"The Eighties - A Decade of Extremes" and GAL Gerard Alsteens

"The Eighties - A Decade of Extremes"  is an exhibition that presents a nuanced picture of the eighties with all its contrasts, cheerful and playful, but also hard and radical.

"The exhibition also recalls social and political events through a variety of materials, ranging from drawings by 'political cartoonist' GAL, vinyl records, magazines and movie excerpts."

GAL (Gerard Alsteens, °1940)  is the éminence grise of the Belgian political cartoonists.
Knack Magazine (2016,nr 23) published a 5 pages long interview with GAL.
In his cartoons you evidently experience his social engagement and contesting against everything what's wrong in the world.

The cartoonist is right when he states about his political cartoons of more than 30 years ago:
"I could publish them again today. I only need to replace the heads."

I looked in my bookcase and found this little book: "AAA...!  75 politieke tekeningen van GAL. (75 political drawings, 1977).
In fact it is not a book, but an edition of "kreatief" , a literary and art magazine.

If you watch the cartoons below, drawn in the seventies, you understand why you easily can change them into contemporary political drawings...

everything is possible again...

"le defi schaarbeekois"

You can visit the expo in the M HKA Museum in Antwerp from June 17 until August 7.

More about GAL on our blog:
GAL