How the Beano encouraged generations of artists to break the rules

How the Beano encouraged generations of artists to break the rules

We asked eight artists about the comic's influence ahead of a new exhibition exploring the publication's history and featuring contemporary art with that "Beano sensibility"

Simeon Barclay

“My early inclination to draw was the urge to mimic and copy the illustrations in the pages of those British comics like the Beano, the Dandy and Whizzer and Chips. It was a space of comedy, kinship, solitude, escapism. There is a revelry within the space of the frames for anarchy and turning conventions upside down, so there is an element of [the Russian philosopher Mikhail] Bakhtin and the carnivalesque—a sort of release for the viewer. I loved the Bash Street Kids character, Plug; I claimed him as a leitmotif in my work, his innate ugliness placing him on the fringe of society. A mirror to society’s normative tropes, he stands proud in the liminal space where his mere presence enacts a criticality. It’s a shame but in the absence of any relatable or expansive Black characters at the time, Plug’s bonkers individuality, for me, opened up an unorthodox and contingent space in which to insert and mirror myself within the frame.”