Drawing a fine line

Satire is one of the great British traditions, closely associated with the notions of personal liberty, readiness to express opinion and our much-vaunted freedom of thought. The English appetite for satire has long set standards of democratic licence unequalled in the rest of the world: the lampoon is sacrosanct in our culture, a guarantee of a healthily sceptical attitude to authority and self-importance. It is a great safety valve, as well. Perhaps because the British have been so effusive and inventive as satirists, as a nation we have felt less need to rebel in more active ways. Instead of dragging politicians from their seats of power and stringing them up, we have been content to satirise the swine. Well, it’s this attitude that has made us what we are today. In which case, it’s high time for direct physical action…

Satirical London, at the Museum of London until 3 September, offers over 350 examples of satire from the past three centuries in a display which is somewhat unclear in its presentation. The quality of the work on show is, for the most part, unimpeachably high, with very fine things by Hogarth and Rowlandson, Gillray and Cruikshank, coming up to date with Steadman, Scarfe, Martin Rowson and Steve Bell. But the exhibition lacks clarity and narrative drive. It’s loosely clustered in a congeries of semi-divided spaces, with insufficient thought given to chronology or theme. The gloomy wastes of this floor of the Museum are neither welcoming nor pleasant to visit, and the exhibition design doesn’t help matters. There’s a video loop from a 1985 Fluck and Law documentary which is so brief that anyone spending a reasonable amount of time looking at other exhibits in its vicinity (several sections of the gallery) is subjected to its inane repetition a dozen times. This is not only immensely irritating, it also destroys concentration.