LONDON: Pictures in a new exhibition depict US President George W. Bush as a crocodile, a spider and a dimwitted cowboy. And those are the polite ones. “Misunderestimating the President Through Cartoons” looks back on the years since Bush’s 2000 election victory through political caricature — and highlights the gap between the relative restraint of US cartoonists and a far more savage British style.

The show, which opened on Thursday at London’s Political Cartoon Gallery, features artists from Europe and the United States, including Martyn Turner of the Irish Times and longtime Baltimore Sun cartoonist Kevin Kallaugher.

But most of the work comes from British cartoonists, who revel in the grotesque and in bawdy, toilet humour.

Steve Bell, the Guardian newspaper’s veteran cartoonist, said US colleagues “are not as visually visceral as we are.”

The trans-Atlantic contrast is striking. Kallaugher shows Bush as a pusher plying Uncle Sam with cheap oil, or getting Willy Wonka to sugarcoat the Iraq war.

Bell, Britain’s highest-profile editorial cartoonist, usually depicts the president as a chimpanzee, with simian features and hairy limbs — often accompanied by lapdog Tony Blair.

“He has got chimp-like features,” said Bell. “There’s no getting away from it.”

Martin Rowson, who works for the Guardian and other publications, is equally grotesque. A cartoon about Bush’s recent visit to Beijing shows the president shaking hands with his Chinese counterpart, their hands dripping with blood.

Other British artists focus on the president’s cowboy image and his frequent malapropisms.

“We love making fun of people who mangle the English language, which to a lot of British people is most Americans,” said freelance cartoonist Andy Davey.

The exhibition also contains a veritable menagerie of animal images. Bell pictures Bush as a crocodile in the toxic waters of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.

Another cartoon, entitled ‘Iraqnophobia’, depicts him as a spider.—AP