Royal Wedding: where is the satirical art?

This week sees the release of artist Alison Jackson’s latest book of carefully staged fake photos featuring celebrity lookalikes. But this time the subjects aren’t just everyday celebrities – they’re the royal family.

Up the Aisle is a spoof wedding photo album which is often laugh-out-loud hilarious. Camilla sneaking out of the party to smoke a cheeky fag, best man Harry cavorting with a bridesmaid while swigging champagne, and the whole royal family doing a drunken conga around the dancefloor.

But flicking through it, I couldn’t help thinking how few artists apart from Alison Jackson have responded to the upcoming royal wedding. American artist Jennifer Rubell recently had a small show at London’s Stephen Friedman Gallery centred around a life size waxwork sculpture of William in the now famous engagement pose – except that Kate is missing and you as a viewer can stand in her place, slip your hand through William’s arm and into a replica of her huge rock. The piece was fun and served as a wry comment which invited us to reflect on how it must feel to be Kate, a so-called commoner who’s about to join the royal family – and what this means in 2011.

And then a group of female students from the Royal College of Art dressed up in replicas of Kate’s engagement dress and created a piece of performance art by posing for several photographs in front of Buckingham Palace. The stated aim was to prompt reflection on what is still considered to be the dream of so many girls, to marry a prince – and the fact that for girls of a certain age group, this dream is now becoming more and more of a distant hope with William off the market. The stunt also prompted me to ask why it’s still considered to be the ultimate ambition for a girl to grow up and marry a prince in this supposedly post-feminist age – or why so many girls are told by popular culture that becoming a princess through marriage is still the be-all and end-all of female achievement. Whatever you thought of it, in this sense at least, the piece was successful.

But apart from these few exceptions, and obviously the latest collection of work by Alison Jackson, there’s been little response to the royal wedding from the art world. You’d have thought that with so many artists priding themselves on being anti-establishment rabble-rousers, the event would have drawn a much stronger reaction. What a brilliant opportunity, you might think. But no-one seems to have taken it up.

And the same is largely true of illustrators and cartoonists. This week I went to the new royal wedding-themed show at the Cartoon Museum in London. It was fascinating to see so many members of the royal family satirised throughout history. The Georgian period in particular is heavily featured in the show; it left us several hilarious illustrations ridiculing George III’s adult sons for their womanising, mistresses and sham marriages. I was interested to find out how the Victorian age brought with it a new era of deference which more or less held sway until the 1960s, when the cultural mood of the nation changed and the royals were once again considered fair game. And I loved revisiting the days of my youth, the late 80s and early 90s, surely the heyday of royal satire, when cartoonists and TV’s Spitting Image had a field day with characters like Prince Philip, Andrew and Fergie, the warring Waleses and the home-wrecking Camilla.

But looking at the images on show inspired by the latest royal wedding, I couldn’t help wondering if the quite brilliant satire directed at the last royal generation has somehow lost its edge. There’s so much less royal satire around now and it seems so much more bland. I think part of the problem is that Kate Middleton hasn’t yet given cartoonists much material to work with. Which is partly why so much attention has been paid to the see-through dress she famously wore at the student fashion show where she apparently caught William’s eye. But apart from this she hasn’t provided many images which have made much impact. She’s only just begun to make public appearances, has hardly spoken in public, and, happily for her, hasn’t yet made any Fergie-sized blunders.

But contrary to what the lack of images inspired by Kate and William might suggest, I still think the mood of today is just as irreverent as the one which prevailed in the late 80s and early 90s. And besides there quite generally being a lack of strong characters for cartoonists to work with, I’m convinced that part of the reason there’s so little royal satire around at the moment is because William and Harry in particular are considered untouchable and beyond criticism because of what happened to their mother. By all accounts, Harry has a character ripe for the cartoon treatment. He’s obviously the joker in the pack, has an eye for busty blondes and more than a streak of hedonism. I just think that the image of him, head-bowed, following his mum’s coffin through the streets of London, is far too enduring for this ever to really to take root.

I’ll be interested to see whether the association with Diana will be enough to protect Kate Middleton from attack in the future. At the moment she hasn’t put a foot wrong. I really hope that for her sake she manages to keep this up in the future. Otherwise I’m sure those satirists will be ready to pounce.

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