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Feature: Exhibition - Marriage à la Mode: Royals and Commoners in and out of Love at The Cartoon Museum from March 23 - May 22

Published: 24 March, 2011
by DAN CARRIER

Already worn out by the media’s obsession with Will and Kate’s impending nuptials? Then head to the Cartoon Museum, where a refreshingly acerbic exhibition puts a proper perspective on the latest wedding frenzy

SINCE the announcement of a royal wedding was made, we have been bombarded by companies trying to piggyback on the fact two people are getting married at the end of April. It’s no longer just about selling tatty mugs to cash-flushed, sense-deprived tourists and royalists. I have this week alone answered calls from a catering firm claiming they have been “inundated” with brides-to-be asking to be “Copy Kates” (their term) who want this Camden-based, swanky food creator to do their wedding feast “exactly as the Happy Couple are having theirs”. 

A drinks company have asked if I would like to do a story on the fact they had invented 

a new cocktail – using their product of course, which they call the “most romantic liquor in the world” – to celebrate the nuptials. 

And on it goes: a bar offering couples called Wills and Kate a free bottle of bubbly if they come in during happy hour; a car tyre firm who say they’ll do a free check if you are getting hitched this year (how to prove that one, I haven’t worked out – a wedding licence in the glove box, alongside your MOT?).

This nonsense is  very trying, but the weari­ness recedes when you look at another wedding-themed event that starts this week: the wonderfully satirical Cartoon Museum, in Bloomsbury, is hosting an exhibition called Marriage à la Mode – Royals and Common­ers in and out of Love.

It features works by many of today’s cartoon geniuses including Steve Bell and Posy Simmonds but it also covers the historical events, with the help  of works by 18th-century caricaturists such as James Gillray.

Of course recent years in the Royal Family have offered a bumper harvest of the tragic and the absurd, but this exhibition is not limited to royal weddings. It looks at married life ancient and modern in every social class covering anything from William Hogarth's extraordinary Marriage A-la-mode from the mid-18th century to vignettes from the often explosive ups and downs of married life for Andy Capp and Flo. There are the saucy seaside takes on the great institution given to us by Donald McGill and Arnold Taylor. And there is a lively tour round some familiar themes – the hen-pecked husband, the omnipotent mother-in-law from hell and battles of the bedroom.  

It’s a feast of satirical commentary and fun. And it may just make you wonder why anyone cares that a man born into immense wealth is having a big fat party to celebrate being in love, partly paid for by the rest of us.

Marriage à la Mode: Royals and Commoners in and out of Love is at the The Cartoon Museum, 35 Little Russell Street, WC1, from March 23-May 22, Tuesday-Saturday 10.30am-5.30pm; Sunday noon-5.30pm, 020 7580 8155, www.cartoonmuseum.org 

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