Bruce Leslie Petty (23 November 1929 – 6 April 2023) was an Australianpolitical satirist, sculptor[1] and cartoonist.[2] He was a regular contributor to Melbourne'sThe Age newspaper. His intricate images have been described as "doodle-bombs" for their free-association of links between various ideas, people and institutions.Age journalistMartin Flanagan wrote that Petty "re-invented the world as a vast scribbly machine with interlocking cogs and levers that connected people in wholly logical but unlikely ways."[2]
He received aSilver Stanley Award from theAustralian Cartoonists' Association; anAFI Best Documentary Director prize;Melbourne Press Club's Quill Lifetime Achievement Award; and the Most Outstanding Contribution to JournalismWalkley Award.
Petty was born on 23 November 1929,[3] atDoncaster, a suburb ofMelbourne.
Petty began working for the Owen Brothers animation studio in Melbourne in 1949, before moving to theUK in 1954. His cartoons were published inThe New Yorker,Esquire andPunch. On his return to Australia in 1961, he worked at first forThe (Sydney) Daily Mirror,The Bulletin andThe Australian before joiningThe Age in 1976.
In1976, the animated filmLeisure, of which he was the director, won anAcademy Award for the producerSuzanne Baker (the first Australian woman to win an Oscar). "When I got it, the Oscar went to the producer. We got a picture of it, a very nice gold-framed picture." (The Age, 22 June 2004) Petty made a number of other animated films includingArt,Australian History,Hearts and Minds andKarl Marx.
Petty also created a number of "machine sculptures" with the most famous being a piece known as "Man Environment Machine" (fondly known as the "Petty Machine") that was a feature piece of the Australian Pavilion atWorld Expo '85 at Tsukuba, Japan.
In 2007, he received theAFI Best Documentary Director prize for the documentaryGlobal Haywire which he wrote, directed and animated, as well as the Best Documentary Sound prize; this documentary tries to unravel the global pattern that leads to an understanding of how the world came to be as it is today, and is based on interviews with intellectuals, students and journalists.
Petty's 2008 book,Petty's Parallel Worlds, is a retrospective collection of editorial cartoons from 1959 to the present, street sketches done on assignment around the world, and etchings. Those of Petty's cartoons that depict themes such as the economy, international relations or other social issues as complicated interlocking machines (that manipulate, or are manipulated by, people) have been likened toRube Goldberg machines orHeath Robinson contraptions.
Petty died on 6 April 2023, at the age of 93.[4]
Petty said in the foreword toParallel Worlds that he was ahumanist and socialist, mentioning visits toNicaragua andCuba in the early 1960s, and feeling the influence ofColin Wilson'sThe Outsider.
Petty was married firstly toABC journalist and film critic Julie Rigg. They had two sons. In 1988 he married authorKate Grenville, with whom he had a son and a daughter. He and Grenville separated, and Petty then partnered with the bookseller Lesley McKay.[5][6]
