adelaide Advertiser.

Oliphant often remarked on his intention to draw criticism from all political perspectives and indeed received strong criticism from ethnic and religious groups for some of his cartoons. In 2001, the Asian American Journalists Association accused Oliphant of "cross[ing] the line from acerbic depiction to racial caricature".

In 2005, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee expressed concern that some of Oliphant's caricatures were racist and misleading. In 2007, two Oliphant cartoons produced similar responses. One cartoon about Israel's December 2008 offensive against Hamas in Gaza sparked criticism among some American Jews. The cartoon featured a jackbooted, headless figure representing Israel in a goosestepping posture, looming over a small female figure holding a baby labelled "Gaza". The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center said the cartoon denigrated and demonized Israel and mimicked Nazi propaganda. It called on the New York Times and other media outlets to remove the cartoon from their websites.

A 2005 cartoon showing Condoleezza Rice as a parrot perched on George W. Bush's shoulder was criticized by some readers for depicting her with buck teeth and exaggerated lips.

Oliphant's cartoons featuring Catholic scandals have also been controversial. The Catholic League called him "one of the most viciously anti-Catholic editorial cartoonists ever to have disgraced the pages of American newspapers". On Christmas Eve 1993, Catholic readers were angered by a cartoon associating Michael Jackson and priests with child molestation. One of his most famous cartoons, "Celebration of Spring at St. Pedophilia's – the Annual Running of the Altar Boys", sparked nationwide debates in print, radio, and television when it was published on 20 March 2002. The New York Times and Washington Post, as well as other papers, chose not to include the cartoon online,

In 1987, Oliphant protested the selection of Berkeley Breathed for the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. Oliphant's concern was that Breathed's work "has, so far as I know, not appeared on one editorial page in the country". Addressing the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention to hearty applause, Oliphant represented the views of many of his colleagues: that the seriousness of editorial cartooning as a journalistic pursuit was at risk and that the Pulitzer was encouraging the valuing of humour over political statement.

Non-newspaper drawings

Newspaper editorial cartoons were not Oliphant's only genre. In his early days in Australia, he produced a wide variety of newspaper illustrations. Later in his career, he created illustrations for numerous books, and his work, often in full colour, was featured in the pages and on the covers of many magazines. For a time, he drew cartoons for Rolling Stone; this body of work was intended for a different audience than his newspaper cartoons and was often more graphic or intentionally offensive than his syndicated work. In the 1990s, he drew for a Northwest Airlines advertising campaign advocating the "open skies" policy concept. (Oliphant sometimes flew privately and held a pilot's certificate.) By the early 1980s, Oliphant had begun producing sculpture in addition to his editorial cartoons. In 1988, he started attending William Christenberry's figure drawing classes at the Corcoran School of Art. His work in various media has been featured in several exhibitions, most notably at the National Portrait Gallery. He worked in pen and ink, oil, lithography, and other media.

Sculpture

Oliphant began working in bronze in the early 1980s and produced a significant body of work throughout the remainder of his career. His bronze caricatures have been favorably compared with those of the nineteenth-century French caricaturist Honoré Daumier.

Works in bronze Tip O’Neill, 1985. Held by Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Military Dance/Dancing Couple, 1986 Klansman, 1987; edition of 3. Held by Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Harry Byrd, edition of 10. Held by Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Artist and Model [Oliphant and Nixon]; unique. Held by Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Nixon on Horseback, 1985; edition of 12. Held by National Portrait Gallery; Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Nixon [victory sign]; edition of 10. Held by Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Naked Nixon, 1985; edition of 12. Held by Phillips Collection; Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Richard Nixon, 1985; held by National Portrait Gallery Lyndon Johnson, 1985; edition of 12. Held by National Portrait Gallery; Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Reagan on Horseback, 1985; edition of 12. Held by National Portrait Gallery; Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Gerald Ford, 1989. Held by National Portrait Gallery; Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Jimmy Carter, 1989; edition of 10. Held by National Portrait Gallery; Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Clinton as Billy the Kid. Held by Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library George Bush [throwing horseshoes], 1989. Held by National Portrait Gallery; Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Jesse Helms, 1991; edition of 12. Held by Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library General Schwartzkopf, 1991; edition of 12. Held by Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Clark Clifford, 1991; edition of 10. Held by Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 1991; edition of 10. Held by National Portrait Gallery; Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Rhino, 1992; edition of 9 Bush of Arabia, 1993; edition of 20. Held by Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library Cigar Dreams (Bill Clinton), 1999; edition of 9 The Adjournment of the Luncheon Party, 2002 Leadership [Bush and Cheney] Angelina Eberly, 2004 Distinguished Service Award, National Wildlife Federation, 1969 National Headliners Award for Editorial Cartooning National Cartoonists Society Editorial Cartoon Award, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1984, 1989, 1990, 1991 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, 1974 Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Dartmouth College, 1981 Cartoonist of the Year, Washington Journalism Review (1985, and another year) Inkpot Award, 2009

Archives and collections Oliphant's papers are housed at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia. The collection includes nearly 7,000 daily cartoon drawings, numerous sketchbooks, fine art on paper, sculpture, fan and hate mail, and extensive documentation of Oliphant's career. His works are also held in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, National Portrait Gallery, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, George W. Bush Presidential Library, the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries, and the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe.