In August, the Virginia Film Festival welcomed director Bill Banowsky in conversation following a showing of his film, “A Savage Art: The Life & Cartoons of Pat Oliphant.” The film features archival footage and hundreds of Oliphant works, and the showing was a homecoming of sorts, since the University of Virginia Library houses Oliphant’s archive, which was critical in the making of the film.
Marking the public opening of the film this month, Banowsky said:
“Making a film about Pat Oliphant required having access to a career’s worth of drawings, archival footage, and photographs. This film could not have been made without the support of the Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, which had collected a database full of Pat’s life’s work and generously shared this with the filmmakers.”
It's not too late to catch a showing of “A Savage Art” — the film continues at Violet Crown, with more than a dozen showings between September 12 and September 18.
Oliphant’s archive at the UVA Library
Famous for his apt caricatures of political figures, Patrick Oliphant’s career spanned more than five decades and poked fun at political and public figures across a wide range of the ideological spectrum.
In 2018, when the Oliphant archive was donated to UVA’s collection, then-curator Molly Schwartzburg said, “It is what we dream of when we imagine what a creative person’s archive might look like – a wide range of materials with great research potential.” The collection contains thousands of items: paper, sculpture, notebooks, and more. The pristine condition of the collection is thanks to Oliphant’s wife, Susan Conway Oliphant, a conservator who also holds an Executive Producer title on “A Savage Art.”
Wasting no time, the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library hosted an exhibition in 2019, just a year after acquiring the archive. “Oliphant: Unpacking the Archive” did just that: unpacked the artist’s life and work in light of his impact on the broader world. Beth Turner, a UVA Professor of Art who worked on the exhibition, told the Daily Progress in 2019:
“In Patrick’s mind’s eye, there are no divisions between art and news … he’s leaning on the circulation of newspapers to get his ideas out there, and he’s leaning on popular culture to translate his work into a medium that is powerful.”
The exhibition was celebrated with a week’s worth of events, including sessions at the Miller Center of Public Affairs (where the full video is available online), Law School, and Violet Crown theater, which showed an early screening of the now-complete film.
How to see “A Savage Art: The Life & Cartoons of Pat Oliphant”
“Thanks to the UVA Library, Pat’s life and career will forever be available for anyone to see within a 90 minute documentary film." – Bill Banowski, director, “A Savage Art”
“A Savage Art” opens at the Violet Crown theater on September 12, and you can buy tickets online for shows through September 18. Violet Crown offers discounted tickets to students of all kinds.
Materials in the Patrick Oliphant Artwork and Papers archive are housed in UVA’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. A finding aid describes the materials in the collection, and Special Collections staff can help through an online reference request.