Bruce Leslie Petty, born 23 November 1929 at

Doncaster Doncaster (, ) is a city in South Yorkshire, England. Named after the River Don, it is the administrative centre of the larger City of Doncaster. It is the second largest settlement in South Yorkshire after Sheffield. Doncaster is situated in ...

, a suburb of

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

, is one of

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

's best known political satirists and

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...

s.Bruce Petty Profile
,

The Age ''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...

, accessed 13 September 2008 He is a regular contributor to Melbourne's ''

'' newspaper. His intricate images have been described as "doodle-bombs" for their free-association of links between various ideas, people and institutions. ''Age'' journalist Martin Flanagan wrote that Petty "re-invented the world as a vast scribbly machine with interlocking cogs and levers that connected people in wholly logical but unlikely ways."

Work

Petty began working for the Owen Brothers animation studio in Melbourne in 1949, before moving to the UK in 1954. His cartoons were published in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', ''

Esquire Esquire (, ; abbreviated Esq.) is usually a courtesy title. In the United Kingdom, ''esquire'' historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentlema ...

'' and ''

Punch Punch commonly refers to: * Punch (combat), a strike made using the hand closed into a fist * Punch (drink), a wide assortment of drinks, non-alcoholic or alcoholic, generally containing fruit or fruit juice Punch may also refer to: Places * Pun ...

''. On his return to Australia in 1961, he worked at first for '' The (Sydney) Daily Mirror'', '' The Bulletin'' and ''

The Australian ''The Australian'', with its Saturday edition, ''The Weekend Australian'', is a broadsheet newspaper published by News Corp Australia since 14 July 1964.Bruns, Axel. "3.1. The active audience: Transforming journalism from gatekeeping to gatew ...

'' before joining ''

'' in 1976. In

1976 Events January * January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force. * January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea. * January 11 – The 1976 Phila ...

, the animated film ''

Leisure Leisure has often been defined as a quality of experience or as free time. Free time is time spent away from business, work, job hunting, domestic chores, and education, as well as necessary activities such as eating and sleeping. Leisure ...

'', of which he was the director, won an

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

for the producer

Suzanne Baker Suzanne Dale Baker (born 1939) is an Australian film producer, print and television journalist, writer, historian and feminist. In 1977, she became the first Australian woman to win an Academy Award, winning for the animated short film ''Leisure ...

(the first Australian woman to win an Oscar). "When I got it, the Oscar went to the producer. We got a picture of it, a very nice gold-framed picture." (''The Age'', 22 June 2004) He has made a number of other award-winning animated films including ''Art'', ''Australian History'', ''Hearts and Minds'' and ''Karl Marx''. Bruce has also created a number of "machine sculptures" with the most famous being a piece known as "Man Environment Machine" (fondly known as the "Petty Machine") that was a feature piece of the Australian Pavilion at World Expo '85 at Tsukuba, Japan. In 2007, he received the

AFI AFI may refer to: * ''Address-family identifier'', a 16 bit field of the Routing Information Protocol * Ashton Fletcher Irwin, an Australian drummer * AFI (band), an American rock band ** ''AFI'' (2004 album), a retrospective album by AFI rele ...

Best Documentary Director prize for the documentary ''Global Haywire'' which he wrote, directed and animated, as well as the Best Documentary Sound prize ; this documentary tries to unravel the global pattern that leads to an understanding of how the world came to be as it is today, and is based on interviews with intellectuals, students and journalists. Bruce's 2008 book, ''Petty's Parallel Worlds'', is a retrospective collection of editorial cartoons from 1959 to the present, street sketches done on assignment around the world, and etchings. Those of Petty's cartoons that depict themes such as the economy, international relations or other social issues as complicated interlocking machines (that manipulate, or are manipulated by, people) have been likened to

Rube Goldberg machines A Rube Goldberg machine, named after American cartoonist Rube Goldberg, is a chain reaction-type machine or contraption intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and (impractically) overly complicated way. Usually, these machi ...

Heath Robinson William Heath Robinson (31 May 1872 – 13 September 1944) was an English cartoonist, illustrator and artist, best known for drawings of whimsically elaborate machines to achieve simple objectives. In the UK, the term "Heath Robinson cont ...

contraptions. At the 2016

Walkley Awards The annual Walkley Awards are presented in Australia to recognise and reward excellence in journalism. They cover all media including print, television, documentary, radio, photographic and online media. The Gold Walkley is the highest prize and ...

Petty was recognised with the Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism award.

Influences

Petty says in the foreword to ''Parallel Worlds'' that he is a

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humani ...

and

Socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

, mentions visiting

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the cou ...

and

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

in the early 1960s, and feeling the influence of

Colin Wilson Colin Henry Wilson (26 June 1931 – 5 December 2013) was an English writer, philosopher and novelist. He also wrote widely on true crime, mysticism and the paranormal, eventually writing more than a hundred books. Wilson called his phil ...

's '' The Outsider''. Also by Charlie Perkins.

Personal life

Petty was first married to

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...

journalist and film critic Julie Rigg. They have two sons. In 1988 he married award-winning author

Kate Grenville Catherine Elizabeth Grenville (born 1950) is an Australian author. She has published fifteen books, including fiction, non-fiction, biography, and books about the writing process. In 2001, she won the Orange Prize for '' The Idea of Perfection ...

, with whom he has a son and a daughter. He and Grenville have separated, and Petty is now partnered with the bookseller Lesley McKay.

Filmography

* Hearts and Minds (1968) * Australian History (1971) * Art (1974) * ''

'' (1976) * Magic Arts (1978) * Karl Marx (1979) * Megalomedia (1983) * Movers (1986) * Money (1998) * The Mad Century (2000) * Human Contraptions (2002) * Global Haywire (2007)

Books

*
Australian artist in South East Asia
' / Bruce Petty with introduction by Ronald Searle (1962) *
Petty's Australia fair
' / Bruce Petty (1967) *
A portfolio of Petty
' / Bruce Petty (1969) *
The best of Petty
' / 1968, Ed. Ron Smith *
The Penguin Petty
' (1972, ) *
Petty's Australia: and how it works
' / Bruce Petty (1976, ) *
The Petty age
' / Bruce Petty (1978, ) *
Petty's money book
' / Bruce Petty (1983, ) *
Women and men
' / Petty (1986, ) *
Bruce Petty's the absurd machine
' / Bruce Petty (1997, ) *

' Bruce Petty (2008, Ed. Russ Radcliffe, )

References

Conversation with Bruce Petty
(1972 sound recording) - interviewer, Hazel de Berg
Interview with Bruce Petty, cartoonist and filmmaker
(1996 sound recording) - interviewer, Ann Turner
Portrait of Bruce Petty
(picture) by Virginia Wallace-Crabbe
Bruce Petty (I)

IMDb IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

Classroom resources
Cartoon page of The Age newspaper

from ''

''
Three Cartoonists
- transcript of Andrew Denton’s ABC interview with cartoonist Bruce Petty, Bill Leak and Patrick Cook

of ''Global Haywire'' in

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Petty, Bruce 1929 births Living people The New Yorker cartoonists Cartoonists from Melbourne Australian animators Australian animated film directors Australian satirists Australian editorial cartoonists Directors of Best Animated Short Academy Award winners