Art and Laughter 9780755604197, 9781845112332

Citation preview

Illustrations

1. Red Grooms, Manet at the Met, 2003. Painting, 78.75 x 120.5 in. Copyright © 2005 Red Grooms/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the artist and Marlborough Gallery, New York.

xiv

2. Playing cards with image of ‘La Grande Jatte’ by Seurat, c.1960. Author collection. Courtesy of the author.

14

3. Patty Carroll, Dead Ringer, 2004. Archival digital print, 30 x 49 in. Copyright © Patty Carroll, 2004, http://www.pattcarroll.com.

17

4. Rene Magritte, Time Transfixed, 1938. Oil on canvas, 147 x 98.7 cm. Copyright © 2005 Herscovici, Brussels/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.

18

5. Salvador Dalí, Aphrodisiac Telephone, 1938. Plastic, metal, lobster receiver, 8.25 x 12.25 x 6.5 in (20.96 x 31.12 x 16.51 cm). Copyright © 2005 Salvador Dali, Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

21

6. Gladys Nilsson, Scene Eye to I, 1999. Watercolour and gouache on paper, 15.5 x 22.75 in. Courtesy of the artist and Jean Albano Gallery, Chicago.

23

7. Mona Lisa Lamp, c.2000. Author collection. Courtesy of the author.

34

8. Karl Wirsum, Plug Bug, c.1992. Painted mural on State St., Chicago, IL. Courtesy of the artist and Jean Albano Gallery, Chicago.

39

viii

Art and Laughter

9. Gladys Nilsson, Me, Moiself, and I, 1995. Watercolour and mixed media on paper, 18 x 12 in. Courtesy of the artist and Jean Albano Gallery, Chicago.

41

10. Josh Agle (Shag), Fashionable Terrorist, 2001. Acrylic paint on wood, 12 x 24 in. Courtesy of the artist.

46

11. Kay Rosen, Edgar Degas, 1987. Enamel sign paint on canvas, 2 panels each, 10 x 10 x 2.75in. Courtesy of the artist.

54

12. Patty Carroll, Two Bad, 2004. Archival Digital Print, 30 x 40 in. Copyright © Patty Carroll, 2004, http://www.pattcarroll.com.

56

13. Donald Celender, Art Preference Survey/Jenny Craig Response, 1997. Permission of O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York, NY.

59

14. David Shrigley, One day a big wind will come and…, 1997. Colour photograph, www.davidschrigley.com. Courtesy of the artist.

61

15. Tony Oursler, Blob, 2004. Fibreglass sculpture, Sony VPL, CS5 projector, DVD, DVD player, 38 x 36 x 14 in. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures Gallery, New York.

62

16. Alex Bag, McDonalds I, 2002. C-print. Courtesy of the artist and Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York.

69

17. Judy Onofrio, Three Jugglers, 2004. Bassword, glass, jewels, and paint, 44 x 20 x 10 in. Photographed by Rik Sferra. Courtesy of the artist.

75

18. Michael Hernandez de Luna, Infidelity Stories, 2004. Sheet of stamps. Courtesy of the artist.

81

19. Tom Otterness, Free Money (on Park Avenue), 2001. Bronze, 107.5 x 69.5 x 84 in. Copyright © Tom Otterness. Courtesy of the Marlborough Gallery, New York.

88

20. Red Grooms, Pastrami on Rye, 2003. Acrylic on wood with lights, 54 x 52 x 17 in. Copyright © 2005 Red Grooms/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

90

21. Russel Semerau, Big Mama, c.1993. Enamel on wood with moving parts, 12 x 10 x 5 in. Courtesy of the artist.

103

Illustrations

ix

22. Jeff Koons, Puppy Vase, 1998. Porcelain, 17 x 17 x 11 in. Copyright © Jeff Koons. Photo: © Art of this Century. Courtesy of the artist.

118

23. The Art Guys, Bucket Feet, 2003. Still of performance/walk in downtown Houston, TX with buckets of water attached to feet. Courtesy of the Art Guys Worldwide Media, a subsidiary of the Art Guys.

123

24. Pat Oleszko, Garden Variety Glad-He-Ate-Her, 1999. Courtesy of the artist and Hollis/Murch.

125

Preface

Laughing, appreciating and creating humour have always been a part of my life. I have always had the ability to be open to ambiguity, the unexpected and the incongruous, and perhaps this is why I found such joy in making drawings and looking at cartoons as a child. Much later, when I became an art student and later an art educator, my interest in humour extended to my art making, art research and scholarship as a way to better understand how visual artists can use their ideas, tools and materials to create images that cause others to laugh. My background as an artist and art educator has led me to pursue looking at art wherever my travels take me, and I have continued to find delight, meaning and joy in art that makes me smile and laugh. As a child, I was drawn to visual art: I loved looking at and making pictures. Outside of the picture books that I found in the school library, my encounters with art included the visual parodies and satiric illustrations in MAD, a magazine that mocked contemporary culture, current events and famous people. I loved the realism in these illustrations, and I was amazed that an artist could make me laugh with a line drawing. American illustrator Norman Rockwell caused me to smile and laugh, and I looked forward to seeing his illustrations that gently mocked everyday life. Of course, I read the Sunday funnies, and I found the antics of Dennis the Menace and Archie particularly amusing. In addition to cartoons and illustrations, television sitcoms of the 1960s and 1970s provided humour and pleasure to my life: Laugh-In, Leave it to Beaver, Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, The Carol Burnett Show and The Beverly Hillbillies. We now have a new generation of young people who have grown up watching television sitcoms and animated cartoons, such as Beavis and Butthead, The Simpsons, South Park, King of the Hill and Saturday Night Live, and reading the comics of Robert Crumb, and underground comix. The humour found in the current generation of sitcoms and

xii

Art and Laughter

cartoons is far more biting, aggressive, political and socially aware than the ones of my generation. Humour is a good barometer to measure the times, and comic artists today leave no stone unturned. It was the pleasure derived from looking at art that later led to my decision to formally study art and attend art school. I majored in painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and worked with artists/teachers known as the Chicago Hairy Who or the Chicago Imagist Painters who encouraged me to develop my own visual iconography that resonated in popular culture, outsider art and non-western art traditions. The interesting thing about these sources is that they were abundant in visual incongruities of the humorous sort, and I was quite taken with them. I learned then and there that humour and art were not such strange bedfellows, and that it was all right to laugh when making art, when looking at art, or talking about art. My visual work as a student at the School of the Art Institute explored incongruity and playful juxtapositions of media and concepts, and my work provoked smiles and laughter. You could say that I have a lifelong preoccupation with images that make me smile and laugh. In my doctoral studies in art education, I explored children’s responses to humour in art, and I was highly encouraged by their insights into art and humour. I truly believe that art can be powerful, meaningful and funny at the same time, and that artists who can make us laugh have a special gift to disrupt our thinking. I have had the good fortune to laugh, be amused and enlightened by art. I take art seriously and believe that laughter can be a serious response to art that acknowledges an artist’s talent to play with our reality, suspend our beliefs and reframe our assumptions about art. To laugh with art, and from art, may be the highest complement that you can give to a comic-oriented artist. Have no fear if you feel that you may be humour-challenged. Keep looking at art. Don’t be afraid to laugh. Where would I be without art or laughter? Probably, not writing this book.

Acknowledgements

This book is the result of the generosity and assistance of many people. Thanks to all the artists who shared with me their thoughts with me about art and humour. I appreciate the willingness of these artists, galleries, and museums that gave permission for the reproduction of the artworks in this book. To the editors at I.B.Tauris, I have learned a lot from you. Thank you for the opportunity, encouragement and stewardship of this project. Thanks to Alleen P. and Don L.F. Nilsen whose bibliographic research on humour was enormously helpful. Finally, thanks to R.S. for humouring me throughout this project.

1. Red Grooms, Manet at the Met, 2003.

Introduction

Taking a Serious Look at Art and Laughter

Warning some of the images contained in this book may cause you to laugh.

The art world may be thought of as serious business, and indeed it is. Art galleries and museums are serious places for art viewing. Art is a big money business, and that is no laughing matter. Humour may not be thought of as having much to do with art, but look deep enough and you can find artists throughout the ages who can qualify as comics. The need or urge to inspire laughter has not been the aim or inclination of all artists. Similarly, the ability to create images that result in laughter is a talent not all artists possess. Humour may describe varieties of visual and conceptual incongruities or disjointed concepts and images created by artists, and these are discussed in the next chapter. Humour may also imply an indulgence or inclination for the ludicrous or the absurd, as in ‘to humour someone’. The works by contemporary artists discussed in this book may be described as having humorous content, probably produced with humorous intent; their works may be described as humorous, and they intentionally try to humour us, the viewer. The purpose of this book is to examine contemporary art by mainly American and British artists, whose works contain visual and/or conceptual incongruities that may trigger humorous responses, such as laughter, smiles, grins, chuckles or guffaws. Such work may be defined broadly as visual humour. Works by over forty contemporary artists (mainly from the USA and UK) are discussed, emphasizing that both nations share an art history that has embraced humour within their artistic traditions, particularly, in visual satire. In addition, trans-Atlantic examples of art are discussed, demonstrating that humour is a cross-cultural phenomenon in contemporary art that poses new questions



Art and Laughter

about the nature, interpretation and the purposes of art. This book is aimed at students of art, art history and art education, university art professors, art museum and gallery professionals, primary and secondary level art teachers, art lovers and others who are curious about contemporary art and humour and the relationships between the two. Any inquiry into the history of art, even simply opening up a general survey of art, will undoubtedly reveal that art historical scholarship has generally avoided the topic of humour. There has been a noticeable absence of discussion of humour in scholarly art journals until very recently. In spite of this absence, humour theorists and scholars have long acknowledged humour as integral to art, mostly in the areas of cartooning and satire. In an encyclopaedia of humour, humour scholars Don and Alleen Nilsen define almost every conceivable kind of humour, and their work has enabled other humour scholars to gain clarity on the subtleties and distinctions between the many different kinds of humour.1 Certainly, philosophers such as Kant and Schopenhauer have reflected on humour as a matter of philosophy, and humour scholars have attempted to merge the philosophy of humour with the psychology of humour. Interestingly, contemporary art historians and critics have recently begun to write about humour and art in mainstream art journals, and this is encouraging and validating. Consider the landmark special issue of ARTnews (2004) entitled ‘What is Funny About Contemporary Art!’.2 This entire issue was devoted to artists who engage in parody, pun and irony in their works, and is groundbreaking in terms of the amount of discourse about humour and art in an international art journal. Not too long ago, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) produced a series called ART: 21 and included a segment on humour and art. In addition, a plethora of art exhibits at major international art galleries such as State of Play at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2004), as well as American exhibits such as No Laughing Matter (1991–1993) and Lighten Up: Art with a Sense of Humor in Lincoln, MA (2001) focused on the comic dimension to contemporary art. Slowly, art exhibits are taking hold of this phenomenon, which builds on exhibits of the 1980s, such as the Comic Art Show at the Whitney (1983) and Comic Iconoclasm at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1987). Given the emergence of scholarship on humour and art with curated exhibits and catalogues, it seems timely to discuss the topic of humour as it relates to contemporary art. I suspect that more artists may be turning to humour, and that curators and gallery directors are recognizing this unique dimension to contemporary art. Speculating as to why humour has not been discussed much at all within the art world by art critics, historians and curators, I would say that perhaps most art is not humorous; the typical themes of artworks have rather been allegory, religion, landscape, still life and portraiture. Secondly, images that most people may associate with being humorous would probably fall into the category of popular culture, such as ‘Sunday funnies’, calendars, cartoons, greetings cards, postcards and kitsch, nostalgic, sentimental or fun novelty objects. While ‘there is a dramatic escalation of humorous

Taking a Serious Look at Art and Laughter



material around us – calendars, screensavers, comics, cartoons, and sitcom – and the slaphappy spirit has penetrated the very fabric of the twentieth century in ludicrous paraphernalia,’ the art world has generally avoided the embrace of the humorous until very recently.3 The paucity of scholarship on humour and art may also be because humour has been defined so narrowly. Most people may acknowledge the satire found in caricature as humour, and satire in art is probably the most well-documented humour in art history. While this is a legitimate and rich source of visual humour, there are other forms of humour such as parody, irony and pun that add depth and variety to the humour discourse. As the word art means different things to different people, so does the word humour. If there is one thing that scholarship on humour and art can accomplish, it is to help clarify the variety of terms associated with humour of the visual kind to the extent that it can provide some exemplars for discussion and debate.

Modernism and Postmodernism in Art Most of the artworks included in this book were created between 1980 and the present and fall into the postmodern art category, with their subject matter relating primarily to areas such as culture, identity, representation and gender. Postmodern art relies less on the artist’s use of the formal elements and principles of design because the content or subject of the work takes precedent over formal arrangements. Postmodern art asks viewers to pay attention to the nuances of concept, its location, the potential for interactivity between a viewer and an artwork, the use of technology in the work, the relationships between text and image, and the visual and audio components in an artwork. Some of the artworks discussed in this book, however, fall into the category of modernist art, implying a more traditional content or subject and a focus on formal and compositional concerns using traditional art media, which can include painting, sculpture, drawing and printmaking. Looking at the examples of modernist art in the book, it is important to pay attention to the way that the artists have used line, shape, colour, texture and form, and the way that they have organized these elements of design to create visual incongruities. One huge distinction between modern and postmodern artworks is that modernist artists are concerned with creating aesthetic objects for aesthetic contemplation, while postmodern artists may not produce any objects at all; they often resist the commodification of art through object-making for the art marketplace. This is not to say that no postmodern artist produces drawings or photographs, or other forms of visual representation; however, postmodern artists have typically been more concerned with the shaping of concepts and the questioning of artistic practices and cultural institutions that do not necessarily translate into art exhibits that rely on the use of the



Art and Laughter

white museum pedestal. As both modernist and postmodernist artworks are discussed in this book, an understanding of these two art historical paradigms will help the reader to better understand how and why artists create artworks that may inspire laughter. With modern art, art was rather neatly defined and packaged. Everything could be found in an art museum or gallery, and the standards for what constituted art were fairly well defined. Clive Bell, the father of the modernist philosophy of art, believed that all art is the result of ‘significant form’, that art is sensed, viewed and appreciated for its aesthetic components.4 In modernist art terms, form, as the relationship between lines and colours, mattered as well as beauty. This modernist theory of art focused on a viewer deriving meaning from a work of art through experiencing significant form, that is, line, shape, colour and texture, and the composition and the interrelatedness of subject. If humour were part of such a work, it would be the result of how an artist created it through the juxtaposition or exaggeration of the significant form. Then came Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, titled Fountain (1917), which he placed in the middle of an art gallery. This was really the end of the artist-made object and the start of the ‘ready-made’. Beginning with Duchamp, the everyday mass-produced, industrial object became a potential subject for art. For some, this was the end of art; for others, it was just the beginning. Donald Kuspit cites Duchamp as the beginning of the end of art and modernism,5 which, in his view, resulted in art becoming more like entertainment6 and ‘completely passé in a world of relative values and technological necessity’.7 Art historian Nigel Warburton writes: ‘The idea that all art works must be the product of the artist’s hand, or that they must be aesthetically beautiful, or emotionally profound, is hard to sustain once works like the “Fountain” have been accepted into the mainstream.’8 There is no doubt that contemporary postmodern artists have reverted to Duchamp time and time again through their use of ready-mades, creating works that challenge our expectations about art. Looking back, it might be said that Duchamp infused humour into modern art and art history in a way that no other artist had done before, and that it rose out of a time and place where logic and rationality had lost importance. In keeping with Duchamp’s bold statement, contemporary artists continue to exert their sense of disillusionment in art and the state of the world in a way that defies defeat, exalts resistance, and comes to terms with cynicism, nihilism, alienation and meaninglessness in contemporary life. Through the subtle and not so subtle exploits of incongruities at play in their works, contemporary artists are expressing their own sense of humour, or orientation to the world, which celebrates absurdity and acknowledges, through joke-telling on a scale for the masses, that the world is filled with folly.

Taking a Serious Look at Art and Laughter



Artists and Humour In the last twenty years, the art world has become the target of jokes, and no topic or period of art history is exempt from ridicule, mockery and parody. The crack in the art world made possible through the chisel of humour is getting wider and deeper as many artists see a viewer’s smile as a trophy. We are witnessing the emergence of a diversity of visual humour, the designing of art exhibitions around the theme of humour and art, and art critics and historians who are acknowledging that art and artists are humorous, and not mere entertainment. It seems there are more artists who are letting their funny side emerge in their art. Perhaps there are more artists now who are just plain fed up with how seriously the art world takes itself, or maybe, as world problems get worse, the need for humour in art and life becomes more apparent and necessary. Perhaps there are artists who might disagree with the art philosopher R. G. Collingwood’s theory that art created with the intention of arousing laughter, pleasing an audience or creating pleasurable feelings would not be ‘art proper’.9 According to Collingwood, art that is made with the intention of evoking laughter, such as parody, pun, satire and irony, would not be considered art, and would be emblematic of a society gone awry. Perhaps such a display of visual humour as we are witnessing at this time is a sign that maybe we have gone awry, and surely one role of art is to mirror our times. In the bigger picture, the percentage of artists who make us laugh is fairly small, yet their contributions to the art world are significant. An encounter with visual humour offers artistic, aesthetic, intellectual and psychological benefits. Humour from art, as experienced through smiling and laughing, can be a catalyst for personal and collective healing, wellbeing and improved psychological health. Laughter as a medicine for social ills and everyday problems is known to increase vital functions, relax nerves and aid in digestion. Looking at art that brings laughter can bring both pleasure and meaning, and allow us to extend our capacity to feel joy. The pleasure, enjoyment and understanding of the artworks included in this book depend largely on your sense of humour. Hopefully, you will find artworks that pique your curiosity, and engage you in laughter and smiling. However, let us not be blinded by humour. As Mark Twain reminds us, the secret source of humour is not joy, but sorrow. Many examples of contemporary art that may be described as satirical or employing dark humour contain elements of the tragic. The intent of humour is to overcome the tragic impulse so that life is bearable. As Donald Kuspit writes: ‘Humor restores honesty … humor has the capacity for affectionate feeling.’10

Personal Reflection My rationale for the artworks discussed in this book is that they are ‘funny’ as noted by the artists, art critics, curators and by me. I find all the works in this book funny



Art and Laughter

in varying degrees and for different reasons that are elaborated on in the following chapters. It is important to describe and explain the artworks without being overly analytical and prescriptive; yet there is a need to make distinctions between terms such as humour and laughter, and words used to describe visual humour such as funny, hysterical, witty, zany and dark. I discuss several humour theories that may shed light as to why people may laugh as a response to art, such as the incongruity theory, superiority theory, relief theory and sociological theory. It is expected that readers of this book will have diverse experiences with art, as well as diverse cultural, social, and educational backgrounds. As a result, the artworks discussed in this book may be considered humorous, some very humorous, and some not humorous at all. This is understandable and acceptable for the basic precept of this book is that humour is constructed, that is, incongruities lie within an artwork and are created by the artists, but humour does not live within the artwork. We as viewers determine whether something is funny or not; we locate cues within the artwork and a chain reaction begins. We recognize the incongruities, find them amusing, and we smile or laugh. An artist may have created incongruities that he or she may consider humorous, but a viewer may not perceive them to be humorous. Is the work still humorous? Sure, works of art can be viewed as humorous to some, and not to others. My view of humour, a postmodern view, acknowledges the importance of a viewer’s culture, religious background, education, social class and gender in interpreting art and humour. The appreciation of humour is evidenced in the form of smiles. Laughter is another response to the way that artists use concepts, materials and language, and create incongruities between their reality and the viewer’s. I have found the incongruities in the artworks presented in this book to be humorous in varying degrees. While you may not agree with my ideas on what is humorous, it is perhaps more important to pay attention to your own responses to the artworks presented in this book so that greater self-awareness, understanding and appreciation of art and humour can occur. One of the outcomes of this book is that readers may begin to have a greater understanding of modern and postmodern art. Another anticipated outcome of this book is that readers can appreciate the diversity of art that may evoke humorous responses, and understand how contemporary artists communicate using the major forms of humour.

The Structure of the Book This book is meant to be an introduction to visual humour in contemporary art and not an exhaustive survey. The artists in this book can be considered as visual humorists because they each possess a talent for making some form of joke, and in doing so, they become visual comics. They represent a wide range of art movements that will be

Taking a Serious Look at Art and Laughter



discussed in Chapter 1. Through providing a historical context for the artworks it may become easier to understand the artists’ historical links and the artistic traditions from which they have emerged and philosophically belong to. All the artworks included in this book have a high probability of evoking humorous responses through the relationships between titles, images and concepts, techniques and media, or a synthesis of any of these. Selected works by US and UK artists are organized by themes that cut across media, time and geographical borders to focus on broader issues and the topic of humour. The criteria for the selection of artworks in this book rely on my experiences with the artworks, and I have acknowledged what art historians and critics have written about contemporary and postmodern art with respect to humour. I have included quotes by critics, historians and the artists themselves to add support to and acknowledge the face and force of humour in contemporary art, and to enlarge the discourse beyond my personal and subjective preferences. It has been my intention to not solely discuss the artworks and well-known artists that have been noted in other publications, but to introduce new artists into the discourse on humour and art. Naturally, there are some artists whose works may be considered humorous who are not included in this book. I have aimed for variety and balance in content, media and gender, while presenting a case for the recognition of the comic in contemporary and postmodern art. The chapters are organized around themes that emerged from looking at a wide range of artworks and artists, and these themes are reflected in the chapter titles. As art historian Nigel Warburton has pointed out: ‘Given the brevity of life, if we are going to ask the question [what is art?] at all, it is better to focus on particular works, ask why they are art, and why this might matter to us.’11 I have tried to use this approach this with respect to the questions: ‘What is humorous art?’ ‘Why is it humorous?’ ‘Why does it matter?’ In doing so, I have selected particular works of art for each chapter that embody the essence of a particular kind of humour. Chapter 1 outlines some general theories of humour and various kinds of visual humour; it also provides a historical context for the works presented in this book. Chapter 2 addresses images of smiling and laughing in historical and contemporary art and explores the evolution of images of sweet smiles to aggressive laughter from the mid to late twentieth century. Artists discussed in this chapter include John Currin, Gladys Nilsson, Peter Saul, Shag (Josh Agle), Kenny Sharf, Cindy Sherman and Karl Wirsum. Chapter 3 focuses on artists who combine materials and juxtapose images and text that result in the incongruity associated with puns. Artists discussed in this chapter include Patty Carroll, Don Celender, Adam Dant, Paul Davis, Barbara Kruger, Les Levine, Bruce Nauman, Kay Rosen and David Shrigley. Chapter 4 focuses on artists who create humor through techniques of disguise and who use the mask literally and metaphorically to heighten and intensify their reality. Artists discussed in this chapter include Alex Bag, Guerrilla Girls, Brian Jungen, Liza



Art and Laughter

Lou, Deborah Kass, Judy Onofrio, Sandy Skoglund, Ron Noganosh, and Saul Steinberg. Chapter 5 focuses on artists who have created large- and small-scale works and invite humour through the manipulation of scale and placement of works outside of gallery and museum contexts. Many of these artworks include installation art, performance art and public art. Artists in this chapter include Fernando Botero, Red Grooms, Tom Friedman, Michael Hernandez de Luna, Tom Otterness, Niki de Saint Phalle and Laurie Simmons. Chapter 6 focuses on artists working in a variety of media who employ humour with themes of sex and death. The artworks in this category could be identified from several of the visual humour categories. Artists in this chapter include Jake and Dinos Chapman, Charles Krafft, Jeff Koons, Julia Kunin, Sarah Lucas, Paul McCarthy, Richard Prince and Russel Semerau. Chapter 7 focuses on artists who create sculpture and installations using objects and images that are consumed in our media and culture, such as food, clothing and everyday objects. Artists in this chapter include Sylvie Fleury, Jeff Koons, Cary Leibowitz (aka Candyass), Isabel Samaras and William Wegman. Chapter 8 addresses humour through performance art, as in the works of BANK, the Art Guys and Pat Oleszko. The book concludes with a summary of the main ideas presented in this book and the role of humour in contemporary art. My hope is that readers of this book will awaken, or reawaken an interest in art and find amusement, enjoyment, pleasure and joy through reading this book. In addition, I hope that the artworks presented inspire readers to continue their study of art through books and visits to galleries, museums and public art installations. Chapter 1, entitled ‘Before the Laugh’, contains much that is helpful to know about humour before you laugh at art.

Chapter 1

Before the Laugh

Humor is a kind of perverse raise of the world of foolishness. Donald Kuspit, ‘Tart, Wit, Wise, Humor’ Humour theory can help explain why people are amused and laugh, which may help to explain why the major forms of humour, such as parody, pun, paradox, satire and irony are funny to some but not to others. A discussion of both historical and contemporary artworks is provided to illustrate how each form of humour is situated within contemporary art history. Art history is replete with artists who are well known for their abilities to be humorous and twentieth-century art movements such as Dada and Surrealism, Fluxus, California Funk, Chicago Imagism and Pop Surrealism are discussed to provide a context for understanding the artists presented in this book.

Defining Humour Humour, according to the Webster dictionary, is ‘a quality which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous’, and the ‘mental facility of discovering, expressing, or appreciating the ludicrous or the absurdly incongruous; comical, or amusing’. Humour may also be defined as an attitude that makes jokes and comedy possible through understanding reality, but refusing to be constrained by it.1 Similarly, Surrealist writer André Breton defines humour as the denial of reality and a splendid affirmation of the pleasure principle.2 I think that Breton may have been onto something, as was Freud, in relating the experience of humour to the experience of pleasure. This may explain why we keep coming back for more laughs, either through comics, sitcoms or art. Yet, there is more to gelotology, or the study of laughter. A number of humour scholars have addressed

10

Art and Laughter

humour theory, which may help to explain the kinds of humour associated with visual art and the reasons why people may respond to art with laughter.

Theories of Humour The incongruity theory may best explain the root cause for all humour. Blaise Pascal, a French philosopher, first proposed the theory of incongruity in the 1600s and said: ‘Nothing produces laughter more than a disproportion between that which one expects, and that which one sees.’3 Further along these lines, Hutchenson, Kant and Schopenhauer made similar statements that support that humour is a result is because of the unexpected.4 According to Schopenhauer, laughter results from the fact that we ‘get something that we are not expecting’.5 Of course, the unexpected cannot be threatening, but as Morreall explains it is a ‘pleasant jolt’ in thinking that is made possible through our recognition of the surprise.6 Humour arises via a process of acknowledging what seems to be out of sorts, i.e. surprise, and in a way that undoubtedly gives us some pleasure.7 The superiority theory of humour acknowledges that for something to be funny the viewer must feel some delight in seeing others come to some travail, but thank goodness that it isn’t us! It is a psychodynamic theory advanced by Bergson in 1928 that emphasized the social function of humour – that humour and pleasure can be derived from finding delight in others’ misfortunes through mockery and ridicule.8 Superiority theory can be traced back to the writings of Plato9 and Aristotle,10 and can account for why we find something humorous and laugh at the completely ridiculous and absurd. Terms associated with superiority theory include aggressive-defensive humour and playful aggression. Examples of practical jokes and satire may be explained by superiority theory. Some may say that all humour contains some degree of hostility: think of these terms associated with humour – ‘punch line’, ‘biting satire’ and ‘sidesplitting humour’.11 Herbert Spencer and later Freud asserted that laughing is a release of restrained energy associated with the repression of socially taboo or forbidden thoughts or behaviour. According to this theory, we hide behind our socially constructed masks and personas until we are confronted by images or thoughts that trigger the surfacing of our deepest and darkest fantasies or fears. In laughing, we are able to release the tension of withholding these forbidden impulses. The relief theory of humour is at work when we look at erotic art, satire, caricatures, experience disgust humour, amusement from watching others engage in social or moral taboos, or actions involving bodily functions. Another theory of humour that has relevance for understanding contemporary art is the sociological theory of humour. This theory recognizes that although the ability to understand and appreciate humour may be universal, non-members of a culture

Before the Laugh

11

who have not internalized the behaviours, social norms or values of the culture may not fully appreciate the humour within social interactions and in cultural texts, such as jokes and art.12 Similarly, another humour scholar, Avner Ziv, writes that the function of humour may vary from culture to culture and that humour has four basic functions:13 first, to achieve group solidarity; second, to reduce conflict and conceal malice; third, to control, perpetuate or challenge norms and stereotypes; and fourth, to induce pleasurable experiences. The third and fourth functions of humour as outlined by Ziv are most applicable to the contemporary artworks discussed in this book. While the incongruity theory of humour can be applied to all kinds of humour it really addresses only the cognitive dimensions of humour perception, and fails to address how personal, cultural and social factors influence humour production and perception. Therefore, humour theories may explain only in part why we laugh at incongruities. It is important to keep in mind how our unique personal and cultural backgrounds influence our abilities to understand and appreciate the varieties of humour that may be discovered through looking at visual art.

