The waning presence of cartoons in the public space prompted a superannuated Economics Professor to sit up and take notice. For long, Subhendu Dasgupta has been an avid lover, collector, and researcher of cartoons. In 2014, he tried to put together the dwindling tribe of cartoonists in what was to become Cartoon Dol, a cartoonist’s collective, an association of the practitioners of the art of humour. The primary objective of Cartoon Dol is to revive and popularize cartoons, explore and experiment with new media, take cartoons to the gallery space, conduct workshops, publish books, create an archive, and provide a suitable platform for cartoonists. It also wants to create a space in popular visual media/ new media to recognize unknown artists and students, apart from established practitioners. It also proposes to popularise the art form by crossing the watertight borders, if any, between drawing and artists’ niches. They have initiated projects of archiving cartoons and caricatures, which have drawn the attention of social scientists, historians, and the researchers in humanities.
From seasoned veterans to promising greenhorns, Cartoon Dol has them all. Amol Chakraborty, Anup Ray, Debasish Deb, Upal Sengupta, Uday Deb, Chiranjit Samanta, Rituparno Basu, Ujjayini Mitra, Avishek Choudhury, Aritro Dasgupta are enthusiastic members of the group. Cartoon Dol participated in the Annual Art Fair 2014, a first for a cartoonist collective. The phenomenal success of this participation inspired Cartoon Dol to participate in subsequent art fairs. In 2014, Maya Art Space showcased the first full-fledged exhibition of Cartoon Dol, curated by Debdutta Gupta, which was also a first. Cartoon Dol has researched and archived a section of the long-lost works of several cartoonists, its own senior member Amol Chakraborty being one. The collective brought out Amal Album, a handsome collection of works by the veteran cartoonist. Finally, Kolkata has warmed up to Cartoon Dol’s public initiative Car-toon, a retro milk-white ambassador that was embellished with cartoons that blended razor-sharp wit and deft brush strokes, holding up a mirror to the idiosyncrasies of the city.
