As Michelle Obama leads an arts tour of Pittsburgh for the first ladies, and two first men, of the countries represented at the G-20 summit, she is sure to encounter a new exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum, which the group is scheduled to visit on Friday. “Drawn to the Summit,” on the fifth floor of a building otherwise completely devoted to Warholmania, provides a stark counterpoint to the summit and helps remind us why images can be such powerful vehicles for political expression.

The very first panel in the show defies expectations that a political cartoon can merely elicit a laugh — or maybe annoyance — from a viewer. Silent Tsunami, by Argentine artist Alberto Sabat, is disarmingly jarring and produces a strong visceral reaction. Using digital illustration techniques, Sabat’s image first strikes with its use of color — the light brown of caked mud, somehow made beautiful here — in a medium that often does not employ color at all. Yet the beauty of the color is misleading, for once its effect subsides, the focus turns to an image of a starving child about to be engulfed by a “tsunami” formed from the parched earth around him. In his work, Sabat aims to elevate subjects that in his view do not receive enough, or any, attention — in this instance, the fact that more people die of starvation in Africa every day than died in the 2006 Southeast Asian tsunami altogether.

While the other panels in the exhibit are both more subtle and more playful, Silent Tsunami sets its tone and agenda. The curators, Rob Rogers and Sylvia Rohr, chose 40 leading political cartoonists from the countries represented at the G-20, and the 70 cartoons that now hang on the walls of the Warhol Museum provide a range of responses and reactions to the official dialogue in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, where the heads of state will meet to discuss many of the same concerns.

Some of the cartoons take on the big subjects very directly. The financial crisis, climate change, and oil are well represented, with many cartoonists taking pokes at their respective governments and casting specific blame. One of British artist Peter Brookes contributions, The True Monarchy, shows the royal family bowing down before a barrel of oil. Other artists focus on more regional crises, such as South African cartoonist Jeremy Nells Let Them Eat Cake, a drawing of a bewigged Robert Mugabe as a modern-day Marie Antoinette, about to begin an extravagant meal while annoyed by the starving masses just outside the window.

Curator Rogers is a political cartoonist himself, for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Casualties of a declining newspaper industry, full-time cartoonists are few and far between these days. Yet Rogers says, “It’s still a very important medium, because it is the quickest way to grab someone’s attention while they are looking at an otherwise gray paper. First, cartoons impact visually, and secondly, cartoonists have a way of boiling the issue down to its essence and conveying opinion in a matter of seconds, and so are far more successful at getting a message across than an editorial or a column.”

Rogers goes on to point out that “it also becomes a rallying point for people — it either reinforces their view, or, if they disagree, it adds to the dialogue. There is an immediate emotional visceral reaction, another way to sneak in a message. While they’re laughing, they’re forgetting that they are being indoctrinated with a pretty serious message.”

Rogers and Rohr are not alone in their attempt to provide an alternative voice to the G-20 summit through political cartoons. Another current show, in the ArtUp Gallery on Liberty Avenue, one of downtown Pittsburgh's major arteries, pulls together cartoons specifically about capital and labor from American political cartoonists, with many Pulitzer Prize winners among them, such as Signe Wilkinson. She provided a cartoon with one panel depicting the people we’ve entrusted with our money — accountants, brokers, etc. — and a second showing whom we should have entrusted our money with: Tony Soprano. When Gary Huck, the labor cartoonist and curator of the exhibit, chided Wilkinson, who is a Quaker, about her cartoon, noting it isn’t very Quaker, she responded, “These aren’t very Quaker times.”

Indeed, in these extreme times, Huck has noticed a significant shift in attitude toward the subject matter of his cartoons. Huck, to his knowledge the only full-time political cartoonist employed by a union in America — the United Electrical Union — has spent years using his cartoons to convey his beliefs about labor, capital, and the precariousness of our rights and privileges. In the past, critics often viewed his work as radical, but today, for better or worse, his cartoons resonate almost too easily, he says.

It does seem there is a more critical global audience watching this G-20 summit, as almost everyone has been affected, to some degree, by the financial crisis, global warming, and the hungry pursuit of oil. These exhibitions capture much of this concern, fear, and anger about the greater issues surrounding the summit. However, these cartoons are not only effective; they are also possibly the most entertaining vehicle for these political conversations, and as a result, so are the shows. They help the medicine go down.