Laughter and Humour Each of the main theories of humour discussed thus far can translate into a theory of laughter, that is, why we laugh. As Morreall explains: ‘There is no one theory of laughter; some classify laughter as emotion, and others a behavior.’14 However, Morreall does connect laughter with emotion, as he says ‘we laugh with glee, scorn, or giddiness’.15 Ultimately, laughter is a multisensory experience that involves our emotions, sound and visual and physical gestures. The theories of superiority, incongruity and relief may partially explain why we laugh and what we laugh about. Superiority theory explains laughter as an expression of a person’s feelings or superiority over others; we laugh to make fun of others so we feel better about ourselves.16 Ludovici, in The Secret of Laughter, says that we feel superior through laughter by baring our teeth, that smiling is really an aggressive act whose purpose is to assert our physical prowess in the threat by an enemy.17 The incongruity theory of laughter states that we laugh when we express something that does not fit into an expected pattern; we laugh because what we get is not what we expected.18 The relief theory of humour postulates that we laugh because we are releasing nervous energy, and in this sense it not a competing theory. Herbert Spencer, in On the Physiology of Laughter, explains that laughter is like the releasing of a valve.19 Similarly, Freud viewed laughter as a surplus of energy that needed to be released to let go of our unconscious, forbidden thoughts and feelings.20 Morreall’s own theory on laughter includes the following necessary components. First, for laughter to occur there must be a sudden change to trigger the laughter and this psychological shift must be pleasant.21 The result of laughter, according to Morreall, is a changed psychological state that is

12

Art and Laughter

boosted by positive feelings and a release of repressed feelings. He warns, however, that laughter and humour are not synonymous, and that ‘there are cases of laughter that do not involve incongruity, and not all incongruity will trigger laughter’.22 In other words, we can laugh out of embarrassment or to disguise pain. In addition, we can experience humour, without laughing, but rather through smiling, or smirking. A sense of humour is the ability to recognize the ludicrous or the incongruities presented to us, and of course, find them funny. A sense of humour is critical to appreciating the incongruities made apparent by artists. In recognizing humour, we typically respond with a smile. Smiling is a physical contraction of the facial muscles combined with an upward movement of the lips that may reveal the teeth, in whole or in part. The eyes are known to smile, too, and usually, when the lips are smiling and curled up, the eyes are twinkling with delight. We smile to acknowledge that we have found humour, delight and pleasure. We also laugh, making sounds with our mouths that may last for seconds or minutes. We rarely laugh for hours. Laughing is a rather immediate and transitory experience that Aristotle thought to have redeeming qualities. Laughter is typically associated with pleasure, and according to Freud, laughter is the ‘pleasure resulting from the lifting of the cathexis which has previously been present’.23 In keeping with Freud, Morreall proposes the following definition: ‘Laughter results from a pleasant psychological shift.’24 Laughter may be defined as a neurological response, as Robert Provine, a pioneer in studying laughter as a neurological phenomenon, suggests.25 The essence of the arousal–safety theory of humour, which explains that it is all right to be surprised, but the surprise needs to be non-threatening, and at the same time, is still amusing. This book contains images that I consider may be surprising and nonthreatening. Therefore, there is a high probability that the images in this book may cause you to smile and laugh, and with some degree of pleasure. While we may laugh alone, laughing with others always seems more enjoyable and, in fact, laughter is said to be contagious. While looking at art is considered to be a solitary experience, the experiencing of the works that invite our laughter may be enhanced through viewing, and laughing with others who share our interest in art, and laughter.

Terms Associated with Humour A number of terms are used to describe something humorous, both generally and when discussing an artwork – for example, hysterical, witty, zany (or goofy) and bawdy – and are discussed. Hysterical may describe a ludicrous or outrageous image that results in a response of uncontrollable laughter, knee slapping, watery eyes or stomach pains. Witty describes a sharpness or quick perception of incongruities usually associated with verbal or visual

Before the Laugh

13

puns, or a play on words. Wit is recognized as a higher form of humour that plays with ideas and our perceptions,26 and witty images may invite a chuckle or quiet smile. Bawdy refers to obscene or indecent humour associated with art that contains sexual imagery. Zany is outright goofy and fun, slightly on the ridiculous side, but playful, and non-threatening, and can be found in parody and satire. Bawdy humour may be referenced in the erotic works in Chapter 6, and may illicit a ‘guffaw’ type of laugh, a chuckle behind a hand. There is no telling what art, or types of humour discussed in this chapter, will provoke a response from the reader (or viewer), and to what degree. After all, laughter is in the eye of the beholder.

Major Kinds of Humour Associated with Visual Art It is important to distinguish between the major kinds of humour associated with art, such as satire, parody, pun, paradox, irony and dark humour. All humour has the power to disrupt our expectations and associations in both subtle and obvious ways. An artist grabs our attention with humour making us good candidates to ‘listen’ to their messages. Through humour, the artist is able to accomplish the three Es: enlighten, elevate and educate. Depending on the type of humour, the purpose of humour may include gently mocking others or us, as in parody, taking delight in words that force a new association, as in pun, finding satisfaction in seeing aspects of the human condition mocked, as in satire, or recognizing the contradictions inherent in life, as in irony, or expressing the tragic and comic as in dark humour. The following are some descriptions of the five forms of humour with examples of artworks. While each form of humour is discussed separately for the point of clarity and making distinctions between them, it is important to note that many contemporary artworks employ multiple forms of humour.

Parody Parody is one of the most common forms of humour found in contemporary art.27 We can witness endless parodies through the appropriations of famous artworks and popular culture images that find their way onto coffee cups, greeting cards and dish towels. Some of the most parodied artworks in the history of art include the gentle mocking of art icons, such as Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, The Scream by Edvard Munch and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. The break-up of a view of art as permanent, idealized, beautiful and accurate gave rise to an aesthetic of impermanence, and an opening for artists to begin critiquing the history of art. Parodies gently mock art, cultural and historical icons through appropriating and altering images, and layering them with new meanings. Parody allows for a respectful exploitation of artworks with a twist of novelty. The postmodern period of art, the 1980s to the present, has witnessed a proliferation of parody that continues to flourish due to effortless digital photography that enables image manipulation and

14

Art and Laughter

multiple printings. Postmodern artists also see a fertile ground in using parody to critique contemporary culture, personal and social histories, and the art world. Through a gentle mocking, artists can disrupt any artistic or cultural icon that is seen as original or sacred. Parody has become one of the major avenues for deconstructing art, in that a parodied work ‘talks back’ not only to the original work but also to other parodies. It is important to realize that parody prospers in periods of cultural sophistication of viewers.28 Given the digital age that we live in, we have more sophisticated viewers due to the access to art images available at our fingertips, and more artists appropriating and altering art images.

2. Playing cards with image of ‘La Grande Jatte’ by Seurat, c.1960.

Parodies, however, are not just a postmodern phenomenon; even modernist and realist artist Norman Rockwell parodied art, and himself. Using the principal devices of incongruity, parody is achieved through appropriation, juxtaposition, exaggeration and the repetition of images. In Triple Self-Portrait (1960), the artist, Rockwell, sits at his easel looking into a side mirror as he paints his own portrait. What he begins to paint on his canvas is dramatically different than what he sees in the mirror. In addition, the three postcard-sized images of self-portraits by van Gogh, Durer and Rembrandt that are tacked to his canvas serve as contradictory guides for painting, yet reveal his

Before the Laugh

15

inspirations for painting.29 This painting may even be a parody of Monkey as Painter (1739), by Jean-Baptise-Simeon Chardin. In this painting, a monkey in a cocked hat and velvet coat sits at an easel painting a bird-like creature, and like the Rockwell portrait, ‘more than anything, the portrait ridicules the self-portrait genre’.30 In another painting by Rockwell, Connoisseur (1962), a well-dressed middle-aged man in a grey suit with hat and umbrella stands before an Abstract Expressionist, in the manner of Jackson Pollock. While we cannot see the man’s facial expression because he is turned away from us, we assume the man is knowledgeable about art, and perhaps he is studying this painting as a connoisseur. Rockwell’s paintings and illustrations about art and artists are still some of the funniest parodies on art in the twentieth century. His illustration background gave him many liberties to mock the art world in a way because he was not directly involved in it. At the same time, later in his life, he painted and exhibited in fine art galleries and museums and became part of the establishment that he gently mocked. Contemporary artists continue to parody the classics of Western art, such as Van Gogh and Cézanne, not through painting new images, but in crop art. Stan Herd is a parodist who creates 2D re-creations of Vincent Van Gogh still-life paintings in Midwestern USA farmlands using wheat, corn and field grains.31 Using selected fields, and with permission from landowners, he carefully drafts out the compositions and goes through the field marking the land with flags. The black outlines between shapes become walking paths. Most of his compositions are in the analogous colour range of green, yellow and yellow-green. What is really interesting is that as the plantings mature, his compositions evolve over time. Herd and aerial photographers document this evolutionary process. While Herd’s work falls into the category of earthworks, in the manner of Christo and Robert Smithson with the aim of altering the environment through aesthetic devices, Herd is the only parodist using earthworks that I am aware of. Art history is replete with artists who have parodied artworks, and we will continue to see parody as long as there are art icons and the human need to poke fun at them. Why is parody so appealing to artists? First, artists need to show admiration for works that are classics or famous. Other reasons may be to demonstrate their knowledge of art, to try to replicate an infamous work in a new way that pays homage to the work, and at the same time demonstrates their artistic skills through altering the image. Imitation has a social and cultural purpose; it reinforces values throughout the culture and establishes a norm of acceptability. It also allows for the transmission of skills and abilities that may otherwise be lost between generations and new technologies. Imitation it is said is the highest form of flattery. To be copied is to be admired, and to be admired is to be loved. Artists who parody other artworks typically love the art that they are parodying, and it is a public display of art affection. So, why would we laugh at imitations or parodies? We laugh at imitations because it shows how smart we are, that we know what the original is, and how the artist has

16

Art and Laughter

altered the original. We laugh at imitations because of the way an artist may have demeaned and de-idealized an image, and thereby, reduced it in status and value. We laugh at imitations because we just can’t laugh at the original because maybe it is just too serious or important. The parody is once removed from the original, highly valued, priceless artwork and allows us to see it in a new way. What parody has also done is democratize images; by sheer repetition and appropriation of art through parody, artists have popularized many art images in unimaginable ways. On the flip side, art reproductions have flattened art images and made many artworks difficult to read, thus impairing our ability to perceive subtle incongruities that may be humorous. Parody ultimately fulfils a desire for the masses to have fun with art32 and marks the intersection of art with a historical consciousness.33 Donald Kuspit defines the postmodern humour found in art that appropriates other artworks as ‘pseudo-witty treatments of past art’.34 Parody may be the most entertaining of all the forms of visual humour because it is fairly non-aggressive humour and allows viewers to feel superior in their recognition of the parody. The following artists are discussed in this book in terms of their parodic works: Andrew Brandou, Patty Carroll, Red Grooms, Deborah Kass, Vik Muniz, Michael Hernandez de Luna and Peter Saul.

Satire Visual satire mocks art and life with zest and fury35 and asks us to pay attention to social norms, standards, morals and human foibles. The visual satirist mimics the knowledge and behaviour of a culture or group to overemphasize and exaggerate aspects of life and its foibles with the hope of provoking laughter or a change of attitude or ways. Satire mocks art and life with more of a bite and a twist than parody. The aim of satire is to prompt us to re-examine our values, social behaviours and morals. The visual satirist uses the knowledge of the behaviour and conventions of a culture or group to mimic and magnify the ridiculous, as found in caricatures. William Hogarth, the brilliant eighteenth-century British satirical printmaker, coined the term ‘caricature’.36 In caricature, human form and expressions are exaggerated to elicit a humorous response, and to make a point about human traits, morals, foibles and weaknesses. Satirical images proliferate in the history of Western art from Renaissance artists such as Hieronymus Bosch to eighteenth-century artists Thomas Rowlandson, George Cruikshank and William Hogarth and nineteenth-century political satirists Honoré Daumier and Gustave Doré. The effectiveness of their works lies in the superbly detailed folly of royalty, political figures and members of the Establishment, and their fashions, which could only have been accomplished through access to such social circles, keen observation of contemporary and social life, and an uncanny wit combined with a deliciously wicked pen. Satire may be explained by the superiority theory of humour, which emphasizes a social function of humour. Through satire, pleasure and delight may be found in seeing

Before the Laugh

3. Patty Carroll, Dead Ringer, 2004.

17

others’ habits and features exaggerated and their weaknesses exposed. Both Britain and the USA share a wealth in caricature whose purpose is to bring laughter to the masses. The caricaturist as the maker of satirical prints tries to reduce the complexity of a political situation37 as well as to awaken human consciousness about social ills and problems. Satire may be the most politically potent or charged of the five forms of humour because of its political and social dimensions. There is also a psychological purpose in satire: that we may begin to see our lives as not so bad through recognizing the vices and shortcomings of others. Some artists included in this book who create satirical works are Alex Bag, Patty Carroll, Paul Davis, Guerrilla Girls, Red Grooms, Cary Leibowitz, Ron Noganosh, Isabel Samaras and Peter Saul.

Pun The pun may be explained primarily by the incongruity humour theory. A visual pun can be described as an image with two or more concurrent meanings resulting in the understanding of images on more than one level. A pun can be metaphoric or illusionist, and often contains sayings or phrases that are part of our vernacular culture. Puns are typically found in graphic design and humour is what makes graphic design entertaining and memorable.38 Letters of the alphabet may take on anthropomorphic qualities and graphic designers have exploited typography to create many humorous and memorable ads. Other examples of puns can be found in fantastic or vernacular architecture, in the form of 3D puns as roadside attractions where buildings may be shaped liked doughnuts, UFOs or roosters. Yet, puns in art, while they may be entertaining, create new associations and meanings through word play, and the relationships between text and images. Consider the work by Arcimboldo, a sixteenth-century painter, who combined images of fish, fruit and animals to create his portrait paintings through careful juxtapositions of forms. In The Flora Nymph (1591) and The Summer (1563), visual puns are found in abundance within the hair and heads and a cornucopia of summer fruits and vegetables

18

Art and Laughter

and floral sprays that would delight the king. Certainly, Picasso’s Baboon and Young (1951), a bronze sculpture with car parts for the body, is an example of a visual pun, an absurd juxtaposition and substitutions of forms. The role of pun in art is to bring awareness to the use and power of metaphor, and puns succeed through subtlety. Some examples of artists who employ visual puns are Brian Jungen, Julia Kunin, Gladys Nilsson, Kay Rosen, William Wegman, Karl Wirsum and the Art Guys.

Paradox Paradox is incongruity achieved through the juxtaposition of images, words and images, techniques, media and/or ideas, and at first they can seem false, but then we see the contradictions made apparent and the revealing of something true. This may be evident in Meret Oppenheim’s Object (1936), a self-contradictory fur teacup that is ‘so fantastic that only a comic reaction can make the image bearable’.39 Surrealist artists, such as Magritte and Dalí, have been known to create paradoxical images that elude logic and rational explanation, but at the same time, intrigue and fascinate us. The paradox found in Magritte’s images, for example, are often the kinds of scenarios found in dreams: they represent the unconscious and a reality that is not bound by the conventions of the waking world. The purpose of 4. Rene Magritte, Time Transfixed, 1938. paradox in art is to promote fantasy, recognize the beauty in absurdity, and perhaps be more accepting of a contradictory universe. Paradox asks viewers to question reality and to explore impossibilities in art. Some artists who engage the use of visual paradox in their work include Julia Kunin, Liza Lou, Sarah Lucas, Pat Oleszko, Judy Onofrio, Tony Oursler, Niki de Saint Phalle, Kenny Sharf and David Shrigley.

Irony Irony is a leading form of humour, particularly in postmodern art. Irony is enabled by using words or a combination of words and images to express something completely

Before the Laugh

19

different from the literal meaning of the word or object. The purpose of irony in art is to awaken our capacity to see subtle contradictions in images and within language so that we may ‘read between the lines’, and not take everything at face value. Some examples of artists who employ irony are Sylvie Fleury, Tom Friedman, Les Levine, Sarah Lucas, Bruce Nauman, Richard Prince, Kay Rosen, Cindy Sherman and William Wegman.

Dark humour Dark humour relies on the effect of morbidity, absurdity and anarchy. Other terms related to dark humour include black humour or gallows humour.40 While dark humour is mostly associated with film and literature, dark humour has found its way into visual art. Often overlapping with parody and satire, dark humour confronts topics such as death, chaos, violence, disasters and personal crises. Many postmodern artists today confront the dark side of life in a way that provokes laughter in the face of tragedy. An example of dark humour in a kitsch object is a mass-produced plastic 3D depiction of Michael Jackson dangling his child from a hotel balcony that parodies this real life event captured in the media not too long ago. Some examples of artists who employ dark humour are Jake and Dinos Chapman, Paul Davis, Todd Schorr and Cindy Sherman. Many artists combine a variety of humour in their works. A typical combination is parody with satire, or imitation with a bite that can be seen in the works by Patty Carroll, Red Grooms, Shag (Josh Agle), Isabel Samaras and Saul Steinberg.

Artistic Devices for Triggering a Response of Laughter Artists use a variety of techniques or devices to trigger responses of laughter from viewers. These techniques include association, transposition, transformation, exaggeration, disguise and appropriation.41 An artist combining words and visuals or two images together through juxtaposition may create associations. The association may be incongruous and create the necessary surprise for laughter. Transposition means relocating a subject or image and placing it in a new context. For example, transposition may be seen in the work of Magritte where umbrellas float in the sky among clouds. Everyday objects can take on new meanings if they are transported to new environments. Transformation is the altering of a form, and the merging of two or more forms to create hybrids, or hybridization of form. Exaggeration of form is achieved through changing or distorting the size or scale of a form; making objects bigger or smaller can create a comic effect because one’s expectation of scale is violated. Contradiction is created through setting up paradoxical or ironic compositions or relationships between words, images and objects. Disguise is the concealing or masking of a form, shape, person or place with the intention to hide. Finally, appropriation is the technique of borrowing forms, shapes and images from art, advertising and popular culture with the aim of altering the borrowed image to create a comic effect. All of these humour-

20

Art and Laughter

evoking techniques can be found to varying degrees and combinations in artworks that are included in this book.

Twentieth-century Art Movements and Humour A careful look art history reveals that some art historical periods and movements contain a large number of examples of visual incongruities associated with parody, pun, satire, paradox and irony. These twentieth-century art movements include Dada and Surrealism (Europe), California Funk (USA), Chicago Imagists (USA), Fluxus, Pop Art (USA and UK) and Neo-Pop or Pop Surrealism. These movements will be discussed to give a background to better understand the contexts in which art is produced, and to understand the influences that contemporary artists still draw upon for comic effect.

Dada Dada was a post-First World War artistic and literary movement that aimed to shock people out of their complacency and challenge the notion of art. The most notorious artist associated with Dada was Marcel Duchamp, who introduced the ‘ready-made’. He used found and industrial objects in his art, and ‘announced the entropic split, or the end of aesthetically integrated art’.42 Duchamp’s Fountain, or urinal, which he placed in a museum, still impacts on the way contemporary artists are defining art, the art object and how they approach making art. André Breton in Surrealism and Painting (1965) writes: ‘Marcel Duchamp was the only artist who may be legitimately claimed by all the great [art] movements (Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstractionism) to have shaken the world of art by its foundations.’43 Dadaists were known for their addition of the element of chance, and influenced artists and musicians such as the Fluxus artists of the 1960s and John Cage.

Surrealism Surrealism was more than a painting style; it was a way of responding to the world by artists and poets who shared a vision that the dream world was reality before our eyes. Surrealists enjoyed the process of juxtaposing forms to create new meanings. Their vision of art extended to writing, art making and manifesto writing. Surrealist artists, such as Magritte, Dalí and Ernst, juxtaposed materials and images and invented the collage and the photocollage techniques that incorporated newsprint, text, rubbings of textures, photographs and drawings. One of the techniques Surrealist artists used was automatic drawing, or drawing spontaneously by making marks and developing new shapes, forms and images through free association. Another technique they used was the ‘exquisite corpse’: a game of folded paper where a phrase or drawing was added without the awareness of the other collaborators. Surrealist artists also created images with materials other than paint on

Before the Laugh

21

5. Salvador Dalí, Aphrodisiac Telephone, 1938.

canvas; they continually experimented with everyday materials producing artworks that were highly fantastic, imaginary, mysterious, poetic, absurd and often humorous. Everyday life, current events, dreams and the unconscious were sources of inspiration for Surrealist artists, and their collaborations with one another resulted in a synergy between these artists. Many Surrealist artists and poets collaborated to create poems about drawings and drawings about poems. The juxtaposition of letters, words and phrases with drawn images of dots, lines and shapes brought together the ‘distant realities’ that Breton spoke about. Surrealist poets used words to create new associations in what Breton called ‘random assemblage’. Even handwriting was incorporated into drawings and paintings, which took on lyrical qualities. All of these components contributed to works that embody incongruities associated with visual puns. Like the Dadaists, the Surrealists rejected limited definitions of art and art-making processes. Many of the Surrealist artists were meticulous, realist painters, such as Salvador Dalí, and their stylistic techniques enhanced the surreal quality of their images. Some Surrealist artists, such as Miro and Arp, worked more abstractly by creating formal compositions. Like the Dadaists, the Surrealists questioned reality and gave credence to looking beneath the surface of everyday experiences. Allegiance to Dada and Surrealist philosophy is alive and well today in numerous artists such as Sarah Lucas, Julia Kunin, Tom Friedman and Vik Muniz, who rely on the use of puns, paradox and irony in their works.

22

Art and Laughter

Fluxus, Happenings and Performance Art The Fluxus movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s had strong foundations in music, architecture, Zen Buddhism and art. Their main ideas, expounded by one of the founders, George Maciunas, embraced globalism, the unity of art and life, intermedia, experimentalism, chance, and the playfulness of games, jokes and gags. Notable influences on Fluxus members were Dada, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage.44 Students of Cage, such as Alan Kaprow, who later collaborated with painter Red Grooms were interested in the notion of simultaneous presentation of unrelated events to create what was termed ‘happenings’. These happenings often occurred in rented spaces and merged sounds with set design and poetry, and often resulted in humorous performances. Fluxus, as a movement, reacted against the other art movements happening at the time, such as Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, and really embraced ‘the gag’ or performances that ‘fiddled with the culturally conditioned constructs of performance art’.45 Fluxus artists regarded humour and laughter as potent components of performance that could communicate what could not be said in words. In this regard, Fluxus embraced theatrics, gesturing, sound, words and visuals that could disrupt the notion of rightness, propriety and order. The kinds of humour associated with this movement include paradox and irony.

California Funk California Funk is a movement from the 1960s and 1970s originating with artists from California, such as William T. Wiley, Joan Brown and ceramic artist Robert Arneson. Their work is characterized by the use of bold colour, whimsy and biting satire, and the use of cartoon-style and popular culture images. Robert Arneson, a king of social and art critique among contemporary ceramicists, influenced an entire generation of ceramic artists whose works merged satire and irony with ceramics. Peter Saul is probably the best known satirical painter to emerge from this movement. In a recent exhibit called Homage to Dalí, he parodies and satirizes ‘and is a match for the work of [other contemporary artists] Paul McCarthy, Raymond Pettibon, and Mike Kelley’.46

Chicago Imagists Descriptions of Chicago artists include ‘the shocks, the surprises, the poetry, the tremendously charged emotional voltage, the distortions, puns, fantasy, continual formal unexpectedness and devastating humour’.47 A group of Chicago artists – Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Sue Ellen Rocca and Karl Wirsum – emerged in late 1960s out of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Later, artists Barbara Rossi, Christina Ramberg, Roger Brown, Ed Flood and Sarah Canright would join the group. Broadly known as the Chicago Imagist painters, like the Dadaists and Surrealists, they became associated with more than a painting style. They shared wide interests

Before the Laugh

23

in images from popular culture, the art of the self-taught and outsider art, comics, pattern art, graffiti and the ethnographic collections of Chicago museums. The Chicago Imagists’ works incorporated many of these influences into their visual vocabularies, while transcending them with witty puns. Whether in painting, printmaking or sculpture, their works are characterized by formal and complex compositions, intense and highly personal colour, abstract figures, use of line, painstakingly painted surfaces and details, and ‘the presence of verbal written typographic elements and titles as part of an elaborate wordplay’.48 Gladys Nilsson, Barbara Rossi and Karl Wirsum are Imagist artists whose works employ the use of puns in titles that result in new associations and meanings. Their love of play in art is revealed in their pictorial inventiveness, the hybridization of forms and exaggeration through scale and placement of images. Imagist works may be described as seriously witty in ways that excite the mind and delight the eye.

Pop Art Like the Chicago Imagist artists, Pop artists of the 1960s looked to popular 6. Gladys Nilsson, Scene Eye to I, 1999. culture for subjects, such as advertising, everyday objects, packaging, food, fashion and photography. Features of Pop Art include the repetition of images within an artwork – the crafted object or painting that did not reveal the artist’s touch as in a brush stroke or fingerprint, and the use of unconventional art materials and processes, such as silkscreen, photography and industrial materials. Some of the most famous examples of Pop Art include the series of silkscreened Campbell Soup labels by Andy Warhol; Claus Oldenburg’s large-scale fibre sculptures of french fries, baseball bats or clothespins; Roy Lichtenstein’s comic strip inspired enamel paintings boldly painted with primary colours; and Robert Rauschenberg’s mixed media collage paintings. Pop artists were responsive to an array of new industrial materials on the market and began to integrate some of the new technologies available in commercial printing, such as silkscreening. The repetition of images in the works by Andy Warhol and

24

Art and Laughter

others echoes the beginning of the mass production of images on television and in the newspapers and the manufacturing boom that took place in the USA in the 1960s. The idea of a mass-produced image as an art series broke with the tradition of art that art had to be one of a kind and original. Many of the Pop artists, such as Oldenburg, are still working today and creating large-scale, humorous works that take advantage of new technologies and materials, and outdoor spaces. Parody and mild satire are associated with Pop artworks.

