How beloved cartoonist Michael Leunig, who was famous for his unique sense of playful whimsy, became a hated target for savage woke activists

Michael Leunig cared little about fitting in, less about meeting woke cultural demands and not at all about even being particularly relevant, his colleagues say.

That’s probably why he was so popular, they add.

In the unusual and colorful world of editorial cartooning, the late artist, poet and social philosopher, who died Thursday at the age of 79, was never concerned about being seen as unconventional.

And he certainly was, according to fellow award-winning cartoonist Warren Brown.

“Leunig was not a conventional cartoonist at all, not in any respect,” Brown told Daily Mail Australia.

‘He was not a daily editorial cartoonist, or a political cartoonist, in the sense that he made caricatures of businessmen and politicians or the issues of the day.

‘His commentary was often social, but don’t get me wrong: the social part of it always had a sharp political edge.

‘Leunig was like no other cartoonist; his work was a beautiful combination of writing and drawing and ideas that actually became an art form of their own.

“He was clearly a deep thinker, a complex character and that’s why people loved him.”

Brown was as revered among his contemporaries as among his fans and said it was unlikely Australia would ever see another cartoonist make such a big impact.

Leunig was born in Melbourne in 1945 and attended school at Footscray North Primary School and Maribyrnong High School and briefly attended university before dropping out and concentrating on his drawing.

Eventually he found his way to The Age newspaper in his hometown, where he would work for 55 years before eventually parting ways with the company in September, amid a round of furious cost-cutting.

However, his work transcends the reach of the Melbourne daily, with his beloved cartoons, filled with iconic characters such as the round-nosed Mr Curly and his group of ducks, appearing in whimsical calendars that have won him fans across the country and around the world delivered.

His ability to find the humor and, more importantly, the humanity in the meaningless connected with people from all walks of life.

“You would often see in the newspapers that Leunig would be filling in for another editorial cartoonist who was on leave or whatever, and their cartoon would always say the Prime Minister or Prime Minister was doing something,” Brown recalled.

‘Then suddenly there would be Leunig for a week or so, and the cartoons would all be about something completely irreverent, like, “Oh, we have, you know, ducks doing something or other” and the readers absolutely loved it.

“It didn’t matter that the news commentary wasn’t difficult. It was a kind of social commentary. It had a whimsical character.

‘There was a childlike innocence to a lot of his work – but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have a kind of quicker mind and grasp of what was right – he certainly had a pretty clear vision of what was right. wrong.

“It was kind of like he was almost trying to understand the world, and through the prism of his mind he opened doors for other people to think in a different way, to think like him.

‘And we appreciated it and we understood that he did things differently: “Oh, it’s a Michael Leunig!” Because if it was anyone else, we would say, “What is this? I don’t understand it.”

For all his childlike innocence, Leunig courted controversy in his final years at The Age for his brazen views – and confrontational cartoons – at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

An outspoken critic of mandatory vaccinations, he used his platform to provoke debate about government policy, at a time when it was often criticized. social exclusion.

Brown, who has won numerous awards for his thought-provoking editorial cartoons in The Daily Telegraph over nearly four decades, knows all too well the challenges Leunig faced in expressing his views.

“Lately he has been receiving quite a bit of criticism for various cartoons,” he said.

‘Hereby day and night, and I hate this word, but when everyone is so “woke” – sorry, I can’t think of another word to use – it’s really hard for cartoonists.

‘There’s a desire for people to attack and get offended on all kinds of fronts – people like to be offended by things.

‘It’s very difficult for cartoonists because you’re certainly not necessarily an agent provocateur, but the job is to make people think.

‘It is sometimes a very complex relationship… because you want to make people laugh, but you also want to make them think about life, a subject or the world in a different way.’

Furthermore, Brown, cartoonists had the shortest window in which to accomplish their mission.

‘A cartoon has a life expectancy of about four seconds: someone opens a newspaper, looks at it, sees it, reads it, and looks at it again, and then they laugh, or whatever, and that’s it – that’s all the time you have,” he said.

“It’s the whole Oscar Wilde thing: ‘Brevity is the soul of wit.’ That’s the trick: you have to be able to convey that message very quickly, in four seconds.

“If you can get that message across, and it’s a hand grenade and it goes off, that can be fantastic.

“Sometimes I’d be on the train, and I’d be on the crowded train, and someone would have the newspaper, and I’d be kind of anxiously waiting for them to get to the cartoon.

“Then they get there, and you look at their eyes, and you look at the smoke or whatever, and then you move on.

“If I got a grin, it worked, you know, you did your job and it’s really worth it.

“But sometimes you can show it all in the cartoon, and it’s a hand grenade that you don’t expect to go off, and it goes off in a way you didn’t expect.

“That’s what happened, I think, with Michael Leunig during COVID.

“The cancel culture really affected him.

“It was very difficult for him, as it would be for anyone, to see people pulling away from him and letting him go.”

As difficult as that time must have been, Brown said the lasting memories of Leunig will remain, in reality, joy and wonder.

‘HHis legacy will be all his charming characters, Mr. Curly and the ducks and things like that,” he said.

‘And the wonderful thing innocence of them, I think maybe this will be his legacy.

‘We were almost at the point where we thought, “Michael, he’s going to be there forever.”

“Unfortunately, none of us will be… but his art will certainly live on forever.”