Alphonse van Woerkom Headbones Commentary

The Drawers - Alphonse van Woerkom Commentary written by Julie Oakes

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This series of drawings from Alphonse Van Woerkom are based on Goya’s Disasters of War, the same etchings that the Chapman brothers vandalized by painting over the heads of the victims with clown and puppy faces. Alphonse's treatment, admirably, grants dignity while reclaiming the classic compositions by introducing contemporary, pertinent subject matter. His adept depictions evoke the dark qualities of the original etchings and combine the serious with the brutally brazen wit of a political cartoonist.

Van Woerkom, while working for the Toronto Star in 1970, received the prestigious International Political Cartoon Award from the Salon du Caricature Montreal. He moved to New York where he developed the Op Ed page for the New York times. He has been editorial and political cartoonist for The New York Times Book Review, Newsday, De Gelderlander, and the Northern Centinel where he is currently staff cartoonist.

His illustrations of unflinching social commentary and macabre eroticism were published by Random House as Face to Face, 1973 and Common Life, 1976. From an acquired cynicism of life in the big apple, comes work that is hip and current in content while seated in fluent ability.