Feminist Art Movement The postmodern era in art has witnessed a proliferation of artworks that address issues of culture, race, class, representation, identity, gender and sexuality. The artworks created by feminist artists since the 1970s have been used to subvert sexism, racism and oppression through the legitimization of women’s issues and has resulted in artworks and social change that has been fuelled by humour. Feminist artists have used biting satire, parody and irony as a catalyst to expose the absurdities and incongruities present in the spaces between art and life, in the injustices within political and institutional cultures, and within personal and familial dramas. In 1982, a landmark exhibition entitled The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Laughter, curated by Jo Anna Isaak, explored the potential of laughter, hysteria and the grotesque in art made by women.49 Many of these artists explored relationships between art, genius, creativity, gender, sexuality and politics, and used humour to empower themselves and others. Many third-wave feminist artists of the 1990s and beyond continue to draw upon early feminist works for inspiration. In a catalogue from the Bad Girls exhibit (1994) at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Marcia Tucker, curator, wrote: ‘There is an increas­ ing number of women artists who are defying conventions of traditional femininity to define themselves, but they are doing it in a way that is delicious, outrageous, and with a sense of humor.’50 Works by Sarah Lucas, Julia Kunin, Liza Lou and Judy Onofrio rely on the use of sculptural elements and objects as metaphor and pun to address issues of sexuality, women’s roles and femininity through re-appropriation of materials in ways that are potently humorous. Similarly, the works by Alex Bag and Deborah Kass embrace parody and satire to address issues of identity and representation with biting humour.

Postmodernism Postmodernism is an umbrella term for the wide range of art produced between 1980 and the present that includes conceptual art, neo-conceptual art, neo-minimal art, video and installation art, political art, feminist art and pop-surrealism. Essentially, postmodernism, which also applies to literature and architecture, gave birth to the notion that the critique and deconstruction of art, the art world, social constructs and society was necessary. Issues of identity, self-representation, politics, the environment,

Before the Laugh

25

mass media, advertising, celebrity culture and consumerism have been the concerns of postmodern artists. One tenet of postmodernism in art is relativity, or the belief that no one belief has value over another, and this has led to endless deconstruction. Yet, postmodernism is alive and well. Many would agree that Andy Warhol and other Pop artists set the stage for postmodern artists, who would later explore issues of art production and reproduction, and the death of the notion that art must be original and a single object to be viewed on a pedestal. Postmodern art has a plethora of satire, irony and black humour as artists continue to critique art and life. Postmodern art includes many examples of installation art and site-specific art, or art that is made with either a natural setting or a gallery or museum space in mind. In site-specific works, aesthetic issues are often secondary to social issues or concepts, and they may often include events and performances within the site that are usually documented through photography or video.51 While postmodern art continues to flourish, many view postmodern art as spectacle driven, shallow, unenlightening, and cynical. Artists today, however, do not operate under the same rules as in the past; they are a reflection of our times, and they respond by taking full advantage of technologies and new ideologies. If their work is viewed as cynical, maybe we do in fact live in more dangerous, precarious and uncertain times. Instead of looking to their inner worlds and unconscious like the modernists did, artists today peer outwards and use the world as their subject. Many postmodern artists push the limits of acceptability and operate along the lines of Marshall McLuhan’s ‘Art is what you can get away with’.52

Sensationalism and Young British Artists Sensationalism is a term referring to the Young British Artists (YBA) of the 1980s, some of whom are discussed in this book, such as Sarah Lucas and Jake and Dinos Chapman. Influenced by conceptualism and Dada, their work is characterized by irony, the use of non-traditional art materials, and the exploration of issues of identity and shock tactics.53 Many of these sensationalist artists work in the area of installation art. With new approaches to materials, these artists question the nature of the art museum exhibit, by placing objects in the museum on tableaus, or created spaces, within museums. Installation art dislodges the notion of art as a commodity to be viewed and consumed, and re-establishes art as a participatory, experiential experience, where viewers can interact with artistic practice. Much of recent installation art merges new technologies, such as video, film and webcasting. Issues that installation artists, sculptors and time-based artists embrace include escape, public and private, sensual pleasure and the mundane, interior and exterior, nature and culture, body in space and time, the art museum or gallery as a laboratory or zone for artistic practice, and entertainment and art.54

26

Art and Laughter

Pop Surrealism Contemporary artworks created between 1980 and the present build on the artistic traditions of European Dada and Surrealism. These artists utilize cartoon imagery, bold use of colour and sources from popular culture. Many of these artists grew up reading and drawing comic books and were influenced by underground comix, and artists such as Robert Crumbs and Robert Williams. Most share a love for the absurd and Romanticism, a nineteenth-century art movement that reacted against rationality and industrialization and is characterized by images of emotion, garishness and the grotesque.55 Robert Williams, considered the ‘father’ of pop surrealism, describes this West Coast USA-based art movement as ‘a loose-knit group of artists who function in the craftsmanship-based realm of representational art … we spawn from story illustration, comic book art, science fiction, movie poster art, psychedelic and punk rock art, hot rod and biker art, surfer and beach bum graphics, tattoo and pin up art, and pornography’.56 Their works also reflect interest in retro vintage design, colour, kitsch, and the found object. Widely known as ‘lowbrow artists’, this term has been criticized by these artists who view it as inappropriate, limiting and derogatory. Lowbrow art refers mostly to narrative, cartoon art, mainstream or underground comix and a carnivalesque sense of satire and love for the lurid.57 Yet, the term lowbrow has been more recently replaced with pop surrealism and may better reflect the eclectic interests by these artists in art and popular culture, their painting talent and their ability to tell a story with humour. Pop Surrealists rely heavily on parody, satire and dark humour as they interpret contemporary life, politics, the environment and their internal fantasy-based reality. Many of their works explore the loss of innocence and the presence of hypocrisy and greed in contemporary culture, blending street culture and fine art concerns that bear a resemblance to artists Kenny Sharf and Keith Haring. Many Pop Surrealists who began working in animation, illustration and for the film industry are gaining acceptance, exposure and popularity as a result of gallery and museum exhibits in well-placed LA and New York galleries. In spite of the commercial success, the root of Pop Surrealism lies in a rebellion against commodification. Some examples of Pop Surrealists include Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup, Joe Coleman, Charles Krafft, Liz McGrath, Mark Ryden, Isabel Samaras, Shag (Josh Agle), Todd Schorr and Marc Bell. Many of these artists’ works have been written about in Juxtapoz, a magazine devoted to the discussion of graphic works associated with ‘lowbrow’ art.58 Marc Bell, a Vancouver-based artist, is a good example of a Pop Surrealist who combines his love of comics with what he calls ‘Fine Ahtwerks’. He creates drawings, watercolours, paintings and mixed media narrative constructions that are characterized by inventive creatures, human and animal, and architectural forms in surreal landscapes that combine non-sensical words. His work is described as ‘funny, seat-of-the pants

Before the Laugh

27

comic narratives … foreign and familiar, and a riotous, enlightening, and constantly surprising experience’.59

Challenges to Understanding and Appreciating Visual Humour Laughter may not be a typical response to art for several reasons: there may be personal, social and cultural impediments to responding to art with laughter. In spite of the fusion of big business in the art museum and the savvy marketing of art museum exhibits that make art museums seem more like malls today, art museums are still viewed as serious and proper spaces for art. The social mores and conduct associated with being in such spaces does have an impact on how people behave in front of art, and ultimately may inhibit their responses to art with laughter. Another assumption about art is that it is intellectual and therefore requires an intellectual and measured response rather than an emotional response. James Elkins, in Pictures and Tears (2001),60 discusses how we have been socialized through education and training to be unemotional about art and rely on ‘experts’ about art to tell us what art means. He says that we have become far too intellectual in the presence of artworks, and do not allow ourselves to feel, to cry or to laugh. He suggests, and I agree, that we give ourselves permission to fully experience art, and to laugh if necessary, if that is what the artwork provokes us to do. I am not suggesting that our responses to an artwork should stop at the utter of our laugh. The laugh is a guttural reminder that we have had a pleasant cognitive shift and this should prompt us to inquire further about why an artwork is humorous in ways that can deepen our understanding of the work. Lastly, most contemporary artworks do not provoke laughter. If you look through the history of art, the subjects in art include the religious, the mythological, the commonplace, still life and interior scenes, the human figure and the abstract. Postmodern art in particular, or art since the 1980s to the present, has a cynicism that does not lend itself to humour. As a result, we can find many works that address political and social issues, but rare is the work that both critiques and makes us smile or laugh. Typically, artworks do provide aesthetic pleasure and enjoyment from seeing the tactile, surface qualities of art, and the way an artist has used materials to create form. Artworks may also induce states of awe, puzzlement, melancholy or even repulsion from the way an artist has used materials and ideas. The artworks that do provoke laughter may comprise only a small percentage of art in the entire history of art. These artworks, however, are a vital and curious genre of art that demands more serious inquiry. One of the hurdles to looking at and understanding art is to clarify our own assumptions about and definitions of art. In addition, now that humour is part of the mix, it is important to understand what art we find funny and why. For example, a question worth asking yourself is how you define art. Is art painting, drawing, sculpture or printmaking, or do you think of art in broader terms? In this book, you will find

28

Art and Laughter

images of artworks by mainly American and British artists that cross geographical and artistic borders, and whose works extend beyond art museum walls. You may be drawn to certain artworks, and not to others, and it is important to recognize and understand your likes, dislikes and preferences about art. Questions of whether or not you think a work is good, beautiful, ugly or funny, are aesthetic and philosophical questions; that is, they deal with the philosophy of art. Answers to these questions are based in your values. Aestheticians have long been concerned with the nature and value of art and the questions that arise in an effort to experience and understand art. The following are aesthetic questions: Do you think that art can be funny? What kinds of images provoke laughter? The many ways to define art and humour contribute to the ongoing debate about the definition and nature of art that lie at the very heart of understanding and appreciating art. While humour theories may explain the psychological reasons as to why art may be perceived as funny, one’s culture, race, class and life experiences influence one’s responses to artworks. Certainly the context of the artwork is a factor in responding to a work. For example, if you view an artwork in an art museum or in a beauty salon your perceptions about the work would vary, and you would have a very different experience in each space. In addition, some humour in art may be intentional and some humour may be unintentional, that is, the artist did not consciously intend to be comical. I tend to think this is rare because artists are so conscious about the placement of images, marks and how they want the work to be viewed. However, a viewer, for whatever reason, may find humour in a work of art even though the artist did not intend for it. The sociological theory of humour recognizes that humour expression and comprehension is culture based. A sociological view of humour recognizes that humour is part of cultural production and that producers and viewers of humour are socialized in different ways.61 This may play out in the production and appreciation of all forms of humour. The sociological theory considers the audience an integral component in the process of humour perception. Such a postmodern perspective is fitting due to the complexity and variety of humour, and types of responses to humour. In postmodern thinking about art, meaning lies with the viewer, not within the artwork. In this view, we are not limited to guessing what the artist’s intention is. This is an institutional theory of art that has relevance for understanding postmodern art and this position of the viewer as the creator of meaning. Formulated by Arthur C. Danto and George Dickie62 and expounded on by Arthur C. Danto,63 this theory stresses that the meaning and interpretation of artworks lie outside the artwork and require our understanding of the art contexts where art is created and exhibited, understanding of an artwork in relation to other works by the artist, and consideration as to how art critics and historians have interpreted the artworks. When viewing visual humour, that is, parody, pun, paradox, satire and irony, some of the following questions may be relevant for viewers to ask: Would this work be

Before the Laugh

29

perceived as funny if presented in another context or space? In what contexts would this work not be viewed as humorous? What person(s) or culture(s) may not view this work as humorous? How do the text or titles enhance the humour? Of course, these questions may be good to address after the laugh and may provide some new insights about the function of artworks as cultural texts and artefacts as well as visual texts. The process of interpreting works of art requires taking the time to ask these questions, reflecting on your own beliefs about art and humour, and your reactions to artworks. The perceptions of art museums and galleries by the general public at large are that art is a serious matter, and art museums are serious places that require reverence. For example, many people get dressed up to visit the art museum and, rarely do you hear laughter in art museum galleries. Art museums were designed after European royal palaces, and many today are housed in former palaces, such as the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia. These spectacular spaces give rise to awe rather than laughter. In addition, the designs of contemporary art museums are often ‘artworks’ in themselves with their bold, abstract and often controversial designs of irregularly shaped galleries. Consider the new art museum addition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Both the design of art museums and our cultural assumptions about them may impede our desire to laugh. Yet, the look and feel of art museums are as ever changing as art is. New art museum designs may even be called visual humour in their own right. Consider the architecture of Frank Gehry’s teapot-shaped art museum the Weisman Museum at the University of Minnesota, USA.

Concluding Thoughts The challenges to understanding and appreciating humour require paying attention to museum and gallery spaces as extensions of the artwork; that is, artwork cannot viewed separately from the spaces they inhabit. The understanding of visual humour cannot be separated from the contexts in which the artwork is produced – the time, place and culture of the artist – and the contexts to where art is viewed – museum and galleries. Whether or not an artist intended to be funny, he or she may tickle your funny bone. In reverse, an artist who intended for you to laugh may not arouse your laughter. Interpreting images as humorous depends on factors such as age, gender, culture, race, your experience with artworks, the novelty of the artwork presented to you and the contexts where art is viewed. You may, however, find much of the art in this book to be disagreeable and pure nonsense. Even nonsense is to be taken seriously because nonsense pivots on ‘ambiguity, punnery, and displaced logic’.64 Perhaps what you may realize from such works is that you have a discomfort with ambiguity and displaced logic, even if it is for a moment. Understanding how and why artists use media, ideas and techniques to illicit laughter is important to appreciating contemporary art. Even if your journey through this book

30

Art and Laughter

results in your complete disdain for contemporary and postmodern art, my hope is that you will smile as you learn about these artworks, and recognize the complexity of human experience through the lens of humour. Chapter 2 will explore the varieties of the smile as depicted in artworks throughout the history of art, and how the smile has unabashedly turned into a wide, teeth-bearing grin in contemporary and postmodern artworks.

Chapter 2

Smiling Portraits in Art

Twice I have lived forever in a smile. ee cummings Art has long had a social function, that is, to express a wide range of human emotions. One of the emotions is joy that may be derived from experiencing an artwork that makes us smile or laugh. As discussed in Chapter 1, visual images may be explained in part by humour theories – incongruity, superiority, relief and sociological – that may enhance our understanding as to why images may be perceived as funny, and how they can arouse a response of laughter. The smiling face in art has long intrigued me and is evidence of humans enjoying themselves. The ‘smiley face’ that was plastered on everything in the mid 1970s – from stickers to coffee cups to advertising – represented an attitude of ‘be happy and smile’ that permeated a generation. The smile in art is not a typical gesture. Its unusualness deserves our attention and some further explanation as to possible meanings and significance in the genre of portraiture in art. In both US and UK art traditions, there are images of smiling people in smiles that range from slight, to wide, to even boisterous. The intent of this chapter is to look at a unique genre of art that smiles and laughs at us, the viewer. Smiling and laughing images range from quiet gestures of delight or approval to the smile gone awry. A smile is defined by Webster’s dictionary as ‘to look or regard with amusement or ridicule; a change of facial expression in which the eyes brighten and the corners of the mouth curve slightly upward’. Smiles may be described as staged, spontaneous, forced, easy, wide or sinister. The smile can reveal joy, or conceal the true feelings, as noted in a polite smile. As Angus Trumble writes: ‘The smile is more than a chemical reaction. It is a highly sophisticated concept, an expression of the emotions, a mode of communication, a beacon of desire, a ritual, an occasion of intense psychological,

32

Art and Laughter

anthropological and social interest, the product of acute observation, cognition, and interpretation.’1 In our society today, the white toothy smile as advertised in commercials and film denotes supreme confidence and total happiness. The smile is a result of the recognition of incongruities that are pleasant enough to make us feel joy, thus triggering a chemical reaction in the brain in cranial nerve 7, which activates the facial nerves and muscles into a smile.2 However, beware of all smiling faces. Non-amusing incongruities that are associated with pain, anger or fear do not illicit smiling and laughing in return. For example, pre-Columbian sculptures called Caras Sonrientes or ‘Smiling Faces’, represent drug-induced sacrificial victims, and may not be likely to induce amusing responses from viewers. Yet, some early sculptures, such as the ceramic Seated Ball Player (first to fifth century ad) yields a wide and toothy grin that could speak only of some anticipated or achieved pleasure. One kind of smile that may not elicit a smile from the viewer is a smirk or a ‘smile in an affected or smug or snide manner’, for such a smile may not arouse pleasure. Contrary to the smile, which is quiet, the laugh represents ‘the show of mirth, joy, or scorn with a smile or a chuckle or explosive sound’, as a result of surprise, the recognition of the unpredicted and the incongruous, the contradiction between what is expected and what occurs, and the jolting of one’s expectations. Laughter is a result of the mouth opening with sounds that can be described as ‘machine guns, nasal, and high pitched, musical, guttural, and grunting’.3 While we may view paintings that depict hearty laughter, we can only imagine what kinds of sounds they might produce if the painting could come alive. Images of smiling and laughter are a rare and curious phenomenon in art. Images of laughter and smiling are likely to be found in abundance in commercial photographs, in family photos, in film, in popular culture and in clown paintings. The invention of the Polaroid camera in the mid 1960s and recently the digital camera have fostered the capturing of more toothy smiles than ever before in history. Yet, smiling in photographs is really a twentieth-century phenomenon. Looking back, people did not smile in paintings or family photographs. Do people smile more now than centuries ago? Probably. First, of all, people now have better access to dental care, and now with tooth whitening people are smiling more than ever. In A Brief History of the Smile, Angus Trumble writes that teeth were really hard to draw, and many models from the lower classes who were used in paintings had understandably horrible and unkempt teeth. He writes: ‘Most teeth in art belonged to dirty old men, misers, drunks, whores, gypsies, people undergoing experiences of religious ecstasy, lunatics, and the possessed.’4 In France, it was even considered a social offence to show one’s teeth,5 and the court of France at Versailles operated by a rule that denounced the show of teeth and tongues and unacceptable amounts of laughter.6

Smiling Portraits in Art

33

The function of the smile for the middle and upper classes in European society up through Victorian times was to promote politeness and grace, and ease the encounter with a graceful smile. That didn’t stop painters such as Joseph Ducreux and JeanEtienne Liotard, both eighteenth-century painters, who painted their self-portraits with wide smiles that revealed rotting and missing upper teeth. Perhaps there was a good reason for the no-smile social rules, but in art, smiling was fair game, and perhaps one of the few places that lewdness, or the display of truly joyous human emotions, would be found acceptable, and even possible. In general, the showing of teeth in art and in most social circles, except for bars, music halls and vaudeville was considered lewd and socially unacceptable, and quite unattractive.7 So, it is no surprise that women throughout the history of painting and sculpture have been depicted smiling, with very little movement of the lips, and with restrained emotions. Smiling in our contemporary culture is now seen as a sign of success and personal happiness, and the social constraints against women smiling have lifted. There are exceptions, of course, and in certain societies, like Japan, women still may cover their mouth when they laugh or smile. Whereas in Japanese culture the custom of blackening teeth was a sign of status, our teeth whitening and cosmetic dentistry craze glorifies big, white, even toothy smiles. The history of the smile in art can be traced back to Egyptian, Greek and Buddhist sculptures depicting an archaic, mysterious smile: a closed mouth with a slight upward curve.8 In addition, small terracotta ceramic smiling figures called ‘entertainers’ (c. sixth century bc) served as Chinese tomb sculptures to amuse the dead in the afterlife. The smile in art is truly as old as the remaining artefacts of recorded civilization suggest. Perhaps the most notable of all smiling paintings is the Mona Lisa, whose enigmatic and shy smile has intrigued and baffled viewers for centuries. The smile might be described as a veiled smile that conceals her inner thoughts, for example the reason that she smiling. Most examples of smiling in Western, European portrait painting depict the decorous smile, a smile of reserve and restraint. Some exceptions to this may be seen in sixteenth and seventeenth century Dutch genre and portraiture painting, which depict lewd smiles complete with ‘laughter lines’.9 An example of this would be Franz Hals’ The Laughing Cavalier. Artists in the twentieth century have depicted more smiling people in paintings, photographs, prints and videos than ever before. Today lewd smiling can be found in artworks and in popular culture advertisements, music videos and comic books, yet we still go back to one of the most famous smiles of Renaissance art to understand this phenomenon.

The Famous Renaissance Smiles The Renaissance painter, Guiseppe Arcimboldo and his series of portraits painted with fruit and vegetable forms are portraits that smile at us, and make us smile. These artful

34

Art and Laughter

jokes rely on their ability to convince us that cheeks can be peachy, noses can be cucumbers, lips can be peas, and ears can be corn. Yet, in Renaissance portrait painting laughs as opposed to smiles are rare when depicting aristocracy.10 The portrait of Lisa Gherardesca, La Gioconda or Mona Lisa, the wife of a wealthy merchant, has perplexed and intrigued art viewers for centuries. In spite of all the scholarship on this painting, there is no definitive answer as to why Mona Lisa smiles, but only that she does smile. She actually smiles a half smile, or ‘unsourire attenue’.11 Some speculate that Mona Lisa was very sad and musicians and clowns entertained her so she would smile. It was very unusual to have aristocratic women smiling at all in Renaissance portraits, and the smile is naturally restrained. Treatises on feminine beauty stated that women should never display more than six upper teeth.12 While her smiling face is protected under bullet-proof glass in the Louvre in Paris, France, we can find her image repeated in advertisements, souvenirs, postcards, towels, coffee mugs and

7. Mona Lisa Lamp, c.2000.

magnets, and on 93,800 websites.13 Her image has been used to sell cars, chocolate, coffee, soap and souvenirs. Anyone who is anyone, such as celebrities, presidents, presidents’ wives and royalty, has been immortalized with a makeover in the style of Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is a cultural icon

Smiling Portraits in Art

35

that has grown only because of merchandising and appropriation and the repetition of her image through parody. The fact that millions of people go on a pilgrimage to the Louvre every year to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa, a painting that smiles, is a cause for hope. The sweetness of her smile is also bittersweet and melancholic; it is not a smile of jubilation or reverie. It is a smile that understands both joy and sorrow. We do not expect her to smile because of her social standing and the cultural expectations imposed upon her. Yet, she does smile. Both Leonardo and Mona Lisa defy our expectations of art, and women’s roles. Leonardo and Mona Lisa defy the expectations of an artist and his sitter. Her smile, which may be defined as only a halfsmile, slightly turned up, is still alluring, pop and very cool. Perhaps she is just being true to herself, as her name, Gioconda, in Latin, means ‘happy, joyful, and glad’.14

Other Historical Grins and Smiles Most images of wide smiles and grins in historical Western painting belonged to the lower classes, which included beggars, dwarfs and court jesters. In royal courts, jesters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were used to lighten up the crowds, poking fun at royal life and social mores. Their entertainment value was rooted in their abilities to use gestures, dance, jokery, dialects and costumes to parody and satirize Renaissance royal life. Often the jesters were both good-looking and funny, and their role was to play the idiot or fool. One perk was that a jester had absolute immunity and freedom to speak the truth because it was all in jest. Jesters often worked in pairs with dwarfs who were jesters in their own right. Dwarfs often had physical defects and were poked fun of while entertaining and amusing the courts.15 On recently viewing a sculpture of the Dwarf Morgante, Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimode Medici’s jester, I was reminded of how slaves appeared in Roman comedies and Greek theatre to amuse the upper classes. In addition to performances, images of jesters and dwarfs appeared in paintings around the same time to amuse the households of the royal European courts when they could not be around to perform. Some other notable smiling images in historical Western painting include Franz Hals’ The Laughing Cavalier (1624), William Hogarth’s Miss Mary Edwards (1742) and Jacques-Louis David’s Comtesse Daru (1810). Daumier’s small-scale ceramic caricatures of French, male, nineteenth-century political figures laughing gleefully are some of the best smiling sculptures in the history of art.16 Perhaps men had more to smile about, and if art mirrors life, men were certainly freer to express themselves in public arenas. A few rare historical examples of women smiling and laughing in art include the Self-Portrait by the Renaissance painter, Judith Leyster (1635), where the female sitter laughs unabashedly at the viewer. It wasn’t really until the mid twentieth century that we begin to see hearty laughter in art. The drawings of café scenes by George Grosz, and street scenes by American artists Jacob Lawrence and Faith Ringgold depict

36

Art and Laughter

smiling, grinning and laughing people engaged in leisure activities. A growing genre of images in art depicting the working class smiling and laughing is a twentieth-century phenomenon spurred by the development of photography for the masses. Mass immigration sparked an unprecedented photographic documentation of new immigrants to the USA. Painters who could now work from photographs began to employ ‘snapshot’ compositions in their works. The documentation of American life through photography was spurned during the 1930s and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects. The invention of the automobile escalated leisurely excursions into the country and across America and the UK that were documented by photographs and silent home movies. The emergence of an American middle class with leisure time is exemplified in the 1939 photograph Vacation Fun by Martin Munkacsi. The sweet smiles that could be found in historical examples of smiling in art turned into wide-grinned, unabashed smiles in visual satire and parody in contemporary art around the mid twentieth century. The 1960s saw a proliferation of visual parody and satire in contemporary art in the USA and elsewhere, and perhaps more lewdness in art. Humour was used as a means to express resistance to social and political policies. Artists used techniques of exaggeration, distortion of the human figure, and appropriation of other images in art and media to express their ideas. No longer did art have to be serious. Art could even be about other art, and culture. Smiling was now used not just to denote satisfaction or happiness, but also to conceal malice, confront social injustice and challenge stereotypes in art and life.

Smiling and Grinning in Contemporary Art In recent years, there have been a growing number of art exhibits devoted to humorous artworks with smiling images. These include What’s Funny About Art? at the University of Richmond, Virginia and Humor, Irony and Wit at the Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. Examples of artworks from these exhibits illustrate a variety of humour, and a range of smiling and laughter present in contemporary art. They also point to the fact that the smiles and grinning in artworks have grown bigger and louder through the centuries, and that the grin and the smile are used to communicate about social mores, norms, stereotypes, power relations, gender and relationships.

John Currin’s Women John Currin is a contemporary painter who paints people smiling and laughing heartily and zanily. Currin’s genre of subjects include middle-class and high-income men, couples and women who appear in full and partial portraits ‘cobbled together from an ocean of sources: old master paintings, illustration, advertising, and magazine covers … creates creatures who are completely artificial, yet familiar’.17 Stylistically, Currin’s women are strange-looking – thin, fragile and anorexic – with oddly-proportioned

Smiling Portraits in Art

37

bodies, elongated necks, large bosoms and wide grins reminiscent of women in the paintings by Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach the Elder. Robert Rosenblum notes that ‘Currin distorts these figures and “vignettes of modern life” through a distorting lens that emphasizes, to the point of caricature, how weirdly unnatural our world has become’.18 A perfect example of Currin’s satire is Stamford After Brunch (1999),19 which captures a rather giddy group of three upper-middle-class women, perhaps housewives who, without their husbands, are enjoying a shared laugh after brunch. Park Grill (2000), another painting by Currin, depicts a thin, blonde woman laughing heartily as she holds a glass of wine and engages in conversation with a man who also smiles at her. Both settings are likened to a high-class urban grill or bar. Her neck is quite elongated, unadorned, and her skin a pale shade of flesh. Her blouse is slightly open, unbuttoned at the neck, and her mouth gaping with wide laughter. Did he just tell her a joke? Are they laughing at someone? Or are they just happy? Is he flirting with her? Or she with him? Is her blush the afterglow of a hearty laugh, or a mild seduction? Her hair is slightly jostled back as if she is sitting in a wind tunnel. Her male admirer, in a three-quarter turn, slightly cut off by the picture frame, smiles back at her with whitened teeth. There is an uncanny similarity to the smile of the woman in a photograph, El Morocco (1955), by photographer Garry Winogrand. Currin’s portraits of urban young women are also reminiscent of photographs of women by another twentieth-century photographer, Weegee. Other works by Currin of smiling women such as The Cuddler (2000) and The Big Bow (2000) present women in poses that are reminiscent of female models in fashion magazines. Currin’s work is described as painterly, and his vignettes or snapshots of the ne’er-do-well, rosy-cheeked, almost anorexic females in restaurants and clubs conjures up a Norman Rockwell realism with a dose 1990s thin wispy body types, and perfectly white, capped teeth. While Rockwell’s work is far more nostalgic and sentimental, Currin offers a whole lot of giddiness in his series of smiling and laughing women. What is compelling are the settings for laughter: cafes, restaurants and clubs as sites for human interaction, emotion and consumption. These settings recall the work of 1930s artist George Grosz and his caricature-like paintings and drawings of Berlin café life. Currin composes figures from many sources, such as newspaper images, advertisements, live painting of models in the studio and photographs of his own body. It is safe to say that the figures are a construction, a fantasy and a composite female subject. Currin’s smiling and laughing women are women we have probably seen around town, laughing and smiling, yet who are oblivious to us. Insulated in their own little worlds, self-contained, they laugh to their heart’s content. The fact that these are paintings, and not photographs, make this work compelling in that it is highly unusual to find examples of hysterically laughing women in art. We’ve come a long way from Renaissance paintings of women barely able to smile to Currin’s images of women laughing wholeheartedly.

