The power of cartoons caricature

It's a long way from Honoré Daumier's caricatures satirizing the previous king of France to today's digital animations. But the history of political cartooning remnants the same: the serious business of poking fun at the high and powerful.

An exhibition gap this week at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University examines the state of political caricature at two essential moments: The birth of the form in comic journals such as La Caricature in 1830s France, and the beginning of a new era in which today's artists work in journalism's shifting landscape.

Among the contemporary artist featured in the show are "Doonesbury's" Garry Trudeau; veteran political cartoonists Steve Bell, Steve Brodner, Jeff Danziger and Pat Oliphant, and The News & Observer's recently retired Dwane Powell. The 19th-century illustrations center on the work of Daumier satirizing Louis-Philippe and that of his contemporaries.