38

Art and Laughter

Wide Grins of Joy: Karl Wirsum’s Hybrid Figures Karl Wirsum’s Plug Bug is a poster, a painting and a mural painted on the side of a building in downtown (north Loop) Chicago. The mural is visible from the famous ‘State Street’. Wirsum, a Chicago-based painter, printmaker and sculptor emerged in the 1960s as part of the Chicago Hairy Who, a group of artists who were identified with sharing their passion for imaginative, figurative abstraction that drew upon influences such as billboards, comics, science fiction films, robot toys, popular culture and selftaught artists. Wirsum is a well-known, prolific and popular artist whose oeuvre consists of 2D and 3D works and public art commissions. Wirsum’s evolution as an artist can be traced to his invention of delightfully distorted abstract, human and animal hybrid forms that are known for their bold colour, patterns and crisp contours. The categories of Wirsum figures include anthropomorphic, female and male figures who are engaged in some everyday kind of activity. What Wirsum does with these seemingly everyday activities, such as mowing the lawn, throwing a ball, hitting a fly or ice skating, is to see the potential for humour as he exaggerates a pose and eludes our logic through patterns, foreshortened limbs, accessorizing figures with funky clothing, glasses, hairdos and, of course, adding humorous titles. Wirsum’s main stylistic element is line, which he reinvents at every turn, and which carries our eye around the image, in all the nooks and crannies, almost as if we were on a visual rollercoaster. Wirsum has been recognized for his humour by historians and critics, and rightly so. For a retrospective of his work, Dan Cameron writes: ‘In both Duchamp and Dubuffet we can also glimpse some of Karl Wirsum’s unparalleled wit, which may be his most beloved (and intimidating feature) … It is magnanimous humor, an uncynical glee, that informs the very essence of Wirsum’s art.’20 Similarly, James Yood, critic and art history professor, describes Wirsum as a ‘juggler … driven by a lusty gusto for human comedy … it would be a mistake to describe his work as goofy (it’s sometimes surprisingly poignant and moving) … it’s also true that it is sometimes very funny, that it provides a kind of emotional release rare in contemporary art’.21 The Plug Bug is a visual hybrid of what appears to be a bug, with an electrical outlet, in an eight-legged creature that is painted with bold Day-glo colours of blue, yellow, lavender and rust. Like Wirsum’s oeuvre of images, Plug Bug is drawn in a highly stylized way with flat, bold use of colour and shading that causes its edges to vibrate. Wacky and quirky may describe the Plug Bug as shapes are set within other shapes. The Plug Bug is typical of Wirsum’s genre of anthropomorphic, robot-like human figures that have been translated into coloured-pencil drawings, acrylic on wood painted figures, and acrylic paintings. Plug Bug exudes an extreme smile or wide grin that is fashioned like a watermelon slice with seeds. The incongruity lies in the fact that bugs don’t normally smile, and if they do it is hard to tell. Outlets are not usually seen as animated and alive although this hybrid outlet is zinging with energy. The smile is seen in other works by Wirsum: Strangers on a Terrain (2004), Foot Falls, Forward Fast (2002), Wing

Smiling Portraits in Art

39

8. Karl Wirsum, Plug Bug, c.1992.

Tips for A Tuning Fork (1995), Mr Answer Pants (1991), and Tuskarama Nails One Down (1986). Wirsum writes: ‘The title of Foot Falls, Forward Fast is an example of my use of puns to provide a humorous verbal component that can be taken separately or ignored as per the inclination of each viewer.’22 Wirsum derives his subject matter from contemporary life, and make his images come alive with impeccable use of line, with twists and turns, in imagined and elegant contours, and overlapping patterns, suggestive of a Japanese kimono, an aerial view of the landscape, a quilt pattern, 1940s floor linoleum patterns, spider webs or toy robot designs. Yet, it is more than purely decorative; it is a glimpse into the Wirsum World and a funhouse of characters. The combinations of body parts and facial expressions found in Wirsum’s drawings, prints and sculptures recalls the funny face and ‘Mr Potato Head’ toys of the 1950s and 1960s: toy sets with plastic eyes, ears, noses, mouths that could be used in any combination to create faces, and block head toys that could be turned to create a multitude of possible faces.23 The element of humour in Wirsum’s work finds its roots in ‘film, comics and radio … Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Jack Benny, Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen, the comics of Charles Addams and New Yorker cartoons, and the work of Magritte’.24

40

Art and Laughter

The visual richness of his work is further enhanced by his titles, which add a humorous twist to the mix. Wirsum’s titles rhyme and are an homage to wordplay. Consider his rhyming titles as in Mr Newer Bluer (2004) and Infant Ocean Commotion (1990), pun titles such as I Am a Wall Ruse (1969), Skull Daze (1971) and Lolli Pup (1973), and just plain hilarious, nonsensical titles such as Eraser Eyebrows (1982), Rabbit Double Scoop Gyro with Windshields (1981) and Cancel the Rainbow Catastrophe (1992). Dennis Adrian, critic, writes: ‘Wirsum’s addiction to puns, both verbal and visual, is an essential device in his construction of the multiple meanings in his work.’25 Nicholas Roukes in Artful Jesters calls Karl Wirsum ‘the clown prince of art’,26 and Wirsum lives up to this in his works that visually delight the eye. Art becomes play; play becomes art. Everyday life almost seems circus-like or at least heightened, alive, and not what it seems. It is easy to be taken in, allured and transfixed, especially with his flawless, smooth surfaces and continuous lines that define the figure and ground. Wirsum does what artists are supposed to do: lure us in to get lost in his symphony of form, wit and graphic genius. Like Currin, Wirsum takes the everyday and makes it absurd, yet playful and joyful. He uses formal, conceptual and linguistic relationships to assert his vision of the world, which smiles and grins at us, and makes us do the same in return.

Gladys Nilsson Gladys Nilsson is another Chicago-based artist and founding member of the Chicago Hairy Who. She is known for her cartoon-like, elongated figures and narrative watercolour paintings. Her female figures, many of which smile coquettishly and parody the drama of her life, provide the central drama in her works. The humour arises out of the exaggeration of dangling, awkward, elongated, tubular and elastic limbs, the juxtaposition of multiple figures and forms of varying size and scale, and her use of titles. Some figures loom over others, while other figures are miniature in scale. Many figures are drawn in frontal and side positions, and overlap with one another. Central figures are women in various kinds of poses – sitting, standing and walking in landscapes or set within interior spaces. The women are neither heavily stylized nor idealized. They come in all shapes and sizes; however, many of the women figures are tall and adorned with hats and wavy hair. The use of colour seems to be based on formal decisions and colour is not used realistically; heads may be painted blue, cats are purple and mushrooms are red. Nilsson delights in the intensity of watercolour pigment and the qualities of watercolour paint; she achieves some startlingly beautiful effects, which can be seen even in colour reproductions. She often combines gouache with watercolour, and the effects from gouache tend towards surfaces that appear more opaque and milky. Many of her compositions have a variety of perspectives, depth or the illusion of a background that is created through planes of flat colour. Some surfaces are modelled, but the majority of her forms play off one another through the vibration of contrasting colours and fairly crisp but wavering contours.

Smiling Portraits in Art

41

A favourite of mine is Me, Moiself, and I (1995). Nilsson’s central figure, bearing a Cheshire cat grin, holds photographs of herself while looking through a stack of her paintings.27 All the while, cats meander under her studio table. It seems to be the acts of daily life, witnessed or lived, that draw Nilsson into art making, and into her painted world. Her work is a view into the life of women, many of whom smile at us. The women she draws and paints are living their lives as curious, gentle, spirited women who are attentive to nature, animals, friends and things. I think these women are happy, and really enjoying life. Many of her paintings have the child-like simplicity of Paul Klee and the stage-like quality of Surrealist theatre combined with the whimsy and fancifulness of a Chagall, or Edward Lear’s fantastic drawings. Each painting tells a story about the complexities of a moment in time, and of human interactions and the awareness of a woman as artist. Nilsson’s understanding of the delicacies of intrapersonal and interpersonal communication between living things is revealed in her paintings through nuance: looks, positions of the head, glances, gestures and poses. Her characters are intelligent, thoughtful, reflective, and able to see the humour and irony in life’s situations.

9. Gladys Nilsson, Me, Moiself and I, 1995.

42

Art and Laughter

Nilsson’s sense of humour really becomes apparent in her titles. Like Wirsum and other Imagist painters, Nilsson uses puns and homonyms, and amusing spelling changes in her titles. This dimension of her art increases the humour factor. Consider the following titles: Prepairation, Point-Lss, Maximysing, Looky-Looky, Sorta Sara Sota, Scene Eye to I, Little Vahhhse, Ern, Mt Clmers. Her paintings are delightfully engaging in scenes that are reminiscent of the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Nilsson’s paintings are like 2D sitcoms in their quick-moving drama, yet are artfully constructed to reveal subplots, layers and levels of incongruities that are unfettered by reason.

Peter Saul A California native, Peter Saul influenced the works of Chicago Imagist artists in the 1960s with his comic book, figurative/narrative style and highly satirical, witty and politically charged works. He has created works about wars, mass murders and celebrities, and made countless parodies of famous artworks. Saul’s works are hilarious. In a recent Homage to Dalí, Saul parodies and ‘with merciless satirizing he is a match for the work of [contemporary artists] Paul McCarthy, Raymond Pettibon, and Mike Kelley’.28 To look at a Saul’s work is to see the way that he has combined deformed and grotesque forms with beautiful colour, created multiple perspectives that result in a topsy-turvy world effect, and created blob-like human figures with some degree of realism. The way most of his forms are painted it appears as if he were looking through a piece of wavy glass: body parts appear to undulate like ocean waves. His work is a combination of paradox and contradiction, and at the same time, Saul unifies his compositions with psychedelic colour reminiscent of the 1960s. There are many smiling and grinning animals and humans present in Saul’s paintings and prints. A favourite of mine is his painting entitled Poopin on Duchamp (1996), a painting of Saul sitting on Duchamp’s famous Fountain (1917) sculpture with the caption ‘Found objects ain’t worth a good shit’.29 This work, which is both parody and satire, is a scathing commentary on Saul’s beliefs about installation art and assemblage art that is based on the use of found objects. Some of his works seem to be more personal, like Relax Dear (no date), a painting of a two-headed person, male and female. The male head has a look of dread on his face as a plane flies overhead. Perhaps this has been a fear of his, or a new fear acquired by the recent terrorist-related air events. What characterizes his work is the zaniness and goofball humour. Zaniness may be defined as the kind of images found in MAD magazine in the 1960s: ‘a slaphappy spirit … associated with novelty items, pranks to give a false impression of disobedience, and that he [she] is a kooky, maladjusted oddball.’30 Zaniness is a characteristic of humour that relies on exaggeration, in particular exaggeration of the body as an inanimate thing, so flexible that it could be bent and shaped in any direction. In Saul’s work, we see this with how he twists and bends his figures in contortions of unusual degrees. Saul uses elements of distortion and malformation of the human

Smiling Portraits in Art

43

figure to create figures that are grotesque, but still loveable. They are like the troll dolls of the 1970s: bizarre, deformed, but somehow still appealing. So, although Saul’s figures are distorted, they do not appear to be in pain, but rather enjoying themselves. The zaniness found in Saul’s work is an opportunity for the ‘extroverted display of enjoyment, of the hoots and hollers we make as we are swept up in the spirit of mass delirium’.31 There is a sense of delirium in Saul’s painting. First, one is intoxicated by the saturation of colour, and then the expressions on many of his subjects in a slaphappy state of being. His characters are so alive that you can almost hear his characters exclaim ‘UGGH’ or ‘WHEEE’ or ‘AHHAHAHA’. In all its brightness, the presentation of subject matter is not sugar-coated, precious or sentimental, and in this sense, his work may be seen as ‘anti-cute’ or harsh, like the humour associated with The Simpsons cartoon show. The type of humour present in Saul’s work, that is, goofball or screwball humour, is one rebelliousness and gags.32 Satire is certainly at work in his social and politically charged paintings, such as Vietnam (1966), Ronald Reagan in Grenada (1984), and Business Woman (1990), and Saul is a relentless satirist. He is also an accomplished parodist having parodied numerous high-profile art masterpieces, such as Picasso’s Girl in a Mirror (1978), De Kooning’s Woman (1975–83), Piece of Cake, Eduard (1998) and Salvador Flies Dalí Fried Eggs (1999), and putting his unique, visual and grotesque twist to the figures and subject. His use of ducks, as in the manner of Donald Duck, as subjects appears in several of his paintings, such as Sardanapolis Duck (1993), a parody of the Delacroix painting Death of Sardanapalus. In the painting, ducks rule, and assume a human character, and in this work, Saul works with concepts of anthropomorphism or animal transvestitism.33 There are many layers to Saul’s work: the unmitigated goofiness that lures the viewer to grotesque and seemingly darker thoughts. His genius lies in the fact that he has been able to sustain a high level of slap happiness that has translated into visually compelling and thought-provoking images.

Clown Paintings and Cindy Sherman During my childhood, Red Skelton and Bozo the Clown were in vogue, and clown images in popular culture were plentiful. Harlequin and clown paintings were popular during the 1950s and 1960s and there were many instructional books and kits about how to paint clowns. The clown paintings kits were meant for everyday people to have a painting experience and create something beautiful and cheerful. Now many of these paintings are being collected for their vintage and aesthetic value. There is no doubt that many children who are now ‘baby boomer age’ had clown paintings, and their presence in our bedrooms were somehow thought to be a cheerful addition to childhood. The circus, since its inception in the nineteenth century, has always been a big event in the life of a child – seeing the hustle and bustle of flying trapeze artists and clowns putting out fires with hoses that spewed water and flowers. Hideous outfits,

44

Art and Laughter

exaggerated features and bright use of colours characterize most clown paintings and were influenced by harlequins in their baggy pants, pointed hats, polka dots and floppy shoes. There is something loveable about clowns because they are so versatile and have noble aspirations to provide amusement for large masses of people. While clowns may appear to be a contemporary phenomenon, however, their ancient roots can be traced to the Hellequin, or the animal-faced demon that dwelt in the underworld. In the Middle Ages, the hellequin, or later, harlequin, became associated with laughter and carnival.34 Clowns appear back in Greek theatre, in Hopi Indian (USA) culture, in the Charlie Chaplin silent movies, and continue to this day in movies such as Patch Adams (1998) and Pee Wee’s Circus (1988). Picasso is probably the most famous of clown and harlequin painters (see his Jester of 1905), yet artists throughout history took a liking to the clown, beginning in the sixteenth century with clown or jester in paintings, Punchinello drawings by Tiepolo in the eighteenth century, lithographs of facial grimacing by Louis-Leopold Boilly, Toulouse-Lautrec, Honoré Daumier and Gustave Courbet in the nineteenth century, Pierre Bonnard, Georges Roualt and twentieth-century artists James Ensor, Reginald Marsh, Francis Picabia, Marc Chagall, Edward Hopper and Alexander Calder.35 While viewed as part of popular culture in their kitsch and campness, clown paintings are now being looked at more seriously due to actress Diane Keaton’s book, Clown Painting,36 and The Great Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown.37 Contemporary artists such as Jonathan Borofsky and Bruce Nauman have more recently employed the clown theme in their works. Borofsky, known for his counting and writing numbers and dreams down, created a Dancing Clown at 2,845,325 (1982–83). This looming 15-foot figure has ballerina tights, pink toe shoes, a blue and white satin tutu, and a huge clown face looking rather sad with red-balled nose and a red top hat. The figure also wears white elbow-length white rubbery gloves. Bruce Nauman worked with the clown figure in the late 1980s in his series called Clown Torture (1987). Both these examples explore the clown as tragic/comic figure, and the artist as clown.38 Cindy Sherman is one of the most well-known twentieth-century artists to take on the clown in her Clown Series (2003–04) – colour photographic portraits, the size of circus posters. These glossy, digitally mastered photographs zap us with colour and over-the-top costumes as she ‘chooses the game of masquerade, veils, and replaced identity’.39 As Sherman has done in her other portrait photographs, she becomes the clown taking on a variety of clown personas that are hilarious, dark and bittersweet. Sherman works in the tradition of Rhona Bitner, New York photographer, who created life-size colour portraits of real clowns against black backdrops, and Claude Cahun, an early twentieth-century female photographer known for her cross-dressing and gender ambivalence.40 Yet, Sherman puts her stamp on this subject in the intensity with which she has explored the variety of clown personas, facial masks, costuming, lighting and gestures.

Smiling Portraits in Art

45

Sherman, like other artists who have been drawn to the clown, is a keen observer of the clown façade, and she manages to take us to a place somewhere between truth and fiction while providing levity and gaiety along the way. We are enticed by the candycoloured hair and clothes and alluring smiles. Yet, like her other portrait series, such as Hollywood Types (2000), the mask and the make-up trap us, leading us to the eyes, the most telling features of the portraits. In the eyes lie the truth, the mystery, the pain and the disconnect that lurks beneath the colour, pattern and the goofiness. Sherman says she wanted to find something beyond the make-up that shines through in these clown portraits.41 I think that she did this. Are her clown paintings funny? Yes, some maybe more than others. Out of eighteen clown portraits, all untitled, eleven clown portraits depict smiling clowns. All the portraits contain elements of exaggeration with huge flowers, clown noses, collars, candy-coloured wigs, hats and balloons. Many smiles are painted on, and some portraits even have double smiles, her smile plus the painted smile. Other smiles are painted on complete with teeth and, even though Sherman doesn’t smile, the clown still smiles. Noses are red and bulbous, painted, plastic, big and tiny. In her portraits, the eyes also smile. She uses theatrical make-up to accentuate around and above the eyes, enlarging them, re-creating eyebrows, eyelashes and even tears. The make-up is basic – bold, black, white and red – and is never quite exact, but is a critical visual facial feature that adds to the visual incongruities. One image, Untitled #425, has overlapping close-up shots of Sherman as different clowns in a photo-montage effect. A single full view of herself as a clown in a striped jumpsuit with a red wig dominates as the central image. The three clowns laugh hysterically as the centre clown frowns and looks rather sheepish. These two are lovely portraits: Untitled #410, a clown/cowgirl; and Untitled #414, a clown in a kimonolike sequined garment with a huge, pink wig. The Ronald McDonald look-a-like in a red striped outfit is also a happy clown. These three clown portraits42 sparkle with happiness, and the clowns smile gleefully and joyfully. They make the viewer smile, too. In an interview, Sherman said that she does not think her clowns are funny,43 yet she has used all the techniques of the visual jokester and caricaturist. It is reassuring, though, that she does think it important to entertain herself while working, and to have fun.44 Adrian Searle writes about her photographs at Gloucester Road Tube Station, London: ‘Of course her art is serious fun, and not to be taken lightly. She does it with such panache and calculation and knowingness that we are often in danger of losing sight of its essential ridiculousness.’45 I am glad that Sherman has taken on the clown: clown paintings reveal smiles and laughter, and often mask pain. The smile does not always allude to feelings of happiness, and while a clown painting is smiling at us, it may all be an illusion. All the while, clown paintings have validated the silly, foolish and comical. They exist for the laugh, and to show us how truly ridiculous we can be. Lastly, they do bring more smiles into twenty-first-century art.

46

Art and Laughter

Shag (Josh Agle) Shag is the name of a deep pile carpet popular in the 1970s. It is also the stage name of a contemporary pop surrealist artist. Shag, an LA artist, is well known for his 1960s-style narrative paintings and prints that depict male and female couples relaxing, listening to music, eating, drinking and smoking, and, of course, smiling within modernist interior spaces. Heavily influenced by LA culture, modernism and celebrity and consumer culture, Agle creates images that are both nostalgic and contemporary. His Jetson-like people grin in their delight of consuming delightful things: food, music and good times. These ‘feel good’ paintings both parody and satirize contemporary middle to upper middle class urbanites. LA Masquerade (2003)46 depicts couples wearing devil, skull, cat and harlequin masks and costumes at a party. Set around dusk, couples are posed on the balcony of a very modern glass and steel hi-rise apartment as they balance their martini glasses. Everyone is smiling except for the devil, the cat and the dog. Highly elongated figures appear insect-like, with pencil-thin, spindly limbs. They grin and laugh in their private world of jokes. Fashionable Terrorist (2001) is a satirical statement about the searching of civilians by airport security.47 A very 1960s-looking stewardess walks inside an airport wearing a purse with a skull-and-crossbones image. She grins widely, laughing as a figure on the runway on the other side of the glass runs alongside her. This figure, which is carrying a briefcase, wears a Tiki, or a Polynesian-style mask head and hula skirt. In the distance an aeroplane takes off. Part of the humour and delight is in Shag’s use of colour. He tends to work with analogous colours and a 10. Josh Agle (Shag), Fashionable wide range of tints and shades: this Terrorist, 2001. painting contains purple, lavender and shades of blue.

Smiling Portraits in Art

47

Shag, like Currin, Wirsum and Nilsson, invents characters that are disguised and bear the smile. Smiles range from delirious to devilish to coquettish. They take on the role of artist as clown, or one who can allure you into their world through hypnotic smiles, bright colours, outlandish costumes, and exaggerated and distorted bodies. Once they have us, we are all theirs.

Kenny Sharf Kenny Sharf has been painting since the mid 1980s when he was a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York. A contemporary of Keith Haring, he is known for his colourful and amusing paintings, sculptures and public works, and incorporation of images from television, cartoons and visual culture in his paintings. Growing up in the 1960s in southern California, Sharf was taken with the cartoons of The Flintstones and The Jetsons. The Flintstones were a ‘prehistoric’ family who had all the amenities of a suburban family in prehistoric styling. In contrast, The Jetsons were a space-age family, a family of the twenty-first century who had flying cars, robots and space-age fashions and who lived in a surreal landscape. It is clearly seen how Sharf was taken with these surreal, whimsical and imaginative spaces when looking at his paintings. Curator Robert Farris Thompson writes: ‘A clown’s round nose and jester like action light up the art of Kenny Sharf … overripe colors stolen from candy animate figures adapted from ’toons of TV. To put it simply, he makes art with a sense of humour. It is coded in the mixture of high tech with sci-fi rainforests and dinosaurs.’48 In an art historical sense, Sharf draws on the work of Surrealism in his highly fantastic and imaginative landscapes, Pop Art for bright colours, and Pop Surrealists who combine surrealist techniques with contemporary popular culture imagery. So, what is funny about Sharf’s works? Sharf combines a mixture of oil paint and spray paint, which is associated with graffiti art. He makes carefully controlled marks and modelled forms as well as spontaneous lines using spray paint. His colour is not quite neon, but associated with the world of children, amusement parks and animation: saturated pinks, blues, yellows and greens. Like Saul, Sharf employs exaggeration and hybridization in his paintings through his human-like, biomorphic plant and flora forms with smiling faces and goofy grins as ‘he plants things [images] in incongruous soil’.49 The incongruities that Sharf creates are not frightening; they seem implausible, yet playful, lighthearted and joyous. Sharf even dubbed his art ‘FUNart’50 and he is right about that, yet the complexity of Sharf’s images moves it beyond entertainment. Sharf explores many dualities, such as formalistic dualities of modelled forms and flatness of colour, biomorphic and geometric shapes, and conceptual dualities, such as imaginative and surreal vistas constrained within a canvas frame. The Jungle and space landscapes embedded with goofy, biomorphic smiling heads are themes throughout Sharf’s paintings. A favourite of mine is his painting of blue and white cloud forms that are embedded with his characteristic goofy, bulbous grinning

48

Art and Laughter

faces. Curator William Jeffert writes: ‘Sharf’s imagery seems to align with a Jungian collective unconscious,’51 that is imagery we all have seen at one point as a culture saturated by television and media. So while Sharf’s imagery is not totally recognizable, we are comfortable with it because at one point we have seen images like it on television, in commercials or on cereal boxes. While his images are cause for smiling and laughter, his titles are hilarious and seemingly nonsensical, but on closer examination may be combinations of words that he may associate with his paintings. Consider the following: Krakkarouge (1998), Mamdilla (1997), Jungleaux (1997), Plantetazul (1998) and Blibsibshabshok (1997). In addition to painting on canvas, Sharf has worked three-dimensionally covering old appliances with his space-age colour and faces and has worked on some installations that he calls ‘Closets’. Gallery owner Tony Shafrazi writes: ‘Kenny Sharf brought back to art the wonder of the perpetual imagination with a zing and boundless humor.’52 The smiling face abounds in Sharf’s work and is one of the few places in contemporary art that the smile and the grin live so abundantly. Sharf’s work may be the much needed ‘commercial’ in the midst of our daily dramas that provides some reprieve.

Concluding Thoughts Smiling in art can be traced back thousands of years to the Egyptian and Chinese tomb artefacts, yet laughing in art is a twentieth-century phenomenon. The smiles and grins have grown wider and louder over the years with women depicted in art laughing unabashedly. The twentieth century may be the first century when people were freed of manual labour due to industrialization, have more leisure time than ever, and perhaps more to laugh about. While smiles were once mostly associated with the clown image, now we see a variety of portraiture in art bearing smiles. The artists’ works discussed in this chapter by John Currin, Karl Wirsum, Gladys Nilsson, Peter Saul, Cindy Sherman, Shag and Kenny Sharf share certain characteristics: they are figurative, employing exaggeration of figures and anthropomorphism or hybridization of forms. Their versatility in using pun, parody or satire is evident in looking at their most recent works, as well as looking at their production of artworks over time. Historically, European painting and American vernacular painting have embraced the clown as subject in art. The intent for such paintings was to amuse, and I can’t help but think that the creators of such paintings were also amused in the making of these paintings. Clowns, influenced by early harlequin figures, took on colourful and exaggerated colour and dress and have become cultural icons that are associated with wearing smiles and bringing smiles to others. The artists discussed in this chapter know how to capture our attention and seduce us through formal inventiveness and surprise, use of comic imagery and stylistic devices that compel us to laugh. They are able to skilfully manipulate our sense of reality, and

Smiling Portraits in Art

49

what we perceived to be plausible. Through their piercing insights into contemporary living and the human condition, they appeal to our intellect and emotions. Artists who take clowning seriously make us believe the unbelievable through creating superbly rich, visual, conceptual and funny artworks that smile at us, and that allow us to smile back at their dream. Chapter 3 will explore artists who combine words and images that invite our laughter through conceptual and visual twists and turns of language.

Chapter 3

Playing with Words and Images

Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor, for a subject, which will not bear raillery, is suspicious, and a jest, which will not bear serious examination, is false wit. Aristotle Many contemporary artists use words as a visual element like other artists may use line, shapes or colours. In contemporary and postmodern art, we now can find examples of artists who manipulate words for aesthetic or comic effect. Purposefully misspelling and exaggerating words, phrases and titles, artists compel us to laugh with their uses and abuses of language. Words that were once the domain of poets and writers are now ‘words in art’ that can be seen for their formal beauty and elegance as well as for their literal and symbolic meanings. Contemporary artists such as Barbara Kruger, Ed Ruscha and others share a love of advertising and the ability of words to have a visual plasticity.1 Drawing on techniques of advertising, contemporary artists have used clichés, aphorisms and truisms to explore banal and everyday language in new contexts. Jenny Holzer in the mid 1980s displayed her infamous ‘truisms’, such as ‘Protect Me From What I Want’ and projected them in public, urban spaces. Similarly, Barbara Kruger’s paintings and posters, drawing on advertising, touted sayings such as ‘I Shop Therefore I Am’. The artists discussed in this chapter combine images and text together in ways that result in works of varying scale, although most of these works tend to take the form of installation art. The artists in this chapter – Barbara Kruger, Kay Rosen, Patty Carroll, Bruce Nauman, Les Levine, Don Celender, Adam Dant, Paul Davis, David Shrigley and Tony Oursler – appropriate words, letters and phrases in varying degrees, and some with images for very different reasons. Drawing upon Surrealist approaches and aims, these artists use

52

Art and Laughter

language to disrupt logic and rationality, and to explore the absurdities of language. It is evident in their works that these artists share a love for the pun to gently nudge viewers out of their taken-for-granted assumptions about language and art. In addition to their common use of puns in their work, they also employ techniques of collage. Collage involves the merging of mixed media, such as paper, paint or other materials that result in a visual layering of surface, as well as the combination of text and image. Bruce Nauman, for example, collages or superimposes layers of ‘neon words’ over one another in his installations. Kay Rosen combines letters and words together, and often uses found visual images, such as postage stamps. Many of these artists use installation art as a format for their work as most of them work large and require wall and floor spaces; however, these artists have created singular works of art. Some works, such as the billboards by Les Levine, require large, urban spaces. Creating billboards with command-like sayings, Levine draws upon the billboard concept to reach mass audiences as he explores relationships between art, culture, advertising, religion and language. The combinations of images and text in a work of art requires the viewer to understand the complex relationships and meanings between image and text, colour, and the placement of works. We are not always accustomed to ‘reading’ a work of art, as we expect art to be visual and the viewer can feel a bit put off at first. But some artists do indeed view words visually, seeing the roundness and sharpness of letters, and typefaces and words as something to be arranged like other artists might compose a painting out of squares or circles. In addition, some artists, like Jenny Holzer and Bruce Nauman, combine words, electronics and signage, and further complicate the experience with moving words that merge together in a seamless stream. Artists who play with words and images and add the time component ask that we pay attention to the rhythm and flow of language, as well as the static dimension of the immobile word. The artists discussed in this chapter are enamoured with linguistics, yet need to express themselves visually, and in their cleverness with language, the humour of pun and irony emerge.

Barbara Kruger Critic James Elkins writes: ‘There are a number of postmodern works that are intrinsically funny. One example may be Barbara Kruger’s photograph of a hand holding a card that says “I shop, therefore, I am”.’2 This image has almost become an art icon, and you can see it appearing on refrigerator magnets and dish towels. What is it about this work and her other works that invite laughter? Kruger started from an advertising background, and it is clear that she has a profound understanding of the power of the ad and the relationship of humour to advertising. Humour is used rather frequently in advertising to assist the memory; we remember things that are associated with pleasure and often

Playing with Words and Images

53

tend to put the unpleasant memories in storage. Kruger’s work embodies techniques of humour found in design. Steven Heller in Design Humor writes: ‘The pun is endemic to graphic design … some design is compositionally witty, knee slapping funny as a result of scale, juxtaposition, or simple repetition … sometimes typefaces and typography evoke a simple smile.’3 Kruger’s work I shop, therefore, I am can be read on many levels. First, it is play on words of the saying ‘I think, therefore, I am’. By shopping, Kruger is also saying that we become what we buy, and certainly the labels that we wear define us personally, professionally, socially and culturally. This one-liner was created out of consumerism, for consumers. The irony in her work is because it resonates so deeply, we might just shop and purchase one of her cups or magnets. Kruger is an artist who unites words and images to create social commentary about consumerism, women’s rights or the lure of advertising in the most economical of terms. She chooses her words and colour schemes carefully: red, black, white and grey are colours usually associated with print advertising. She paints in a very flat, graphic style and has employed photographic and silkscreening processes in her works. Written in the first person, her statements are hard to argue with; she deploys the personal pronouns ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘we’ and ‘you’, known in linguistics as shifters,4 which aim to identify with the viewer regardless of gender or race. They are personal at the same time; they resonate with people from many cultures and backgrounds. As a result, Kruger’s works have become highly identifiable, repeatable sayings, and through their repetition, they have become part of our collective consciousness, feed for the parody fodder, and part of the visual culture mix. Her works have also set the stage for other word artists, such as Kay Rosen.

Kay Rosen Kay Rosen is from Indiana in the midwestern USA. Her works are language-based, specifically puns, linguistic jokes and other plays on words that take the form of collages, paintings, artists’ books and site-based installations. Formally studying linguistics, performance and painting, Rosen was influenced by conceptual and minimal art and artists who relied on patterning, repetition of modules or units, and use of text in art. Rosen uses the module or unit of the letter in works that are primarily small scale, and grouped together to create new meanings. Her use of puns and one-liners characterize her work. Miriam Seidel, critic, writes: ‘Kay Rosen’s work seems tailormade for the deconstruction-minded 1980s, with their text-only visual means and her deadpan manipulations … Rosen’s intricate setups deliver quietly effective cognitive sucker punches.’5 Her finesse with language has been described as ‘marvels of linguistic economy and variety … stunning in their brevity’.6 In a very funny work entitled Thwart (1989), Rosen spells out each letter phonetically on a canvas, making the viewer sound out each letter thinking that this is some ancient language, but it is really the letters of

54

Art and Laughter

the word thwart. The word thwart is spelled out like this: ‘Te ach dub l u ar te’ complete with vowel sounding marks. The process of sounding out the word is thwarting, but eventually did bring a smile to my face. Rosen is known for her careful manipulation of letters and words to create new meanings and associations.

11. Kay Rosen, Edgar Degas, 1987.

The puns in Rosen’s work are exemplified in her large-scale wall paintings entitled Half Full and Blurred. According to Rosen, she does consider her work to be funny from ‘unexpected revelations in language’; therefore, she does not intentionally try to make her work funny. She uses typographical, grammatical and artistic strategies in her work to create her wordplay.7 Taking delight in Duchamp’s urinal and seminal artwork, Rosen’s work displays homage to the Dadaists who frequently played with words and word associations. What Rosen does is make us conscious of the intricate relationships and spaces between letters and words and how words can be ‘read’ on many different levels. Rosen’s words can be appreciated for their abstract form and the pure delight of positive and negative shapes. A hilarious diptych Edgar Degas (1987), the name of an Impressionist artist, is a set of two canvases, ten inches squared. One reads ‘EDga’ and the other canvas reads ‘deGA’. ‘EDga’ is painted in red letters on a yellow background, and ‘deGA’ is painted in yellow letters on a red background. One must understand that Edgar Degas was a well-known Impressionist painter to fully appreciate Rosen’s

Playing with Words and Images

55

phonetic and graphic manipulations. The words make you want to read them out loud, and in doing so, something funny happens – the viewer becomes a performer of the absurdities of language, and the instigator of the joke. The words achieve a comic effect when sounded out loud very slowly. Rosen also uses titles of her works to achieve comic effect. Nancy Princenthal writes: ‘Many of the jokes use titles for punch lines, as in Rosen’s Fillmore Space, a sheet of stamps of the US Presidents with a space cut out and left for Millard Fillmore.’8 The incongruous surprises in Rosen’s work are afforded by condensation and displacement. This process is explained by John Marmysz, a contemporary philosopher and humour theorist: Condensation is the process by which a number of meaningful associations are attached to a single word, in jokes, or to an image, in dreams. The focus on a word leads the mind in various directions allowing the second process, displacement, to occur. The humorist intentionally manufactures a story, or image, in which the listener/viewer’s attention is displaced onto a point of focus, only to be brought to another point of focus in the punch-line.9 In her work, Rosen uses words like ‘Oh, Eau’ together. Though they sound alike, they have multiple meanings, leading us to associate through our own experiences, creating a tension, but then she pulls us back to the joke. Rosen loves language and makes it fun. She brings language into the art gallery, makes us ‘work’ at getting the jokes and asks us to tell the jokes. Although she may not think her work is intentionally funny, she makes it her job to toil over the intricacies of language.

Patty Carroll Working in themes of ‘Anonymous Woman’ and ‘Dark and Deadly’, Patty Carroll, Chicago-based photographer, often combines photographs and writing.10 In her series, Hot Doggeries, she photographed Chicago hot dog stands. One photo depicts a sculpture of a larger-than-life Paul Bunyon holding a hot dog. These photographs capture the bizarre and the absurd in vernacular architecture. In her Night Pictures series, she captures the nightlife across America: motels, swimming pools, casinos and restaurants are bathed in theatrical lighting and neon colour against night skies. Carroll creates beauty out of these seemingly commonplace sites through dramatic lighting that transforms these places from commonplace to glamorous and mysterious. Through carefully framed compositions, she creates photographs of high contrast, luscious colour and vernacular text from the signage: ‘eat’, ‘food’, ‘motel’ and ‘vacancy’. Her works recall the work of Ed Ruscha, a text-based artist who has been painting words from the American vernacular landscape on canvases since the 1970s.

56

Art and Laughter

People do not appear in her photographs of places: the façades, entrances and lit parking lots have a documentary quality and the loneliness of an Edward Hopper painting. The fact that they are colour photographs makes them seductive like candy. Carroll loves colour and light and the shapes and lines found in neon signage. Unlike Richard Estes, Carroll is not so concerned with the reflection of light, but rather how light transforms a mundane doorway or architectural façade into something dramatic. This series is less humorous than some of her other series, such as Movie Posters and Anonymous Women. Her interest in capturing the dramatic and theatrical lighting, however, is carried over to her other works that shine in their parody and satire. Upon first seeing Carroll’s exhibit of Movie Posters at the Art Institute of Chicago, I was intrigued by her treatment of this subject matter. In the series of Movie Posters, she combines her photographs of places with posed actors and vintage style graphics and text to create actual movie-sized posters for her imagined movies. The movie posters contain witty sayings and puns, such as the names of her imagined cast of actors: Larry Luser, Dan Demand and Stella Stale. The movies posters are full of colour, glossy, large scale and digitally mastered. Movie titles such as Bliss to Blood, No Second Chance in Life starring Tuff Kooky, Two Bad starring Red Dee and Gree Dee, recall the crime and romance novellas of the 1950s and 1960s with women characters who somehow meet their fate. The movie posters are both a parody of the genre of movie posters in terms of their content and stylistic formats, as well as a satire of mystery and romance films and novels. Her series of Anonymous Women are portraits of women whose faces are obscured by objects: a picture frame, entitled Framed, or a head of lettuce in Frissee, or a woman’s head covered in sausages to resemble hair. These portraits rightly recall the painter Arcimboldo who created three-quarter portraits using food and objects. Her interest in pop and vernacular American culture and her glossing over of American cinema and vernacular architecture is in keeping with an American fascination with façades and candy-coloured environments that hide 12. Patty Carroll, Two Bad, 2004. the sinister with an ever-so-thin veneer of sweetness.

Playing with Words and Images

57

Bruce Nauman Bruce Nauman is a sculptor, performance artist and word artist whose oeuvre of works includes painting, drawing, sculpture, mixed media, installation art and conceptual art. Like Rosen, he was influenced by minimalism and experimental musician Steve Reich, and his interest in words, double meanings and word puns, can be traced throughout his career. In the Stuart Collection Vice and Virtues installation, Nauman combines words, light and motion to create a cacophony of contradiction and associations in his manipulation of vernacular text associated with morality issues.11 This installation of neon words consists of the names of seven vices and seven virtues: FAITH/LUST, HOPE/ENVY, CHARITY/SLOTH, PRUDENCE/PRIDE, JUSTICE/AVARICE, TEMPERANCE/ GLUTTONY and FORTITUDE/ANGER. The words are superimposed over one another in blinking, coloured neon and the work is installed on the outside of the plate glass windows on the Charles Lee Powell Laboratory. Structurally, the virtues flash sequentially clockwise around the building at one rate; and the vices flash in a counterclockwise direction at a slightly faster rate. At brief intervals, both the seven virtues and the seven vices flash together. Nauman does some manipulation with scale. Each letter is seven feet high and is constructed of two colours, with a total of fourteen colours and nearly a mile of neon tubing. This work, first proposed in 1983, was completed and erected in October 1988. The sculpture had to be relocated before it was ever constructed because the La Jolla neighbours objected to seeing the word ‘Lust’ flashing in neon over their neighbourhood. This work is complex in its humour associations. The combination of pairs of words with opposite associations is ironic, and the clockwise motion of the blinking virtues along with the counterclockwise motion of the vices is ironic. This is also a bit satire here at work; that no matter how hard one tries, we are still human and susceptible to moral dilemmas. The words in a static form, without motion, are irony, but when set into motion through blinking and kinetic activity become satire. Meaning and humour is complicated through the combination of flashing words created through the cycles that allow all the words to be in combination with one another at some point. The juxtaposition of these age-old vices and virtues with the new technology of neon presents an element of humour and surprise that recalls the work of Jenny Holzer who, in the 1990s, created a series of ‘isms’, or sayings that she projected in Times Square in New York. The public nature of the installation, on the outside of a building in La Jolla, California, brings what is seemingly a private matter, a reflection on one’s vices and virtues, into a public space, and gives new meaning to the concept of public and private. In our contemporary culture, where there seems to be little respect for privacy, where the comings and goings of stars are a public matter, vices and virtues for speculation in a public arena seem fitting for the times. Interestingly, residents of La Jolla, who live

58

Art and Laughter

around the building, did not approve of the word ‘LUST’. This adds yet another layer of irony to the work, and the paradox that artists face when trying to create a mirror for others to reflect in.

Les Levine Les Levine is a ‘media sculptor’ who has been creating videos and billboards since the 1960s. He has created over six hundred billboards since the 1980s that merge text – mostly single words – and cartoon-style images in the most unusual and incongruous combinations. Critic Thomas McEvilley writes: ‘The basic unit of Levine’s verbal components is the imperative verb that is suitable for a glimpse in passing, or his monosyllabic verbs. His one word messages are often puns, but not a complex pun.’12 Like Rosen’s art, Levine uses words that may be used as a noun or a verb, such as his billboards with the words ‘RACE’, ‘TAKE’ and ‘STEAL’. His words have multiple meanings, and like Rosen’s works, Levine uses words as objects to be appreciated on a variety of levels.13 He also uses phases such as ‘Pray for Me’, ‘Consume or Perish’ (1989), ‘Block God’ (1985), and ‘Feed Greed’ (1988). These phrases, almost like commands in their obvious absurdity and humour, get at deeper and darker issues related to religion, politics and consumerism. Levine employs puns and rhymes in his work, but unlike Rosen, Levine is a satirist who comments on social, political and environmental issues. Using words as ‘cues’, he sets off associations for viewers with his combined use of image and text. His billboard projects use humour to get the attention of a passerby, yet when he has the attention, he uses it to forcibly confront larger issues. Levine is commissioned by towns and cities to create these billboards. His use of primary and secondary colours and usually, flat, contour line drawings characterize his billboards. Recently, in Stuttgart, Germany he created two hundred billboards throughout the city and ‘in the end, everyone who looks at them, is invited to clarify their own notions of art’.14 Levine’s work may be proof that humour may be a catalyst for social change and reformed thinking.

Donald Celender Donald Celender was a Professor of Art at a well-known university in the Midwest, Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota. His recent death has sparked renewed interest in this conceptual artist’s works. A renowned artist who exhibited throughout his career at the OK Harris Gallery, New York City, Celender wrote letters to a wide variety of people – celebrities, leaders, chefs and artists – asking them their opinions on various art-related topics. He would ask questions about their aesthetic preferences as well as enquire into their views and beliefs about art and artists. He is also known for his

Playing with Words and Images

set of Holy Holy Art Cards and Art Ball Cards that parody well-known modern artists. These cards were featured on the cover of Art in America in July/ August 1979.15 One of his more humorous projects involved his writing to chefs on university stationery to ask them which artist from the past they would like to dine at their restaurant, and what would they be served. The correspondence that he received back was exhibited with his letter of enquiry. Don Celender has been described as one of the world’s great conversationalists.16 His work invites conversation with everyday people about their attitudes and beliefs about art.

59

13. Donald Celender, Art Preference Survey/Jenny Craig Response, 1997.

Adam Dant British artist Adam Dant explores a wide range of subjects that include the art museum and the experiencing of art within art museums with wit, parody and satire. A painter and printmaker, Dant also creates highly detailed and rendered ink drawings that have an ‘old world’ feel, like ancient maps or historical and highly illustrative documents. Dant works in a figurative and narrative style on relatively small-scale works. Some of his funnier drawings include Anecdotal Plan of the Tate Gallery as well as other museums throughout Europe and the UK. One of his more recent series of works, The Bureau for the Investigation of the Subliminal Image, or BISI, includes drawings, pamphlets and book jackets that in a sense parody the museum pamphlet that museum-goers read when they visit art museums.17 Dant’s ‘booklet’ includes a set of sixteen black and white illustrations with text that point out how the art museum can be a site for the emergence of the ‘subliminal image’, the hidden images in works of art. In his book he references that he has gone into art museums and discussed with strangers about what subliminal messages they see. His interest in how museum-goers perceive and interpret art is manifested in a work that is part performance based with the documentation of the performance in his books and drawings. Dant understands that the art museum experience is a highly subjective one; we come to the art museum with our own set of experiences and beliefs about art; what we ‘see’ may be different from the person next to us. His booklet includes another

60

Art and Laughter

fascinating topic – the museum at night and the possibility of artworks that talk to one another. Anyone who loves museums of any kind has probably had a fantasy of being left behind after closing hours to be alone with the collection. I think there was even a movie about this. Dant’s work, besides being a parody of museum documents, is a bit satirical in that he pokes gentle fun of the art museum as a cultural institution. His anecdotal drawings appear more like drawings of tombs with long hallways and empty vestibules. Perhaps it is this metaphor of art museum as tomb that has significance for the art museum as a site for engaging in the subliminal. The tomb signifies the unconscious – the mysterious and ethereal spaces where our limitations are lifted and paradox is possible. We can enter these spaces through encountering art. Dant suggests that if we allow ourselves to get lost in the maze of the museum exhibit halls, let go of our practical concerns, and let go of the museum brochures and recorded tours that tell us the viewer what to look at and what the artwork is about, then maybe our own imaginations can be activated and the subliminal can emerge.

Paul Davis In a similar vein to the work of Celender and Dant, London-based artist and illustrator Paul Davis’ works are based on conversations that he has with strangers on the streets. He asked people on the streets across America and in Britain what they thought of each other’s countries. The question to Britons was: What do you think about America? The question asked to Americans was: What do you think about Britain? In a recent book entitled Us and Them (2004),18 Davis’ interviews are translated into drawings and writings. Working in a cartoon-like drawing style, Davis presents portraits of his subjects, the street people of Britain and America. Using spare colour, only to highlight areas, these black ink and pencil contour line drawings resemble caricatures in their exaggerated features and manipulated scale of facial and body parts. Working from photographs and videotapes, Davis captures a likeness of his subjects in a rather childlike drawing style that relies on details rather than shading. Some of his drawings are drawn on hotel stationery that reflect his travels across the two countries. The actual quotes use the vernacular and slang language of his subjects, which adds to the humour of each portrait. Davis writes by hand the quotes around the drawings in a way that encapsulates the drawings in text, or uses text as borders. His subjects reflect both males and females from a variety of racial and class backgrounds. The portrait drawings are refreshingly honest with responses to his questions that include such topics as music, politics, shopping, climate, stereotyping, culture and language. As a result, the humour is both satirical and dark in ways that express the truthful and the tragic in our perceptions of one another across the Atlantic.

Playing with Words and Images

61

David Shrigley Working a similar style to Davis, David Shrigley, a British artist based in Glasgow, creates black ink drawings that resemble doodles. Shrigley combines handwriting and sayings with his drawings that result in playful and witty combinations, and that represent his unique perspective on the world. In addition to his drawings, he works on animations, illustrations, sculptures and projects.19 Some of his projects might be considered jokes in the streets. For example, Shrigley painted the following words on a leaf in the midst of a 14. David Shrigley, One day a big wind huge outdoor fall leaf pile: ‘One day a will come and…, 1997. big wind will come and … ’ (1997) He photographs these street jokes or installations, and publishes them as postcards and his website is replete with images of his installations, drawings and projects. He is a visual prankster who has been able to translate his drawings and nonsense into T-shirts, greeting cards, bookmarks, record covers and public art. David Pagel of the LA Times writes: Several of Shrigley’s photographs document his in-the-street pranks. In one, a sheet of paper, posted on a tree in a city park, informs passersby that a pigeon has been lost: ‘Normal size. A Bit Mangy Looking. Does Not Have a Name. Call 257-1964’. In another, a wooden sign has been stuck in a lush grassy lawn. It states, ‘imagine the green is red’. A third depicts an empty urban lot on which the artist has placed a refrigerator size box. On the front of his make-believe building he has cut a door and painted ‘Leisure Centre’.20 Shrigley is a contemporary artist and prankster whose public installations appear casual, yet they are quite calculated arrangements that invite us into a private laugh about things that children and poets take delight in.

Tony Oursler One contemporary artist who pays homage to Bruce Nauman’s conceptual and performance art is Tony Oursler. An international video artist, Oursler’s works are a

62

Art and Laughter

hybrid of sculpture, performance, video and conceptual art. I came upon his Blob (2002) in the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois not too long ago, and I began to laugh at the absurdity of the sculpture; it was mildly unsettling and at the same time amusing.

15. Tony Oursler, Blob, 2004.

In a little alcove, this blobby, biomorphic-shaped fibreglass form, around 4 ft x 4 ft, was stretched over a wire armature and was sitting squarely on the floor. Also on the floor in front of the blob was a digital video projector that projected an image of a talking face onto the blob. The image of the person was mumbling nonsensical, yet familiar, phrases, and the combination of this distorted face and mouth, sound and nonsense was both alarming and hysterically funny. Staring quietly at this blob couldn’t have been a funnier sight for an onlooker to behold; the comical, cute, yet, grotesque, blob certainly commands the viewer’s attention. Oursler creates other ‘babbling’ objects using images using projectors, walls, floors, and objects. Like other artists who use text, performance, images and sculpture, Oursler engages us in a multi-modal way that activates all our senses. His babbling sculptures are

Playing with Words and Images

63

wonderful, ‘blobs’ that come ‘alive’ by the sheer presence of a moving image projected onto them. The sculpture is funny, yet the repeated nature of the babbling does get a bit annoying, and even ominous. They remind one of people who walk around with cell phones and babble away all day. The Blob is a work of paradox; it is funny, mysterious, shocking, creepy and imaginative. As well, it is tucked into a museum alcove to be discovered as you turn a corner. The Blob in the context of Oursler’s recent exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, entitled Studio: Seven Months of My Aesthetic Education (Plus Some) is part of a larger oeuvre of artworks that embraces problems of our culture, technology, dreams and the supernatural world.21 Michael Kimmelman, art critic, describes Oursler’s work as ‘funny although his work is dark’.22 Indeed there is dark humour prevailing as he explores both the comic and the tragic. Oursler likens his Blob sculptures to caricatures and writes: ‘Rough humor is a delicate exercise … the blob is beyond any definable features, it is a character, an irreducible entity … it is funny world and an ugly thing.’23 The blobs have sad, endearing, yet comic qualities that invite our empathy and laughter. The blob heads are like cute toys with big, sad eyes and over-enlarged heads, yet their capacity to talk at us through a projected image on unconventional screens is a bit alarming. Another Oursler work, the Influence Machine, is a multiprojection environmental piece that explores ghostly apparitions and talking lamps. The inanimate object becoming animate is primarily relegated to sci-fi movies, yet in Oursler’s installations we encounter the paranormal – talking blobs. Oursler describes his works as ‘conjuring up psychological states and internal spirits’. His work gives new meaning to the phrase ‘moving picture’, and through his work he creates moving portraits and animated sculpture using LCD projectors, something more commonly used as a presentation tool. He is a contemporary artist/tinkerer who uses bulbs and projectors and seemingly simple materials, juxtaposing materials to explore the private, internal and spiritual dimensions of contemporary life. His moving images surprise us in their incongruous relationship to the materials at hand, and the repeated gestures and sounds of the moving images lend themselves to absurdity and ridiculousness that can only engender a laugh.

Concluding Thoughts All the artists discussed in this chapter employ understatement or the representation of something less than it is. Understatement is the opposite of exaggeration or overt displays of the ridiculous. Subtlety, quiet sophistication and the downplaying of the ridiculous are at work in the heart of the works by these artists. In many ways, understatement comes up on us a little slower, but when it does it packs a mean punch. The humour in these artists’ works is deadpan; that is, the works confront us in a very matter of fact way only later to incite us to laughter.

64

Art and Laughter

Most contemporary art is not about the subtle; works in galleries are big and meant to fill large spaces. Given the fact that our attention span is very short, in part thanks to television, many art gallery visitors may lack the attention span and patience to spend time with work that they ‘don’t get’ instantly. The works by these artists take time; you have to stop and read text and listen to the art. I often think about how people from other cultures view English language-based artwork, and if humour is lost in the translation. Given the apparent challenges for language-based works of art, I do believe that they are worth the effort. Contemporary and postmodern art has resulted in artists creating works that are about the meaning of language, and how language may be perceived conceptually and aesthetically. The contemporary artists discussed in this chapter who employ language as subject in their art also use humour-evoking techniques: appropriation of words, juxtaposition of words, letters and phrases, use of words that rhyme and homonyms. The artists in this chapter are not only wordsmiths, they are visual artists who are able to take language out of traditional written and spoken contexts and place it within art contexts. In doing so, they find a visual home for words in light, colour and sound, and in unconventional and unpredictable ways that invite our laughter. Chapter 4 will address artists who create humour through techniques of disguise and who use the mask literally and metaphorically to heighten and intensify their reality.

Chapter 4

The Art of Disguise

In the end, everything is a gag. Charlie Chaplin Masks are an ancient art form and are found in numerous cultures from around the world. Their function to conceal and disguise the identity of the wearer has proven effective for military battle, masquerade balls, spiritual and religious ceremonies, and sports events. Created in every conceivable material, such as clay, paper, stone, metal, fabric and paint, masks can also be created through the use of cosmetics and theatrical make-up worn by actors and clowns who assume the masks of comedy or tragedy through their gestures and facial expressions. The contemporary artists discussed in this chapter have employed the mask in one form or another, and in doing so have been able to freely pursue personal, political and artistic issues through disguise, and with humour. It is through disguise that the artist enables the release of his or her inhibitions and true feelings and the emergence of ideas into new forms that would otherwise not be possible. Freud would say that artists who deal with matters of disguise need to unleash what they are repressing, yet there may be some prohibitions or cultural taboos against certain forms of behaviour or thinking. The disguise permits the expression of such ideas in a socially acceptable way, and with some distance for the artists. Contemporary artists, such as Alex Bag and the Guerrilla Girls, employ both actual and symbolic masks in their work to disguise their identity, yet at the same time reveal truths about the art world. In this sense, their masks create an ironic situation where truth is made possible but only through disguise. Liza Lou, Sandy Skoglund, Judy Onofrio and Brian Jungen are contemporary artists who take everyday objects and transform, conceal and disguise them. In other words, they mask objects and disrupt the viewer’s expectation of the objects. In Lou’s work,

66

Art and Laughter

every inch of the surfaces of found and created objects are covered with glass beads that she applies by hand. Her installations are truly a testament to the bead, and to patience! Similarly, Onofrio creates assemblages in wood, plastic, glass and ceramics, masking the original identity and use for these objects. In doing so, she transforms objects that serve as visual metaphors for the events of her life. Sandy Skoglund creates large-scale, room-size installations using people and objects that have a fantastic, dream-like and other-worldly quality through the disguise of surfaces and concealment of mechanical devices that activate objects within her installations. In his recent works, Jungen has used Nike athletic shoes and created mask forms that resemble North West Coast Indian ceremonial masks. In this sense, Jungen’s work is ironic: masking the identity of a shoe to create a mask. Through disguise, these artists are able to exert humour through parody and satire in ways that intersect with issues of identity. A primary theme in postmodern art is the exploration of identity. One of the outcomes of the feminist and multicultural art movements of the 1970s and 1980s was the realization that the production and interpretation of art relies on our looking and analysing through our own cultural lens that has been shaped by our personal, familial, cultural, social and educational experiences. Art made by women in the last twenty years has embraced autobiography and the lived experiences of women related to the roles of women in the family, class differences, issues of desire, eroticism, representation and how women are represented in art, life and the media.1 Women artists use performance art, film, photography and language-based art as well as traditional art forms, such as painting, drawing, sculpture and printmaking to explore their identities. In addition, many women artists explore craft traditions, such as knitting, needlepoint, ceramics and sewing to explore issues relating to being a woman and an artist. Helena Reckett and Peggy Phelan, in Art and Feminism, write: The work of many women artists at the end of the 1990s showed evidence of millennial reflection, exploring collective memories, associations, and traumas to re-open questions of history and the memorial … reappropriated stereotypical imagery to address social and historical issues, and re-evaluated the everyday, addressing banal situations, spaces and chance encounters.2 The works of artists discussed in this chapter, in particular the works of Alex Bag, Guerrilla Girls, Deborah Kass, Liza Lou and Judy Onofrio explore issues related to being a woman in the art world and in society with wit. Kass’ parodies of Pop artist Andy Warhol are a perfect example of how postmodern artists are re-opening questions of art history and the meaning of icon in our culture. Issues of identity and representation are not exclusive to art made by women as noted in the works included by First Nation artists Brian Jungen and Ron Noganosh.

The Art of Disguise

67

Male artists have been exploring issues related to gender, culture and race: Jungen and Noganosh draw upon their Native heritages to explore their identities, to engage in social critique and to explore the meaning of Native art forms. This chapter, on disguise in art, begins with a discussion of Saul Steinberg – a brilliant visual artist, satirist, social commentator, master of line, a keen observer of cities, art, life and a master of disguise – a well-known American artist who spent his entire career exploring issues of identity, disguise and cultures.

Saul Steinberg Known mostly for his New Yorker cover drawings, Steinberg also exhibited watercolour and ink drawings and mixed media collages in galleries and museums throughout his career. Like Rockwell, he successfully crossed over between illustration and the fine arts. Arthur Danto, art critic, writes about Steinberg: ‘There is nothing, I think in the whole history of art, to put along side Steinberg’s miraculous New Yorker (March 29, 1976) cover that shows the world as seen from the point of a New Yorker.’3 Steinberg’s economy of line created some of the most original examples of visual paradox, pun and satire in twentieth-century art, and influenced countless numbers of artists and cartoonists. Steinberg’s unmistakable style of drawing and graphic lettering are embodied in his fanciful lines and swirls, and coloured pencil and ink drawings of people and places. Fiercely witty, the drawings reveal Steinberg’s passion and knowledge for art history, Surrealism, his penchant toward graphic jokes and architectural fantasy. Steinberg’s drawings are amusing, as they are forcibly fanciful. They do exhibit wit and charm, not by clever chicanery, but through juxtaposition of incongruous forms, inventiveness, use of multiple perspectives and the creation of plausible absurdities that exude a joy when discovered. So many of Steinberg’s characters are hybrid – human/animals who are often masked bearing the grins of sly alligators. His works both parody and satirize contemporary urban life. Steinberg’s interest in masks appears throughout all this work, and he was shown photographed in paper bag masks. One of his series of drawings satirized ‘certificates’; Steinberg created his own certificates of authenticity using stamps and scribbles and blots of ink. Other works include his parodic satires of the art world, such as people looking at art in the art museum and parodies of icons of art. One drawing appears to be a parody of the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci where Steinberg has drawn a bunny, Santa Claus, Abraham Lincoln, Lady Liberty, George Washington and a scarecrow at the dinner table. Steinberg travelled across America in the 1980s documenting the burgeoning strip malls, the escalating use of the automobile and the evolving American landscape. In contrast to documentary photography, Steinberg merges wit, whimsy, perspective and insight into spaces that seem both real and imagined. His series of party drawings – in

68

Art and Laughter

which each person is drawn in a different style, such as cross-hatched, dotted, coloured, outlined – is particularly lovely. No other artist has so convincingly made a drawing of a human figure from his own inked fingerprints. No other artist has created work about urban life, and particularly New York City, with such verve, maybe with the exception of Red Grooms. Steinberg’s comic drawings capture the identity of an artist, and a nation shaped by the urban experience of congestion, commotion, kinetic activity and interaction, frenzy, and the clashing of cultures on the streets and in the museums. Steinberg is an artist who was shaped by his own hand and refined doodles. Doodling as a spontaneous mark-making activity while one is engaged in conversation, or on the telephone, is normally relegated to notes or scrap paper. The doodling element in Steinberg’s work, though, is more calculated: his doodling is emotive, and extols the doodle as a serious ‘line’ in art. Another taboo that Steinberg breaks in his work is the use of cartoon-like drawings that have deeper socially relevant content, and potency beyond just entertainment. This is really a very hard line to walk, and if Steinberg were to draw himself walking this line, I am sure it would be fanciful and doodle-ish lines.

Mocking the Art World Through Disguise As Steinberg gently mocked the urban life and social exchanges of people from all walks of life, and created portraits of characters from all walks of life with helmet-like heads and mask-like faces, contemporary artists are continuing to explore disguise in portraiture. Artists who wish to critique the world, or the art world, with some distance, embrace the art of disguise. Like Saul Steinberg, Alex Bag, a performance/video artist, is also keenly aware of the art world from a different perspective, and like Steinberg, she uses disguise in her work to critique it from her perspective as a woman, and to expose, in her view, the inequities and the contradictions.

Alex Bag One of the tenets of feminism is to critique the stereotypes of women and to unfurl the biases inherent in our culture and the art world. Alex Bag uses satire and parody to mock the art world, exploring the intersections of art, culture and lived experiences. Similar to artist Andrea Fraser, who creates mostly videotapes of performances that are hilarious depictions of her ‘lampooning the bloated lingo of much art critique; the egomaniacal ravings of artists who believe their own fawning press; and the orgiastic cult of museum worshippers’,4 Bag creates videos and performances that mock artists, the art world, dealers and museum curators, and she essentially spoofs her own career as an artist. In her Untitled 1995 video, she speaks in a deadpan delivery as an art student delivering monologues about the art world. Curator John Spiak writes:

The Art of Disguise

69

Using direct dialogue with the camera, intermixed with performative vignettes by the artist, Bag airs her personal views and demonstrates the survival skills she used to slog through four grueling years of influential boyfriends, patronizing male teachers, bad student video works, stultifying artist lectures, and paralyzingly mundane jobs.5 For those of us who went to art school, does this sound vaguely familiar? The satire lies in the gentle mocking of her art school experiences. In her use of wigs, make-up and accents, she is once removed from herself as she dramatizes her art school sagas. What holds true in Bag’s video work about the disappointments and realities of being an art student is that being an art student is not romantic or glamorous as the myth might have it. There is an element of sadness and truthfulness revealed that places her video in the tragic/comic category. Bag’s video crosses over between art, confession, deconstruction of the 16. Alex Bag, McDonalds I, 2002. art school experience and the artist as a romantic bohemian myth. Bag talks publicly about this very closed, misunderstood, complex and gruelling experience called art school, and we are probably better for it. Following her video pieces, Bag continued to work in performance and video in creating a group of C-prints. Critic David Frankel writes: ‘Crackup’, 2002, tackled a broader cultural range, moving from the parking garage to the Blockbuster store, from psychiatrist’s couch to McDonald’s. Each photograph shows one of these spots plus Bag posed and costumed wearing fake eyes – bulging orbs suggesting both blatant hysteria and Ping-Pong balls. To flesh out these characters, each photograph’s frame holds a built-in speaker through which Bag pronounces a few lines of dialogue.6 Bag uses techniques of exaggeration and almost carnivalesque grotesqueness in her choice of accessories and make-up that both repulse and amuse. This more recent body of work involves her adoption of characters and a more hysterical tone not present in her earlier videos.

70

Art and Laughter

Through confronting the pain with humour, Bag unmasks her own pain and experience, and perhaps the collective pain of others that she knows. Humour becomes her catharsis, a healing for her and all artists who may have been paralysed and disenfranchised by the art school experience. Humour in her work both conceals her pain, yet reveals some truths that may not be possible without disguise. Perhaps the video about art school deserves to be viewed in a primetime television spot so that the public at large can see what it really takes to make it through the critical theory crossroads and the pains of postmodernism. Like the Guerrilla Girls, Bag understands that disguise is a necessary social mechanism for the expression of outrage.

Guerrilla Girls The Guerrilla Girls have been working since 1985. This group of anonymous art world females took on the art world through humour to not scratch, but gnaw away at racism, sexism and other injustices that they saw permeating the art world.7 Having had a successful run with presentations, a website and publications, the Guerrilla Girls still combine theatrics with scholarly research. Solidly performing with facts that have a lot of punch, the Guerrilla Girls continue to engage audiences in conscious-raising. In 2005, the Guerrilla Girls performed at University of Wisconsin-Stout. As two Guerrilla Girls entered a packed room from the back, they tossed bananas into the audience. With a verbal and visual back and forth dialogue, the two Guerrilla Girls reminded us about the pervasive stereotypes, racism and sexism still present in the art and film worlds. With large guerrilla masks and their gentle blue eyes peering through they became masters of disguise and appropriation, two techniques used in humour production. First, they take on the names of famous, but dead, women artists, to pay homage to women predecessors. They speak loud, but not shouting, and use tongue-in-cheek humour to make what they have to say a little more palpable for some. Their power and protection lies in their anonymity. Their work crosses over between conceptual and performance art that is fused with feminist ideologies and biting satirical humour. They suppress their individual voices for the good of the collective voice. Their biting humour continues to gnaw through the tough cultural systems. After the presentation, I shook their hands, soft, yet firm in contrast to their hard, wrinkly guerrilla masks. The Guerrilla Girls are a walking paradox still full of conscious raising, even when you thought you didn’t need it any more.

Deborah Kass Since his famous Brillo Box works of the 1960s, Andy Warhol has crystallized a generation of artists who began to question the impact of advertising and the media. His famous painting, Before and After, questioned the notion of beauty, image and identity, long before it became such a hot topic in postmodern art. Deborah Kass is a contemporary artist who loves Andy Warhol’s work. Her appropriation of his style

The Art of Disguise

71

of working in silkscreen she proudly calls The Warhol Project. This eight-year project allowed Kass to substitute her own cast of portraiture subjects while using Warhol’s stylistic conventions. The Warhol Project consists of twenty-eight silkscreened portraits on panels that constituted a travelling exhibition that was organized by The Newcomb Gallery, Woldenberg Art Center at Tulane University.8 The images that Andy Warhol is so famous for, such as Jackie Onassis and Chairman Mao, are replaced with Kass’ own heroes: Barbra Streisand and Gertrude Stein. Her work, like Warhol’s, explores the concept of celebrity, hero and status in our culture. What is funny about Kass’ work is that it pays homage to Warhol with a feminist twist; she celebrates women, and in particular, Jewish women, who in some way could be called daring, provocative, witty, talented and successful. Icons of Jewish culture and womanhood that are celebrated in her portraits allow Kass to celebrate her religious, cultural, artistic and gender identities, as well as challenge cultural notions about beauty, status and womanhood. Like Bag, Deborah Kass challenges the male patriarchal structure of the art world by appropriating images in art, notably Andy Warhol, and using his medium. Sherry Levine, whose work has been important for Kass, is generally considered an appropriation artist who forcibly questioned the concept of originality and authorship. Kass writes: ‘I am using Andy as a cultural text; a ready-made.’9 She takes the ready-made and alters them through colour and subject. Cherry Smyth writes that Kass’ appropriations of Warhol’s art ‘mirrors his own methods to undermine the way that it has been historicized’.10 The appropriation of Warhol’s images is a technique of parody, and Kass is a political parodist and satirist who aims to draw attention to the representation of Jewish women in history, in the arts, and to myths about beauty, celebrity and success. Even her earlier work of the 1990s embraced humour. Mary Ann Staniszewski writes: ‘Her paintings of the early 1990s comprise panels taken from a variety of sources – fine art, media, and popular culture. Kass’ use of images from the comics makes her alignment with humor as a means of critique more obvious.’11 One of the portraits in The Warhol Project is that of Cindy Sherman. Sherman is disguised through wig and make-up to look like Liza Minnelli, which is indeed a parody of Warhol’s Minnelli silkscreen. Kass uses other subjects, such as Yentl, the character out of Streisand’s film. She has also created portraits of herself in camouflage that parody the camouflaged portraits by Warhol’s portrait. The parodies of Warhol’s Jackie series are substituted with images of Barbra Streisand and are very humorous in the flip/flop of these female cultural icons. Her camouflaged and disguised portraits ‘get at another layer of masquerade in a vast repertory of impersonations’.12 Through the juxtaposition and substitution of her own images in Warhol’s ‘ready-mades’, Kass empowers her own set of heroes. Through using techniques of camouflage and disguise in her portraits she empowers the sitter and distances the viewer. We are able to recognize her masquerades

72

Art and Laughter

and disguises because Warhol’s works are so famous, and so recognizable. The insertions of her own icons have immediate parodic qualities. Yet, it is in the selection of her subjects, Jewish women, that couldn’t be farther from what Warhol would select. This undoubtedly sets up a dynamic tension that results in the incongruous and the humorous. In the Warhol series, Kass ultimately explores the tension of being a Jewish woman in an essentially white Anglo-Saxon Protestant world. Yet, it is Kass’ life as a recognized artist that allows her to further explore the intersections of culture, art and fame that comprise her identities, and that make her parodies that much more interesting.

Liza Lou Out of the consciousness raising of 1970s and 1980s feminism, many women artists began to address women’s domestic work, and kitchen and food themes began to emerge. One of the most notorious food-related works is the Dinner Party (1974–1979) by Judy Chicago. Liza Lou is a contemporary artist who became known for her work entitled Kitchen (1991–1995), an installation of a kitchen scene using actual appliances that she covered in entirety with glass beads. This 168 square foot installation13 includes cereal boxes, cabinets, floor tiles and walls, all of which are covered with patterned beaded surfaces. The installation of beaded forms no doubt sends one into a visual dazzle of colour, form and pattern. Lou then also created Backyard (1997), 22 x 4 feet of simulated suburban bliss consisting of over a quarter million beads just for the grass! Backyard includes a lawnmower, laundry on the line, a grill with charcoal, food, flowers, insects and other summer delights, and typifies Middle America. Next came Trailer (1999–2000), a ‘beaded tableau that transforms the most familiar settings of American domestic life into exuberant spectacles’.14 Her interior trailer scene captures in a limited palette the patterning and styling of a trailer complete with flooring, furniture, shoes, and food. A recent exhibit American Presidents (1996–2001) consisted of 2D creations: a series of 43 beaded portraits on wood of all the US presidents using monochromatic beads to simulate the likeness of historic black and white photographs. These photographs were exhibited at the Smithsonian Art Museum, Washington, DC (2001) along with some 3D beaded objects that one might find in the Oval Office. All of this took Lou five years to complete, and she used millions of beads. Starting out small with Socks and Underwear (1994) was probably not such a bad idea. In terms of learning how to knit, one might also start out with socks and then move on to scarves, sweaters and rooms. The creation of these large-scale installations has involved her use of volunteers and much planning and organization. References to feminist art and seminal works need to be noted with Lou’s installations of domestic-related scenes. Woman House in the 1970s in Los Angeles, created by Miriam Shapiro and Judy Chicago, contained a crocheted room installation and an aesthetically

The Art of Disguise

73

designed kitchen space. Lou’s use of beads to define, embellish and decorate surfaces has its roots in craft traditions and fashion, which have been dominated by women. Beading has been women’s work historically. While most beadwork tends to be on the small and intimate scale, Lou’s installations are on the grand scale for beadwork, and therein lies the humour. She obliterates the mundane quality of the everyday world and objects through the embellishment of everyday objects; objects are transformed through light, glamour and colour. In elevating the everyday, the everyday doesn’t seem so dull and ordinary. Like other Pop Artists, such as Claus Oldenburg who transforms everyday objects with scale and materials in large-scale installations, Lou understands that art making and the art experience can be fun, enlightening and lots of labour. There is no doubt that her work is dazzling. I saw her Kitchen installation at the Minneapolis Museum of Art, complete with a sink of turquoise beads and a cherry pie cooling by the oven. Lou transforms the museum-going experience with the glamour of shimmering glass. Like the Impressionist painters, Lou lets our eyes mix the colours together as she paints with glass, and like Van Gogh, she places every stroke of bead passionately on her canvas. The humour in her work is possible through the recognition of objects concealed and transformed by glass, the transformation of the mundane, everyday object into an object of beauty and glamour, and the slice of American life that is gloriously recast through coloured glass. Her works are parodic satires as they parody a slice of life and at the same time very gently mock it by making it seem more brilliant and glorious than it actually is. In this sense, Lou’s works are not only realistic, but also very idealistic, and it is this duality that makes her work ironic.

Sandy Skoglund Sandy Skoglund is a sculptor and photographer who uses rooms as her canvas. Since, the 1980s she has used her studio as a set to place her own sculptures, objects and hired actors in what I call ‘dreamscapes’. She often obsessively creates multiples of objects for her installations and after careful posing and arranging Skoglund then photographs these spaces in brilliantly coloured large-scale photographs. Her process is tedious, and she produces only a few pieces per year. Is her art photography, sculpture, installation, or all three? Her installations/photographs merge the waking, everyday reality with a bit of fantasy, whimsy and poetic delight. Her recent work, Shimmering Madness (1999), is a mixed media installation that includes fluttering mechanical butterfly wings and jellybeans. As in her past works, she uses the technique of contradiction through using incongruous objects that result in paradoxical and surprising arrangements. She also uses the technique of transposition – moving objects out of their normal environments, such as the use of blue leaves in an office space. Her work is described Lindy T. Shepherd, art critic:

74

Art and Laughter

Her multimedia results are surreal and perhaps ever so sinister, like Fox Games (1987), which features a couple dining in an elegant, gray monochrome restaurant overrun by glowing red foxes jumping from table to table. In A Breeze at Work (1987), brilliant-blue leaf sculptures cover an office environment that’s otherwise coated in brown. Sandy Skoglund’s Cibachrome print Walking on Eggshells captures a surreal bathroom tableau she has sculpted and arranged. The scene is populated by two women at toilette, gingerly making their way across a floor covered with eggshells, a bunch of lifelike snakes, and a trio of cast resin rabbits with hands for forepaws.15 Yet, to look at a Skoglund photograph, like a Liza Lou installation, is to laugh at the subtle absurdities. Skoglund’s use of puns in her titles, such as Fox Games, serve as a metaphor for relationships and life, and link the literal with the symbolic. Like Judy Onofrio, Skoglund is a sculptor, painter and installation artist who draws upon a highly personal, witty visual vocabulary to create mixed media works that delight the eye and tickle the funny bone.

Judy Onofrio Judy Onofrio is obsessed with pattern, colour, disguising objects and making sculptures that take the eyes on a holiday. Like Lou, Onofrio uses found objects, broken dishes, plates, beads, buttons, tiles, plastic fruit and animals, china cups, ceramics and mirrors to create a cacophony of colour, pattern and mosaics that are reminiscent of the architecture of Gaudi, West Coast funk artists, and the sacred grottos and environments found in the midwestern USA.16 Her work also pays homage to the sculptural and architectural environments of Niki de Saint Phalle who created extraordinary, imaginary and mythic sculptures and environments using mosaics, plaster and paint. Onofrio is as obsessive in her technique as she is about collecting all her materials; she is a flea market and garage sale devotee. Using themes from her life, such as gardening and fishing, every piece has a story embedded in the cemented ceramics sculptures. Her work fits into the category of assemblage and installation art. Most of her work is freestanding, yet some of her sculptures sit on shelves or on walls. Probably her most ambitious installation is what she calls JudyLand and is her home garden located in Rochester, Minnesota.17 This predominately self-taught Midwest artist who tributes her Aunt Trude as a role model and mentor, brings an honesty and humour along with her eccentricity. Her sculptures are fun to look at, and it is easy to get lost in all the nooks and crannies. Bejewelled and often with female figures and mermaid-like figures, Onofrio presents juxtapositions of fish, flora and fauna forms together in a 3D découpage. Forms are arranged on pedestal forms or in wall niches and are juxtaposed in nonsensical arrangements like dreams and the bits of mirror catch the light and our smiles.

The Art of Disguise

75

Judy Onofrio writes about her work on her website: Arches, pedestals, porches, and columns are the framework for shrines reminiscently religious, yet ultimately a personal and invented space. The central figures are created primarily of wood and later are surfaced with detailed embellishments. Men, women, birds, fish and animals assume characters that become engaged in various relationships of seduction, balance, duality, and temptation. Through my art, I construct a world of memory, humor and stories. Best of all, I live in that world and invite others in.18 In the process of working and creating 17. Judy Onofrio, Three Jugglers, 2004. her sculptures, Onofrio takes many kitsch and recycled objects with dishware and gives them a new home. Her works are as much about abundance and excess as they are personal narratives. Like Rococo art, Onofrio’s sculptures are ornate and obsessive in their use of glass and mirrors, and decorative and playful forms. Her works represent an artist who views the process of collecting objects critical for the creation of her sculptures. It is her eye for the unusual, the quirky and the fun and the way she puts things together in harmonious and delightful incongruity that begs us to stay just a little longer and find the treasures hidden in the folds.

First Nation Humour in Art: Social/Political Humour There are several First Nation (USA and Canadian) artists working today who draw on their Native, cultural experiences and histories in their work. Artists Ron Noganosh and Brian Jungen use parody, irony and satire in their works to explore what is already present, but perhaps may be unnoticed. In the Trickster Shift: Humour and Irony in Contemporary Art, Allan Ryan writes about the trickster as a comic spirit underlying

76

Art and Laughter

Native literature, storytelling, and most recently, art making. Ryan writes that the trickster is admired for being creative, curious, playful, earthy, irreverent and resilient and is used to teach about social etiquette, customs and ways of being in the world.19 The sacred clown that is part of Southwest Pueblo culture functions similarly as the trickster to shock, to see absurdities, to recognize incongruities and to see the irony in life. The Hopi clowns, or Koyalas, bridge the secular and the sacred entertaining at very serious ceremonies. Humour then becomes the catalyst to move people from states of unawareness or rigid thinking to reinvention and seeing things in new ways. In many ways, Noganosh and Jungen become the trickster in the context of contemporary art to shock us through incongruities, and move us into greater states of awareness. Native artists, such as Noganosh and Jungen are exploring identity and representation that is merged with a comic spirit in ways that build on the use of the trickster figure. Alan Ryan writes: ‘A distinct comic attitude does exist that can be legitimately labeled Native Humor that transcends geographical boundaries and tribal distinctions; it is most often characterized by frequent teasing, outrageous punning, constant wordplay, surprising association, extreme subtlety, layered and serious reference, and considerable compassion.’20 The works of contemporary artists Noganosh and Jungen bear these qualities and represent the diversity of humour present in First Nation contemporary art. While ‘the truth remains that there has not been much to laugh about in Indian country since contact’,21 the work of these contemporary artists bears witness to the invincible spirit of humour to transcend cultural boundaries and oppression.

Ron Noganosh The shield in Native American culture serves to protect warriors. As aesthetic objects, they have been appreciated for their decorative qualities and beadwork. Ron Noganosh is a Canadian First Nations artist and art teacher who creates contemporary shields. In his 1991 series of shields, he puts a new spin on this historical, spiritual and aesthetic object, using parody, satire and irony to explore Native historical events and social issues. In Shield For A Yuppie Warrior, designer label silk fabric is stretched over the circular frame. Suede fringes and mink tails hang from the shield. This is a shield for a contemporary warrior who has bought into high fashion in an image and label conscious society. In another shield, Shield for a Modern Warrior, or Concessions to Beads and Feathers in Indian Art (1984), flattened beer cans comprise the shield with suspended feathers, beads and fur tails. Allan Ryan writes: ‘What makes this particular piece both visually compelling and socially relevant is the ironic play between flattened beer cans and a warrior’s shield. Noganosh is able to advance the notion of alcohol as a shield … and as a critical parody, it is a grim semiotic sign of the times.’22 About the role of humour in his work Noganosh states: ‘If they stop and laugh I got their attention,

The Art of Disguise

77

and then maybe they’ll take the time to look around and see what’s going on.’23 Like the masks of Brian Jungen, Noganosh critiques the Native Indian cultural icon and its cultural, aesthetic, religious and spiritual associations, and re-creates shields that are embedded with contemporary Native concerns and recycled materials. Noganosh uses black humour to ‘transcend the pain and absurdity of reality, to subvert pain by undermining the seriousness of the subject’, and to laugh in the face of tragedy.24

Brian Jungen Brian Jungen is a Canadian artist who has worked with issues of identity and representation through his sculpture and installation art. In the 1990s, Jungen explored what it means to be ‘Indian’ through the eyes of a non-Indian working conceptually and through object making. In one piece, Jungen asked shoppers in a mall to create a doodle about something ‘Indian’. He took these doodles and transferred and enlarged them onto gallery walls. In more recent works, he exhibited sculptures made from black, white and red coloured Nike Air Jordan basketball shoes that resemble masks from the US Northwest Coast Native Indians. Upon closer inspection, they were indeed recycled and transformed basketball shoes to which he assigned such titles as: Prototype for a New Understanding. As an emerging and First Nation artist in Canada, Jungen’s basketball shoes as mask can be read as metaphors and puns. In keeping with stylistic characteristics of a Northwest Coast Indian mask, Jungen uses the shoes’ parts to create masks that suggest highly exaggerated facial features. In Prototype for a New Understanding #3,25 he takes the Nike shoe, probably around size 11 or 12, and slices the sole to reveal a gaping smile, he tucks in the entire front where you lace the shoes, and reveals the shoe insert to give the piece more height. Jungen has added a piece of sole probably from another style of Nike shoe to the back of the shoe to extend the sculpture with surprising textures and shapes. A plastic circle on the side of the shoe serves as an ‘eye’ for this mask that sits atop a thin white pole in a purely modernist exhibition style. These masks are replete with duality and irony. The contemporary fashion status symbol that the Nike has become across cultures cannot be denied, and it has a powerful identity in the Western marketplace. Similarly, the ceremonial mask has a sacredness and powerful identity within Native artistic traditions and tribal communities. The notion of Native Indian young people trading in cultural identity and traditions for consumerism is suggested as Jungen substitutes, or transposes, the mask for a shoe. Ceremonial masks as a conduit for internal dialogue with the spirit world perhaps has been overtaken by external dialogue with consuming. Jungen may in fact be saying that issues of spirituality do not seem very important these days, especially for young people, when the allure of consumption and status through consuming the ‘right’ shoes remains so dominant and appealing. Jungen’s construction of the mask out of the shoe typifies the Nike logo ‘just do it’.

78

Art and Laughter

Jungen did it; he has taken a very recognizable icon and made it into another kind of icon, the mask. Jungen transforms the shoe through altering its structure and form and merging it with other shoe parts. In creating his Prototypes, Jungen creates a comic ambiguity that requires viewers to ask: Is it a mask? No, is it a shoe? Can it be both? Jungen relies on this ambiguity and plays with our notions of mask and shoe to create puns (mask as shoe and shoe as mask). His sculptures result in both pun and irony as he explores the contradictions and social and cultural meanings of the mask, and Nike shoes.

Concluding Thoughts Masking the identity of subjects in portraiture and masking the identity of an object in sculpture are techniques used by contemporary artists who understand that disguise bears a powerful dual function – to conceal and reveal. They want to fool us, and yet, at the same time, they want to reveal to us what lies beneath the surface. Through disguise, artists can alter our perceptions about reality, and laughter is possible when we recognize that our trust in our own perception has failed us. For disguise to be successful, the viewer must recognize and appreciate the incongruities posed vis-à-vis the disguise. The works by Bag, Guerrilla Girls, Jungen, Kass, Lou, Noganosh, Onofrio, Skoglund and Steinberg offer us opportunities for humour through disguise. Experiencing their works may be likened to an adult version of the game of peek-a-boo, in that we may come away somewhat amused upon realizing that we have been willingly, yet joyfully, deceived. Deception may not be a bad thing, that is, if no one gets hurt. Chapter 5 addresses another aspect of art – scale – and how artists joyfully play with our perception and reality through making things really big, or really small.

Chapter 5

The Big, the Small and the Funny

Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps. William Blake Scale is always an issue for artists. How big or how small defines the work and is determined by an artist’s concepts, materials, financial situation, and the aesthetic preferences or commission guidelines. Some artists are drawn to both looking at small works of art and to working on a small scale. Other artists seem to work large and are drawn to public spaces for the display of their works. While war monuments have dominated as a genre of public sculpture in urban areas for centuries, the urban renewal movement in the 1960s gave way to large expanses of space in cities that could be redefined with contemporary sculpture. Simultaneously, ‘percent for the arts’ programmes in cities across the world have provided funding for large-scale outdoor sculptures by well-known artists that could serve as cultural centrepieces and tourist attractions. In Chicago, the outdoor sculptures by Picasso, Miro, Calder and Dubuffet that dominate the downtown plazas have invigorated the spaces and the economy as a result of their draw to citizens and tourists. Large-scale public sculptures that started appearing in cities all over the world have been followed by equally engaging and humorous sculptures that can provide increased aesthetic enjoyment and pleasure for citizens on a daily basis. While public sculpture is typically associated with the descriptions of monumental, serious and expensive, there is humour to be found in some of the more recent big public art installations. Contemporary artists are changing the face and perception of the urban landscape with the presence of funny sculptures. These artists include Fernando Botero, Red Grooms, Niki de Saint Phalle and Tom Otterness. Otterness and Niki de Saint Phalle have created large-scale public sculptures in urban spaces that give new meaning to the term ‘urban

80

Art and Laughter

playground’. Looking to the work by these artists reaffirms that play and fun are not just for children. Don’t be fooled by these works or be fooled by their scale, big or small they reel us in for a look at ourselves, and our assumptions about the nature and value of big and small. Many contemporary artists, however, do not see big as better, or even necessary. Reacting against the large-scale minimal artworks of the 1970s and 1980s, many contemporary artists have taken to the small scale, and even the miniature. Small works by many artists are seen as more intimate, portable and economical. The one thing in common between the artists discussed in this chapter, whether they work big or small, is that they manipulate scale for comic effect using techniques of exaggeration, placement and/or creating incongruous relationships between materials and subject. Some of the more compelling small works by artists in the last twenty years have been miniature dioramas by artists such as Laurie Simmons. Other artists discussed in this chapter who work relatively small include Vik Muniz and Tom Friedman, whose works invite us into laughter through altering our perception of scale and materials. There is a saying that ‘Big is better’, and this may be more indicative of the point of view that many Americans may hold when it comes to cars, houses and art. The work, however, of Laurie Simmons and Michael Hernandez de Luna is proof that small can be immensely magical and funny.

Laurie Simmons and Dioramas in Contemporary Art Laurie Simmons’ miniature installations or dioramas were created using toy doll figures set into domestically themed interiors. The interiors are nostalgic of the 1950s and the image or myth of the post-Second World War ‘happy homemaker’ is called into question with startling clean and vacuous domestic scenes. No dirt, no kids and no activity from the outside appears to be present in the photographs.1 Yet, there is something ominous and humorous going on here. The miniature scale of the toy figures evokes sentimentality and nostalgia associated with childhood and child’s play. The large photographs that she takes of these scenes alters our perceptions of scale, and takes us out of child’s play and into a darker, more surreal space. Simmons parodies the 1950s and all the clichés and design of that period in her doll’s house interiors (c.1979) and in more recent works of constructed gallery, museum and library interiors. It is fun to look at them and recall childhood experiences in finding magic in miniature interiors. The playhouse is a symbolic house for the soul where the dramas of life can be acted out in the safety of fantasy. Simmons’ interiors have an air of fun, cleanliness and newness, but at the same time speak of a deep loneliness and alienation. The irony of these spaces is that on the surface they speak to happiness that seems elusive.

The Big, the Small and the Funny

81

Michael Hernandez de Luna Michael Hernandez de Luna combines the comic, the satirical and the political in his postage-sized artworks. His work may be described as mail art, performance art, conceptual art or a combination of all three. Since the 1990s, de Luna has created pages of fake postage stamps sometimes working with collaborator, Michael Thompson, and sometimes working solo. The pages of stamps that he creates and signs look just like the stamps you get at the post office, complete with the perforated page and amount of postage due. He removes one stamp, attaches it to a recycled envelope, or a new envelope with a fictitious return address and he mails it to himself. Sometimes he has friends mail his letters from locations around the world.2

18. Michael Hernandez de Luna, Infidelity Stories, 2004.

82

Art and Laughter

Where is the art, in the postage stamp, in the letter and the stamp, or are both art? After de Luna receives his ‘letter’ complete with stamped markings by the post office, he displays it with the page of stamps, minus the one stamp. The pages of stamps are themed and no subject is taboo; he covers current events in religion, politics, entertainment and art. Some examples of his themes are McBarbies (c.2000), photographs of Barbie dolls in lewd positions, Infidelity Stories (2004), photographs of the mistresses of famous artists, and American Beauty (2003), photographs of lynching in the South.3 His stamps are ironical and satirical, and some could qualify for gallows humour, such as his most recent series of stamps entitled ‘Axis of Evil’. Drawing on the Surrealist traditions of chance, and employing techniques of appropriation of images, de Luna’s naughtiness merges with a refined graphic sensibility in works that set up absurd, clever and amusing juxtapositions. For example, one of his envelopes bears a Woody Allen image with the text reading Kosher Pedophile. The return address for this envelope reads Korean Girl Scouts Association. Another envelope contains a stamp with an image of a blue dress with a return address of Bill Clinton, Washington, DC. ‘[Historically] what [stamps] are all about is that they commemorate dead things or important things. I think what we do is commemorate our pop culture, how we see the world. As fun as it is, it is really subversive. And we’ve been able to express something that is on our minds and in a fun way,’ Hernandez de Luna said.4 The subversive element in all these stamps is very strong, that is, to disrupt our notions of the world as sane, rational, dry, fair and compassionate. There is a strong element of play and danger seeing how far he can get with the stamps. While many have passed through the post office clerk’s desk in the last decade, he has attracted their attention, but he has never got into serious trouble. Perhaps it is because his work is small and unassuming, and so authentically reproduced in a stamp format, and on stamp papers, that we are fooled. Upon closer inspection of the stamp, it becomes clearer that is a spoof. Yet, perhaps what de Luna may be saying is that looking closely at intimate scale is not something we have time for these days. About his interest in working small he says: What attracts me to the postage stamps and the size is a number of things: its subversive qualities, its design aspects, the performance qualities of sending envelopes through the postal system and having them canceled and returned by postal employees, using the postal system to create the work, the periods of art history … I get to hang the stuff in galleries and museums, I get to recycle images that are taken for granted, and I don’t have to spend any time in a darkroom or print shop in chemicals – now that’s a good time for me.5 Luna’s methods for making realistic renditions of imaginary stamps begin with him getting images from ‘magazine and newspaper racks, posters, playing cards, stickers,

The Big, the Small and the Funny

83

the trash bins, adult and comic book shops, all over’. He describes the process by which he arrives at his subject: I’ll see an image or have a conversation that triggers an idea for a stamp or series of stamps. Like the Bill Clinton follies set up the Vote Democrat stamp (2 donkeys screwing and the word vote), [a] property of Monica Lewinski (sic) stamp with her Gap dress with a semen stain on her shoulder, [and] a Jesse Jackson stamp – Bill Clinton’s spiritual advisor about polygamy.6 Michael Hernandez de Luna’s works are some of most biting and hilarious small-scale works in contemporary art; he does not hold back and as he believes ‘everything is fair game’, and art can merge with activism. Like Tom Friedman’s works, Luna’s works are proof of an artist who is always thinking, tinkering and taking utter delight in mischievous art making.

Tom Friedman In addition to recycling words and letters, some contemporary artists recycle materials and everyday objects to create new meanings. What is interesting about Tom Friedman’s work is how he transforms impersonal objects into something very personal. In addition to being paradoxical, his sculptures are quite comical in both technique and concept. In a recent exhibit at the Prada Foundation in Milan (2002)7 Friedman exhibited over thirty-eight works that were created over a period of ten-year period. Seemingly simple ideas take form evolving into full-blown absurdities, such as a huge wad of chewing gum, actually, a ball comprised of five hundred pieces of chewed bubblegum Untitled (1990) wedged into a gallery corner.8 There is definitely some scatological humour playing in his piece Untitled (1992) – a small piece of human faeces that Friedman has shaped into a half-millimetre ball and placed on a white pedestal. He had other works that are literally held together literally with his spit as glue. It is obvious that Friedman spends a great deal of time on his art, and is clearly engaged. He finds his materials in the everyday world, not necessarily in art supply stores. He likes pencils, cups, gum, spaghetti, paper, toothpicks, tape and soap. He uses materials that are not associated with art making, and belong to a world of outsider artists, or self-taught artists who create with whatever materials are available to them. Friedman uses a lot of paper. In Untitled (1999) he cut up thirty-six one-dollar bills and created one huge disfigured dollar bill. He did a similar thing with nine cereal boxes and created one blurry-looking cereal box. He also likes taking objects apart and reassembling them in a new way; materials are dissolved, dispersed, singled out, removed, extended and reshaped. How ridiculous are his two, blank, wrinkled sheets of paper on a wall in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles?

84

Art and Laughter

Friedman is part magician, transforming materials before our eyes, as they become something else. He is also a con who makes us believe that two wrinkled pieces of paper belong in a major museum collection, but whom is the joke on? All the while he is a gagster who takes the ordinary and makes it into something even more ridiculous. You know the stuff that comes out of hole punchers? Friedman took this and laminated it together to make one, very long cylinder. Friedman has the mind of a comic who is able to see potential and the poetry in the very, very ordinary and commonplace, and make it extraordinarily absurd and mysterious. He does this well in two self-portraits. Untitled (1994), a self-portrait, is carved with great detail on the face of an aspirin tablet. Untitled (2000) is quite the visual prank: a life-sized ‘portrait of the artist’, comprised of construction paper cutouts, in a state produced by a motorcycle accident. All of his ‘body parts and interior organs’ are created out of coloured paper, complete with torn ligaments, broken bones and blood spatters.9 While this would be gruesome as a photograph, or a painting, the use of children’s construction paper reminds me of the funny novelty items, such as fake vomit, that kids can purchase for pranks and a good laugh. There is an element of black humour at work here and laughing in the face of a very gruesome experience. The list of his images and labels in his exhibitions are equally amusing in themselves. Consider the following labels: There (2001) (paper cube splat); Untitled (2001) self-portrait (out-of-focus mosaic of the original image); Untitled (box balls) (2002) (cardboard box and Styrofoam balls), Untitled (2001) (a tarantula made from the artist’s hair); Untitled (2000) (self-portrait in a state of fragmentation produced by a motorcycle accident, made of paper); Untitled (1990) (a ball of chewing gum between two walls); Untitled (1994) (self-portrait carved out of a single aspirin), and my favourite. This sculpture gives new meaning to the word ‘headache’. Friedman describes his work as comedic in the sense that ‘the mundane becomes art’.10 He employs techniques of multiplication, magnification, condensation, and the eccentricity of materials through stretching their limits. He is really a Zen-like artist in approach, interested in minimal kinds of installations. He has a child-like fascination with bubble gum wads and playing with his own dung. Yet, these absurd objects are somehow poetic, beautiful and mysterious upon first glance. He doesn’t use typical or ‘serious’ sculpture materials, such as wood or bronze, but plastic straws. His large-scale objects rest unassumingly on the floor. Installation photographs, even in reproduction, are impressive, showing the white-on-white objects on the gallery floor. From afar, it could be white carved marble, but on reading the caption, we are informed that it is a loop of masking tape formed in a large 183 cm circle, or a continuous circle of plastic drinking cups that fit inside of the other. At his finest, Friedman is a master recycler of materials and objects, and a transformer of objects and perception. He is also a maker of objects who takes such materials as playdough, a child’s sculpture medium, and creates quite realistic reproductions of pills.

The Big, the Small and the Funny

85

Through the process, he is both a creator and a destroyer; he destroys our ideal and perception of what art should be made from and creates a world of objects reformed by his imagination and the inner chuckle that lives inside of him. Silly and smart, Tom Friedman is a walking contradiction.

Vik Muniz Vik Muniz is a sort of visual prankster who creates gags. Muniz created a ‘Jackson Pollack’ painting using chocolate syrup in a series titled Pictures of Chocolate (2002). He also created a ‘Gustav Courbet’ painting using dirt as a medium. He also creates elaborate constructions, such as Pictures of Dust (2001). Gathering dirt from the Whitney Museum, he arranged it in tiered landscapes and then drew outlines of everyday objects in the dirt.11 He also uses dirt as a medium and places toy cars in the dirt to play with the scale and then photographs these constructions from overhead to simulate an aerial view. These large gelatin silver prints assume a scientific documentary quality and recall aerial photographs taken of crop circle shapes. The shapes that Muniz draws in the dirt, such as keys and scissors, are part of our everyday experience, yet they are reminiscent of the movie Honey, We Shrunk the Kids, in which the adventure lies in the kids travelling through the grass trying to avoid mayhem, and running into giant lost keys or scissors in the grass. The shapes that Muniz creates in his photographs also recall the clear and precise chalk-outline drawings found at crime scenes. The humour lies in how Muniz manipulates scale, materials and perception through photography. Like Friedman, Muniz is a postmodern, conceptualist visual prankster who creates pseudo-parodies of artworks, and elevates dirt to an art medium. Unlike earthworks artists, such as Smithson and others who really move a lot of dirt around, Muniz works with small piles of dirt in the comfort of air-conditioned spaces. Muniz speaks to a well-educated art, quick audience who can understand his historical references implied in the parodies, and the gentle mocking of modernist sculpture icons. His more recent series of works include Pictures of Colour (2006) and Pictures of Junk (2006). Like Friedman, Muniz employs a sense of play and delight in not conforming to the use of traditional sculpture or art materials. His eclectic group of works speaks to a mind that is intent on exploring absurdity and playful dialogues with art history.

Fernando Botero Fernando Botero’s signature is his monumental, oversized figures, i.e. fat people. Having studied Italian Renaissance painting and been influenced by his travels through Latin and Central America, Botero paints and sculpts fusing elements of classical art with amusing distortions. His figures and landscapes bear the mark of solid, yet, buoyant

86

Art and Laughter

forms that take on mythic proportions. One can easily say that he paints fat people and fat things. Botero has also taken on art history in his parodies of Italian masters, such as Mona Lisa at the Age of 12, and other icons of art, such as Ingre’s Mademoiselle Riviere (2001), Dinner with Piero and Ingres (1968), Rubens with His Wife (1965).12 All these painted figures are indeed heavy, fat and pudgy: children, adults, young and old, rich and poor. Fat is the democratizing factor in Botero’s work, and no one or nothing escapes this fate. For all their heaviness, they feel remarkably light; women and men stand on seemingly small feet and have rather small and delicate hands. In an essay ‘Why Does Botero Paint Fat People?’,13 Mariana Harstein writes that Botero was concerned with sensuousness and volume, and creating sensations of opulence, excess and abundance. In his paintings and sculptures, one can get the sense of all these qualities, but I cannot avoid the fact that I do think his figures are fat. Maybe it is just all the conditioning of looking at fashion magazines and TV, and pencil-thin Hollywood stars eating carrots. Our culture is so obsessed with being thin, particularly for women, that seeing fat women in painting is rather shocking, and perhaps a bit amusing. What Botero does, and perhaps didn’t intend, is defile the notion of beauty for women in painting. His paintings go far beyond the sensuousness of the nudes of Rubens and Renoir. His figures extol, ‘You know what, I am fat, and I am beautiful!’ In Botero’s world, in Latin America, being fat is associated with positive qualities, health, affluence and joie de vivre, and I think his figures are both sensuous and fat. His paintings are amusing. It is amusing that everyone is fat; he exaggerates body types and the human form and distorts it just so, but not too much so we are totally repulsed by the deformity. Deformity in art can be traced back to the pre-Surrealists, Brueghel and Bosch, as well as the paintings of dwarfs and jesters in Renaissance art. Dwarfs, who suffered natural distortions to their bodies combined with small size, were the subject of laughter and ridicule. On the opposite spectrum, giants have been the subject of laughter and mockery, as in Frankenstein-type characters. Botero wraps up two cultural social stigmas in his works: obesity and deformity. Yet, in his images of obesity lie grace. One image that is funny and paradoxical is Dancer at the Pole (2004). Here an image of a fat ballerina balances on one toe point; she looks graceful, poised and round. Gaston Bachelard writes about being and roundness in the bird form that represents unity in its roundness.14 In Botero’s figures, the immensity of the human form becomes a source of unity and roundness. As children are captivated by the gigantic, bright and amusing,15 we too are captivated and amused by Botero’s world of the gigantic and poetic. Another funny work is The Botero Exhibition (1975), a quiet parody on the museumgoing experience. This painting depicts a museum gallery scene where about ten of Botero’s paintings are displayed on the wall of this gallery space. Museum visitors, including a nun and pope with rosaries, and other men, women and children walk by his exhibit. Some are faced toward the paintings, some are faced toward the viewer; still

The Big, the Small and the Funny

87

others just walk by. The subject for this painting can be seen later on in the discussion of parodies by Red Groom’s of visitors to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Botero came to the medium of bronze late in his career and his large sculptures are as solid and monumental as his 2D figures. His series of bronzes on Park Avenue in New York City in 1993 marked the first time that his sculptures were displayed outdoors in the city. Botero’s larger than life figures set the stage for another sculptor; Tom Otterness who has creates monumental combinations of fat and skinny people in public spaces.

Tom Otterness, Battery Park, New York City Tom Otterness is a sculptor of sizeable reputation. His robust group of new sculptures (2004–2005) that graced five miles of the New York City Broadway 60th and 168th Streets is the result of years of planning and preparation. He may also be one of the most humorous contemporary public sculptors living today. Ken Johnson, art critic, writes: Otterness can animate public spaces with amusing pudgy bronze cartoon characters acting out in parables of modern life … the centerpiece of the 57th St exhibit is a 36 foot long Jonathan Swift character with tubular legs, short cylindrical body who gazes unhappily at a Lilliputian figure.16 His larger than life-size bronzes have taken root all over the United States in public and civic spaces. Otterness elevates the goofy in high-priced bronze works that are also endearing. You want to like these goofy characters, and they are likeable, but not easy like a Disney character. In his art exhibit in New York, on Park Avenue in 2005, Otterness’ sculptures about money dominated the streets: Free Money, two goofy figures with turtle-like bodies embrace in a dance on a huge money bag that appears to be stuffed with money. Another sculpture in this parade of sculptures that bears the theme of money is a giant penny being pushed by little bronze characters. Ironically, or maybe appropriately, it was exhibited in the Deutsche Bank lobby in midtown Manhattan. Otterness’ sculptures are comical and amusing, and lighten up public spaces. If public opinion has any weight, comments about Otterness’ work suggest that his work does brighten up the New York worker’s day.17 Comments include ‘fun stuff to eat lunch near’, ‘they really brought new life to the place’, ‘his work always brings a smile to my face’, ‘they [his work] always seems to meet the right mixture (IMHO) of what public sculpture should be: durable, kid friendly, subversive, fun and beautiful’. These public sculptures are a travelling exhibit and left New York for the Midwest and Indianapolis in 2005. Some of the sculptures include Marriage of Real Estate and Money, Educating the Rich on Globe, Free Money, Mad Mom, Cellular Beaver,

88

Art and Laughter

Computer Pile, Tree of Knowledge, Male Tourist, Female Tourist and Walking Fish.18 His figures are imaginative hybrids of cartoon-like characters and the Pillsbury Doughboy, yet his work takes on serious issues, e.g. politics, as in Mad Mom at the Capitol; historical issues, as in Large Covered Wagon, and the economy, as in Big Big Penny. Humour is achieved through use of scale; the largeness of these dopey, playdough-like figures cast in expensive bronze creates an incongruity that is amusing. Otterness also uses context and placement to achieve humour. For example, would a large bronze penny be as funny in a pastoral landscape as it would on the streets of New York City? The works satirize greed, as in the sculpture of a monumental couple dancing on a huge pile of money and an embezzler under arrest. They also bring attention to social issues, such as homelessness, as in the sculpture of the homeless boy 19. Tom Otterness, Free Money (on Park Avenue), 2001. and his dog. While we may laugh at the sculpture of the embezzler and feel superior, the homeless boy may evoke feelings of sadness and empathy, and gladness that someone is not sweeping this issue under the carpet. His reliance on characters that refer to fairy tales supports a justification for the scale of some of these sculptures (36 feet). In their largeness, they are also as cute and endearing as Jeff Koons’ public art sculpture, Puppy, which is also located in Manhattan. We can laugh at these sculptures because they are so outrageous in size but also because they contain many attributes of cuteness: big, dopey-eyed characters, distorted bodies and sad faces.19 The name of Otterness’ studio, DUMBO, in Brooklyn, New York, is also quite amusing. Unlike HARPO, Oprah Winfrey’s company, I don’t think DUMBO spelled backwards amounts to Tom. At any rate, Tom Otterness is a comic force in contemporary art to be reckoned with, a social satirist, who, like Nauman, takes on the theme of vices and social oppression. Otterness is truly a humorous nihilist, or an individual, like Socrates, who constantly aspires for the ideal, to uplift the human soul, and to conquer the attitude of despair through humour.

The Big, the Small and the Funny

89

Niki de Saint Phalle Niki de Saint Phalle is a magical artist. She has created paintings, drawings, sculptures and environments that take you into her land of nanas, skinnies, myth, magic and humour.20 Her gardens comprise figures, and animal and plant shapes that are embedded with mosaics in a deliriously, delightful way that evokes the land of fairies. Like Botero, she is best known for her voluminous, oversize females holding snakes, painted with suns, moons, stripes, and with bulging stomachs and hips. Often faceless, these goddess-like creatures are painted in primary colours with stylized and free-flowing patterning. In the tradition of Antonio Gaudi’s mosaics and fantastic organic architecture and Jean Dubuffet’s outdoor sculptural installations, de Saint Phalle uses polyester as her outdoor sculpture medium, and paint, mosaics and glass to embellish her 3D fantasies. One of her last public outdoor works was the Tarot Garden created in Tuscany on private land. This work is a 3D vision of the Tarot cards, with sixteen structures to symbolize each of the sixteen cards of the Tarot deck. Resembling an ancient ruin among the Italian landscape, the Tarot Garden is perhaps her most embellished sculptural installation complete with fountains, paths, flowers and trees. One work in particular is very funny – her huge Nana or goddess figure that is lying down. This enormous figure positioned outdoors was an interactive piece: viewers were able to enter the Nana through her vagina as doorway. Once inside, viewers were able to visit a bar, an aquarium and a cinema, all of which were operational. The Nana as museum or entertainment mall is a pun and a unique concept both for sculpture, architecture and the shopping mall. What would our experiences be like if our malls were interactive sculptures instead of architectural structures based on prison architecture? De Saint Phalle’s works embody playfulness. They incorporate hybridization, or the cross-breeding of two or more different forms, animal and human, plant and animal, or human and plant into new forms. She exaggerates female body forms in the creation of either huge or curvy figures that dance on tiny feet and recall the figurative sculptures of Fernando Botero, Elie Nadelman and Gaston Lachaise. We believe her forms; they have vitality and life. She also uses transposition as she relocates these sculptures into garden and park contexts. By creating environments, and other related forms to accompany her sculptures, such as fountains, buildings and paths, she is able to set these sculptures in another reality. Anything and everything is possible in de Saint Phalle’s world. She makes me smile and chuckle as I am taken into something strangely familiar, a place that seems fun and happy. Her works are pure pun, wit and whimsy, and sometimes downright wacky, but also deeply poetic and utterly joyful.

90

Art and Laughter

Red Grooms One American painter/sculptor known for his parodies and satires of American life, and the art world, is Red Grooms. Grooms wants us to believe that the world really is a funny place – and it is. Grooms’ work spans drawing, printmaking and sculpture, and his large installations are called ‘sculpto-pictoramas’. He has created several famous installations over the last four decades: Made in Chicago, Ruckus Manhattan, Cleveland and Philadelphia. These large-scale environments are impressive and only upon a walk through can you fully appreciate his talent for painting large areas with patterns and colour that can be read from afar, as well as painting details that allow for such individualistic and caricaturist faces. These colourful and painterly walk-through environments comprise 2D and 3D painted cut-out figures and papier mâché and epoxy objects that are painted with goopy, shiny surfaces. Using techniques of exaggeration, Grooms parodies urban street life, popular culture and everyday situations that might happen in a city, as he makes his ‘figures look ridiculous and laughable’.21

20. Red Grooms, Pastrami on Rye, 2005.

The Big, the Small and the Funny

91

He has also parodied specific artworks, such as Rembrandt’s Saskia and Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, and created 3D portraits of Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, William De Kooning and David Smith. Using techniques of exaggeration, distortion of scale and perspective, lighting and props, he lightly mocks while also making us smile. It is hard not to smile looking at a Red Grooms’ work. In fact, perhaps that Grooms would be disappointed, or even insulted, if we did not laugh, smile, or chuckle. No cultural or art icon has escaped Grooms, from Charlie Chaplin to Picasso. Grooms is a social realist who has managed to weave together the art of assemblage and social commentary to poke fun at our human foibles. Like some of his art world predecessors, such as Daumier, Grooms mocks with great affection. His work, like other Pop Art, takes its cues from popular culture, but Grooms is far too theatrical, flamboyant and vaudevillesque to remain true to clean and cool surfaces. Drawing on his interest in movies (and Grooms has made a few movies), many of his pictoramas include sound, light and motion. The range of Grooms’ art environment-filled characters reflects the diversity and dynamism of the wide spectrum of culture, and American urban fare. At his best, Grooms is an expressionist, a comic expressionist, whose characters come to life inside his tableaus. We enter his world smiling, and leave smiling, thinking maybe things aren’t so bad after all. There is no doubt that Grooms loves New York City – the workers at lunch, people going shopping and hot dog vendors. His titles from his 2004 series of works reflect the diversity of urban life: Shave and Haircut, Six Dollars, Jack Hammer Blues, Bridges, Lunch and Crunch, and one of my favourites, a deli scene, Pastrami on Rye.22 He even constructed an inflatable life-size New York City bus complete with passengers. His day-to-day scenes, the commotion, the life, the layers of activity, all become one big, huge reason to parody and satire.

Concluding Thoughts The words big and small carry personal and cultural associations and values that determine our experiences with and reactions to contemporary artworks. Yet, contemporary artists are using scale to confound our sensibilities and expectations, and call into question perceptions of space and reality. While we typically may feel small in the presence of large artworks, and feel large in the presence of small artworks, contemporary artists remind us that everything is relative, and that objects may be deceiving, not just in scale, but in weight and volume. Big or small, the works in this chapter embody a mystery that is intrinsically tied to their scale and how the artist has made us to feel like we are in a Lilliputian world, or a voyeur. Both large and small images and the experiencing of large and small objects can be psychologically charging, activate our imaginations, and allow us to step into a space not bound by logic and time. Gaston Bachelard writes that the ‘miniature is the refuge of greatness and immensity is a category of the poetic imagination’.23 Let us not forget that art has the power to

92

Art and Laughter

turn the tables on us. Through big and small, artists invite us to dwell in spaces that we never imagined, and generously invite us into laughter in the most unexpected ways. The artists discussed in Chapter 6 may be the most provocative in this book as they deal with issues of sex and death – the two most taboo subjects in life. Their works, however, speak to their ingenuity, sensitivity and directness, which speaks to the spirit of contemporary art.

Chapter 6

Humour, Sex and Death in Art

A smile is the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities. Herman Melville The subject of sex in art may be cause for embarrassment but it still manages to conjure up a chuckle, even if it is out of nervousness. Freud would say that the relief theory of humour is at work here. Similarly, death, as morbid a subject as it is, has been linked to humour by way of gallows, black or dark humour with images in art that speak to the tragic and the comic. Images related to sex and death in art range from representational to abstract, and explicit to subtle. Some works may address issues of sexuality and/or sexual identity, as opposed to blatant sexual acts or images of dying, which may not trigger responses of laughter. Most of the major artists of our time have addressed sex and death as themes in their work, and often with humour. Yet, art about sex and death with a humorous twist is rarely displayed in art museums or galleries. The subjects of sex and death are considered a cultural taboo, and humour surrounding the topic is likely to be viewed as bawdy, raunchy or just in bad taste. Art museums are still the bastions of respectability and artistic legitimacy, so they claim, and it is acceptable for art to challenge us intellectually, emotionally, aesthetically, but not libidinally. The lack of public exposure to erotic art, or art that contains sex or sexuality as a subject, remains in part due to the reluctance of art museum curators and trustees who may fear a public, political and economic backlash and reprisals that could result in a loss of funding and patronage. In spite of the scarcity of such images in public view, they remain even more enigmatic, alluring and dangerous; there is something appealing, naughty and paradoxical about seeing images related to sex and death in places of respectability and this brings out

94

Art and Laughter

the humour. The works by contemporary artists who address the sex act, sexuality, sexual identity and/or death in their works will be discussed in this chapter. These artists include Gary Baseman, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Joe Coleman, Paul McCarthy, Jeff Koons, Charles Krafft, Sarah Lucas, Russel Semerau, Julia Kunin, and Richard Prince. All of these artists’ works serve to shock us out of our complacent relationships with our own sexuality and mortality, and at the same time invite us into laughter by making our most private thoughts surface. First to death, and while it may seem like ‘the end’, artists resist it with humour.

Death and Humour in Art Death and humour have been bedfellows for a long time dating back to the humorous anthropomorphic Egyptian funerary jars and caricature-like drawings in the Book of the Dead, to the smiling sugar skulls of the Mexican ‘Day of the Dead’, José Guadalupe Posada’s dancing skeleton figures and medieval architectural gargoyles. Gustav Klimt and others have also explored illness, aging and related death themes in art, which enables us to confront our mortality. Let us not forget gargoyles or sculptures that were carved at the top of cathedrals by masons to ward off evil spirits with buffoonery. In their own right these comic sculptures represent gothic humour, or the humour related to medieval ideas and customs.1 Yet, the subject of death in art that is treated by the hand of the comic allows us to look our mortal fate squarely in the face while mocking it. The comic imagination that finds its way into crime humour, as in jokes about disaster and death, and is also known as black or macabre humour, serves a huge social service, that is, to relieve the anxieties and fears of the masses. Nilsen and Nilsen write: ‘Black humor is nevertheless consoling because of the way that it demonstrates that in spite of bewilderment, death, and chaos, people can laugh.’2 Pop Surrealist artists, such as Gary Baseman, create paintings that are chock full of goofy faces, single objects and macabre, cartoon-like characters. He relies on a heavy dosage of skulls and walking and dancing skeletons in his works, like other contemporary artists such as Vik Muniz, who uses the skull in light-hearted ways, such as transforming it with a rubber clown nose. In Gary Baseman’s The Dance (2002), a small oil painting, a masked grey figure dances with a smiling grey skeleton as pink and red, triple-headed insects buzz about them, and a flying black cat looms overhead against a sunshine-coloured patterned background. His paintings are stage-like and resemble a Halloween play put on by the neighbourhood kids. It makes perfect sense that he collects Halloween costumes and likes ‘Day of the Dead’ art.3 The combination of Baseman’s humour and death imagery may seem a bit mild compared with the work of another Pop Surrealist artist, Joe Coleman. Coleman was arrested in 1989 for his performance as Dr Momboozoo, in which he blows up explosives that are attached to his body. Part of his show also involved eating something alive,

Humour, Sex and Death in Art

95

akin to carnival acts.4 The carnival quality of his acts relate to another contemporary artist, Paul McCarthy, whose performances evoke both fear and humour as he works with themes of sex, food and art in videos and performances that have spanned more than thirty years. A death of innocence and of any sense of propriety and ‘good taste’ characterize McCarthy’s works.

Paul McCarthy Paul McCarthy has been described as an ‘amalgamated reincarnation of Egon Schiele, George Grosz, Ed Kienholz … and proof that there is a dark side to modernism’,5 and as ‘the antithesis of Jeff Koons [cute and appealing], and like [Bruce] Nauman, ridiculed the formalist purism of East coast avant-garde’.6 Some of his more well-known recent works include Bossy Burger (1991), a video shot on the old Family Affair sitcom set where McCarthy engages in an outrageous display of food with sex. Described as ‘porno/kitsch, farce, burlesque, psychodrama cooking show’,7 Paul McCarthy’s Bossy Burger explores food as a fetish and the darker side of the human psyche, and probably stands alone as one of the more violent, sardonic videos in art history. In another video performance, Painter (1995), McCarthy assumes the role of the clown as he dresses in bulbous nose and wig as he parodies Abstract Expressionist painters. Using tubes of paint labelled ‘Shit’, McCarthy proceeds to smear this paint all over. Other characters appear in this video, the art collector and art critic, who are crudely mocked by McCarthy. This video builds on Penis Brush Painting, a 1974 video where he uses his penis as a paintbrush. The artist as clown is clearly articulated in his Painter video and elements of the carnival, the grotesque and horror house permeate his works. McCarthy parodies, satires and mocks with razor-sharp wit, and in Freudian terms McCarthy releases repressed aggression through humour, although crude and perhaps disconcerting. Yet, it is the distance created through the act of creating the performance where the darkness can come to light in a zone of safety for both performer and audience. The audience may laugh out of sheer amazement, shock and embarrassment at the display of such vulgarity and lack of ‘good taste’ expected from art. They may also laugh because they feel superior to witnessing such pathetic, pathological behaviour, or they may laugh because all three are reasons to release the tension experienced when viewing McCarthy’s works. McCarthy’s works are a good example of Morreall’s theory of laughter;8 that we may experience incongruities and laugh from viewing McCarthy’s work, but we may not, depending on the viewer, of course, experience pleasure. McCarthy’s works developed in the context of the US West Coast and the Pop Surrealist movement. This movement has been characterized by artists who began as illustrators and animators and whose works bear a similar kind of zany behaviour, depictions of bodily mutations, ‘bad boy/bad girl’ behaviour and attitude, vulgarity, macabre and gross-out humour. Animations, such as The Ren and Stimpy Show and

96

Art and Laughter

The Simpsons typify the aggressive humour and outrageousness that characterized the 1990s. McCarthy is crude and right in our faces with humour that relates to the Bakhtin theory of grotesque that allows us to laugh in the face of destruction.9 Like McCarthy, artist Charles Krafft, another Pop Surrealist artist, addresses death and defiles our sense of good taste through the use of kitsch that is merged with a sardonic humour.

Charles Krafft Charles Krafft, based in Washington, has created a series of ceramic works that merge kitsch, death and humour. His 2002 hand-painted ceramic porcelain bottles constitute a set of canister-like vessels, each of which are labelled with names of diseases and global health threats, such as Ebola, Small Pox, Anthrax and Botulism. The series, appropriately called Biological Warfare Canister Grenades, is a highly satirical and gallows humour work that calls attention to the growing global concern with biological warfare. The porcelain canisters have hand-painted images and lettering in blue glaze and are reminiscent of the famous ‘Delftware’ that is associated with Dutch ceramics. The incongruities created between the highly decorative patterning associated with domestic ceramic ware, the grenade forms and the subject of biological warfare result in a tension that only a laugh can release.10 Another work by Krafft, a ceramic gun and knife decorated with similar hand-painted blue designs set in a beautiful wooden case, is titled Assassin’s Kit (2000). The incongruity of materials associated with guns and weapons, and more likened to materials found in a kitchen are the result of Krafft’s humour-evoking techniques of substitution. This work, as well as his porcelain skateboard with a painted image of Alcatraz prison entitled Alcatraz Island Skateboard (1999), rely on his ability to substitute actual materials for symbolic or metaphorical materials, thereby changing our associations to the objects. His work embodies both satire and gallows humour as he confronts us with our aggressive tendencies that lead to human destruction and death.11 While none of the works by this artist actually presents us with an image of death, death is subtly implied in his works, or understood symbolically through visual symbols and images that have cross-cultural recognition. If death equates with the end of life, then sex and sexuality may be associated with the life affirming, the celebration of the physical, the sensual and the erotic.

The Erotic: Sex and Humour in Art Death and love have been enduring themes in art. Some of the most memorable artworks embrace the theme of love. Art about love typically explores the tenderness between lovers or mothers and their children, as in the works by Mary Cassatt. Images of sex in art, that is, lovers in embraces and poses speak to procreation, pleasure, and that display

Humour, Sex and Death in Art

97

an artist’s rendition of sexual genitalia. These images fall into the category of the erotic, or erotica, with some works more explicit than others. Erotic artworks as discussed in this chapter employ images of or reference to sexual genitalia, which serve as aesthetic objects and as visual metaphors. There is nothing sentimental about these works and these artists explore sex, the act and sexuality, in literal and metaphorical ways. It is important when discussing artworks that employ images of sexuality to make distinctions between the erotic and the pornographic. Art with images that contain sexual content may be also described as erotic, which means love in Greek. Distinct from sexually explicit, or pornographic images, which are meant for arousal, erotic artworks, such as paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints have been created for aesthetic and sensual appreciation and/or contemplation. Western art history is replete with examples of erotic art: for example, Bernini’s Ecstasy of St Theresa (1650) and Courbet’s Origin of the World (1866). Some erotic works may also be instructive, as in the case of Japanese Shunga prints or illustrated marriage manuals created with the intent to educate and socialize. Sexuality in art includes the use of nude or partially clothed human figures in single or group poses. Fleshy figures may be posed in nature, in boudoirs or in salon-type environments complete with subtle lighting, sumptuous fabrics that do more to conceal than reveal the figures, and the act. The aim of erotic work is to entice and seduce the viewer through fleshy and painterly brushstrokes, finely chiselled marble, realistic drawing, or carefully orchestrated photographs. Sexuality in art may also be abstracted works that refer to body parts and recall natural and organic forms, and this can be seen in the work of Sarah Lucas. Erotic art is a multicultural affair with examples from India, Peru, Africa, Mexico, the Philippines, Haiti, Indonesia and the Graeco-Roman world in works that date back over 2000 years. Consider the ceramics of the Mochica, from an area of northern Peru, where the facial expressions on the vessels match a level of ecstasy and enjoyment due to grossly exaggerated sexual organs that sometimes function as drinking or pouring spouts. Erotic art in Japan is primarily graphic in the form of prints and the most well-known created by a school of artists known as ‘Ukioy-e’ in the thirteenth century. Interior scenes are theatrical, with staged figures and props, provided both instruction in sexual techniques and aesthetic pleasure in the beautiful renditions of line and patterns. Humour in Japanese prints may be viewed as bawdry, and with no indication that the Japanese are solemn about sex. It is in the juxtaposition of careful and meticulous drawing and printmaking combined with amorous fantasy and games where the comic joins the erotic. Historical examples of erotic art carry interpretations of mythical fables, religious lore and cosmic theology that are depicted in paintings and on everyday objects. The depiction of gods, goddesses and heroines in scenes of divine love offer humans an understanding of relationships, love, and union through allegory. Similar religious and mythological images may be found in Western art, in Michelangelo’s erotic icon, David,

98

Art and Laughter

the numerous interpretations of Leda and the Swan, and the erotic frescoes in Pompeii, and Greek and Etruscan vase paintings. From modern art to contemporary art, all the major artists have dabbled in the erotic with Picasso particularly well known for his erotic drawings and prints. For centuries artists have created works about love and women as objects of fascination, beauty and desire, and while these works may be described beautiful, sensual, intimate and sultry, not all erotic works may be viewed as humorous. Contrary to what is typically on display in art museums, in January 2004, ARTnews dedicated the entire journal to sex in art,12 both historical and contemporary, suggesting that artists are creating more images with sexually explicit images, that sexual content has broadened to include not just female nudes, but male nudes, and that sex does sell. Linda Yablonsky in How Far Can You Go?13 writes that sex in art has become fun and male and female sexuality in art matters. Contemporary ceramic art forms, from pottery to pots, cups, vessels, tiles, plates, bowls and sculpture, have enlisted erotic imagery from hand-painted to hand-built. In Sex Pots: Eroticism in Ceramics, author Paul Mathieu14 discusses ceramic works by over 100 artists who unite sexual imagery and postmodern issues, such as politics, feminism, masculine identity issues, social issues, gender issues, consumerism, voyeurism, desire, personal narratives, health, life and death. Many of these artworks are intentionally humorous through titles, the use of anthropomorphic images, appropriation of historical images with contemporary subject matter, and figures in comical, inventive gymnastic positions. Let’s not forget General Idea’s 1984 series of acrylic paintings called Mondo Cane Kama Sutra of flat cut-out silhouettes of poodles in orange and yellow against a black background that were engaged in the act of copulation. Other memorable recent artworks that refer to sex are Jeff Koons’ Made in Heaven Series (1989), a series of lifesize realistic sculptures cast in glass, and porcelain of him and his wife Ilona in a variety of sexual positions. Depending on one’s background and experiences, these kinds of artworks may be shocking, repulsive and not humorous. Not all eroticism in contemporary art is created with the intent to be humorous, nor, in spite of the artist’s intent, perceived as humorous. Many of the works by Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman and Louise Bourgeois, for example, may be interpreted as erotic, mysterious and seductive, but may not evoke smiles or laughter. Some erotic artworks do inspire us to laugh and those are the subjects of this chapter. Several contemporary artists explore eroticism and humour through the incongruities of materials, parody of art historical references, explicit suggestiveness and shock value. Jeff Koons, Sarah Lucas, Russel Semerau, Julia Kunin, Jake and Dinos Chapman, and Richard Prince create works that contain images and/or words that suggest sexual activity, poke fun at social mores, male or female gender and sexual identity, or satirize the commercialization of sex, love and intimacy. Erotic art may range from subtly erotic to highly erotic, and the humour may depend on the viewer’s experience or tolerance

Humour, Sex and Death in Art

99

for the subject, and appreciation of the critique. While erotic art may fulfil aesthetic needs, it also has the power to disrupt the silence around discourse of sex. Such is the case with the work of the artists discussed in this chapter.

Jeff Koons Jeff Koons, in his Made in Heaven billboard (1989), put sex on a platter for the art world in full view. In Made in Heaven Koons connects art and advertising in his billboard posters. The billboards show the couple ‘not fully engaged in the act, but looking out, making eye contact, while Cicciolina swoons in ecstasy’.15 This is a remarkable piece, really the first of its kind in contemporary art where the act of sex, the mild mocking of life as a movie referenced with his billboard format, and the use of large-scale and pubic formats for private and sexual imagery come together. Koons is not shy nor does he have inhibitions about sex. His group of erotic works produced throughout the 1990s often produced with his then-wife Ilona included the couple posed together in other photographs and for other sculptures demonstrating the kind of sexually intimacy found in soft-porn movies and magazines. Some of his other works are a bit more explicit, and depict Koons with other women. Red Butt (Distance) (1991), is a quite elegant and dazzling silkscreen on canvas by Koons of himself having sex with a woman with long, platinum hair wearing very high, bright red boots, long, bright red gloves, a bright red corset and a tingling tiara of butterflies with a fiery red and black and yellow background. The woman, who is fondling herself, has an expression of ecstasy and the man one of focus.16 Koons has also made sculptures in cast glass that depict himself and Ilona in various sexual positions. All of these works might be described as humorous, but lewd, with Koons often grinning with the kind of look associated with the flourishing of certain vices.17 Some may view his works as erotic or pornographic, depending on one’s background, experiences and/or orientation. Are Koons’ images any lewder than some of the fashion ads we see today in the slick, glossy high-fashion magazines that blur the lines between sex, art and advertising? The smiles of Koons and his women in his erotic photographs and sculptures are those of sweet mirth and paradox. Koons seems to be the instigator of pleasure and the women his recipients. If the nineteenth-century physiognomists who believed that a person’s outward appearance was indicative of their inner character were right, then Jeff Koons is an artist who likes to be exposed, who likes all the exposure that he can get, and who gets pleasure from delivering pleasure. Like Koons, artist Sarah Lucas’ work presents an open display of sexual genitalia and references, but Lucas aims to amuse us with different intent. Koons’ erotic works are about pleasure and seduction that includes the seduction of the viewer, while Lucas is much more interested in the push and pull of sexual relationships and sexual potency. While Koons as the man about the art town is a provocateur, who never really shows us,

100

Art and Laughter

but infers his sexual prowess, Lucas is a bit more crude and raw in the selection of her sculptural materials and images, and this kind of rawness is attributed to satire. Typically satire has been associated with images of sexuality in the media, comics and cartoons and poking fun of men or women about competence, body image or sexual orientation. In visual art, satire can be found in feminist artworks that includes erotic content or images that be used to address sexism and empower women. Humour in feminist artworks created by women is both personal and political and this can be seen in the work of Sarah Lucas as she tackles sexual taboos and the sexual theories of Freud.

Sarah Lucas As a postmodern, feminist artist, Sarah Lucas’ works expand the notion of both art and humour. Sarah Lucas is a British mixed-media sculptor, whose work has gained international attention for creating sculptures out of rather commonplace materials that include second-hand furniture, food and everyday household items that resemble sexual genitalia. Drawing on her influences of Pop art, Joseph Beuys and Art Povera, a movement that exalted the use of everyday, poor, bleak use of materials to create artworks,18 Lucas elevates these materials though their juxtapositions into a humorous gestalt of forms that refer to the female body. Consider the sculpture entitled Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab (1992) – a brown, wooden table becomes a palette for two fried eggs, a kebab and an image of a Magritte painting propped up.19 This painting incorporates images of fried eggs for eyes and is a notable image in Surrealist art. Lucas continues in the tradition of Surrealist artists by incorporating ready-mades and placing them together in strange juxtapositions. She also works in the tradition of painters, such as Arcimboldo, who use fruit and vegetables in their work as metaphors. Matthew Collings, in Sarah Lucas, describes her work as ‘dry, witty, clever and sly’.20 Her casual, but well-intentioned still life on the table, which is also installation, sculpture, portrait and conceptual art, is a witty combination of idea and materials that parodies Magritte’s painting with a twist. Lucas’ take on art history again parodies other artists’ seminal works as seen in her series of toilets. Here she replicates the toilet in the gallery, in the manner of Marcel Duchamp, but by rendering these resin toilets into a series with phallic shapes, the work is pushed into more conceptual and feminist art historical camps. Unlike Sherry Levine, another postmodern artist who replicates works from the past and calls them her own, Lucas pays homage to the past as she adopts stylistic conventions. For example, her table/portrait/sculpture/installation, Nude No. 2, recalls the Pop artist Tom Wesselman, who created nude paintings with similar titles, and other works like Allen Jones’s kneeling nude female sculpture/coffee table.21 Nude No. 2 includes two melons (a pun for breasts?)22 strapped in a man’s tee shirt

Humour, Sex and Death in Art

101

on a table with the melons protruding. A man’s undergarment is wrapped around the tabletop coupled with a wire handle brush that rests on its surface. While almost elegant in the muted tones of the sculpture – white, off-white, brown – the crudeness of the forms sets off a comical reaction confronting the viewer with the absurdity of these forms as well as the discomfort of being strapped down on a table. Could this be a metaphor for some gynaecological nightmare? Like other feminist artists, Lucas’ ‘portraits’, in the most generous sense, confront the absurdity and preposterousness of being female in a society that tries at every bend and turn to suppress and ‘strap’ women down, to subjugate them and to silence them. Au Naturel (1994)23 is Sarah Lucas’ sculptural installation of a mattress propped up against a wall. To one side is an empty bucket on its side, and two inflatable breasts lodged into the mattress, and on the other side two oranges and a black vertical form are lodged in between the oranges with overt phallic references. This abstract portrait of perhaps two lovers, or strangers, not yet entwined, poses questions on what is ‘natural’ or even accepted practice for sexuality. Lucas’ work continues with her highly sexual content referring to male and female genitalia. In her exhibition Beyond the Pleasure Principle (2000) at London’s Freud Museum,24 she uses chairs and clothing, and intimate undergarments to create ‘portraits’ that defy stereotypes as to how males and females should interact, express sexuality, and in the process defies what constitutes ‘art’. Yet, these portraits are headless; they are headless women and men who are defined by their sexual organs. Her figures in chairs, for example, are created with found objects or food, which become the organs and are placed in provocative ways. Her sculptural installation Hysterical Attacks, of limpish stuffed pantyhose sculptural forms on chairs, is satirical, poignant, disturbing, tragic and comic.25 All the works in Pleasure Principle are sex related and ‘talk back’ to Freud and his pleasure principles with Lucas’ own pleasure principles. The fact that her sculptures are headless with expressive genitalia and gaping vaginas that resemble mouths, speak to the power of libidinal forces. Yet, in some ways, this is a disturbing look at sexism, and how women are still viewed as sex objects and analysed by the media in terms of their ‘parts’. The incongruity of her raw, bawdy and headless figurative sculptures in the context of Freud’s very dark, mahogany furniture and classical art is another level of humour at work. The fact that Freud’s work is all about intellectual and theoretical thinking about sex, Lucas’ headless women and other Bunnies with legs graphically spread wide open is a satire on pleasing femininity and a rebellion against compliance and the media’s view of what is sexy. The parody of other artworks is evident in Lucas’ work Woman in Tub (2000), which is a play on Jeff Koons’ Woman in a Tub (1999).26 Unlike Koons’ work, which is a highly realistic rendering in porcelain of a woman in a tub, mouth gaping, and head cut off above her mouth, Lucas’ ‘woman’ constitutes a personage with pair of actual fried eggs

102

Art and Laughter

suspended on a clothes hangar to serve as breasts, and a pair of nylon dangling pantyhose to serve as legs.27 Her personage is suspended from the ceiling into an empty used bathtub where Lucas has substituted the tap for a large, phallic-shaped metal form. In contrast, Koons’ figure sits in the tub looking down at a blue, phallic-shaped snorkel.28 Lucas’ art exudes a raw and bawdy kind of humour. Her works both amuse and disarm, which is a really fine line to walk. At the same time, the work has rudeness with a cavalier defiance of acceptable notions of female roles and concepts of beauty. Lucas writes: ‘I like my things to be accessible and slightly irreverent at the same time. The “is it art?” [question] is a lynchpin of the humour in my work generally.’29 Sarah Lucas’ work definitely raises more questions than answers.

Russel Semerau Russel Semerau is an American artist who has been working with the theme of erotica for over twenty years. Working in a folksy, crude style, he creates painted wooden sculptures and movable toys of nude couples, and animals, in varying sexual positions that are small scale, with some being no larger than one-foot high. Some have painted faces and some couples are multicultural. This results in viewers as voyeurs to the fun and private playmaking that Semerau creates. Semerau writes: ‘They are intended for adults, as toys that help us trigger the imagination and make believe.’30 For Semerau, the make-believe starts with drawings, or ‘mechanical wish drawings with broadly defined basic profiles’.31 This process enables the artist to work out the movement component so that all the parts can move in synchronistic harmony. The drawings are then transferred to wood where holes are drilled for dowels that connect the figures. Using a combination of scrap and soft woods, he cuts the figures and other parts using a jigsaw and templates. He then assembles the parts, sands, paints and decorates them using cheap enamel paints. In Sunday Morning (1993), two labradors rest on top of a platform engaged in sexual activity in front of a bush while the female holds a bone in her mouth. What is interesting and humorous about this piece is that when looked at from the back, the dogs can hardly be seen beyond the bush. Semerau notes: ‘Perhaps this view is one for the kids.’ Another level of humour that cannot be appreciated in looking at a 2D reproduction is the kinetic element to his work. When the work is set in motion the static sculptures creak in a rhythmic motion. Are these works mere entertainment, instructional, or both? Semerau comments: I use the toy format. I consciously use fun, shiny colors that refer to handmade toys, and strange carnival-like environments and memories of those experiences. I even paint and carve smiles on some of my figures to show that my figures are having fun. I think the crank mechanism that animates my figural sculpture creates a delight because the expectation one has to see

Humour, Sex and Death in Art

103

the figures actually ‘go at it’ and move is completed. Humor can make the unbearable actualization acceptable.32 In Couple (c. 1993), a large white woman rests atop a slender male figure. Her hairdo, a stylized flip, provides a visual zing for this faceless couple who lie on a four-poster bed painted sky blue and lemon yellow. The ‘bed spread’ hides the crude mechanisms that allow for the couple to activate and copulate. Other works of similar design depict couples in different costumes: painted-on T-shirts, black stockings and socks. All waiting for the push and pull by the viewer, these sculptures sit on the floor, rest on the shelf, and if so desired, can be paraded around like a Trojan horse. Semerau acknowledges humorous influences in his work, such as Kobe toys from Japan and other mechanical and viewer-activated touristy-folk toys from Sri Lanka and Mexico. They have a direct visual appeal, are visually and tactically stimulating, and are fun to look at.’ He adds: ‘Humor exercises the brain synapses and keeps the brain pliable by massaging its natural tendencies of habitual concreteness of thought.’33 Some of the titles in relation to the works are also humorous and conjure up many jokes and

21. Russel Semerau, Big Mama, c.1993.

104

Art and Laughter

metaphors about sex: Big Butt, Wonder Bed, Big Mama and In the Bush. Ultimately, Semerau believes that ‘humor must ultimately describe the response of the viewer’.34 This is in keeping with postmodern views of humour and art making. In viewing Semerau’s works, some may find them shocking because of the subject matter and level of engagement of the couples. The element of surprise interests Semerau and he engages us in the tangle of the couple on top of a pull toy and then surprises us with the kinetic element that moves the sculpture into amorous interactivity. Surprise is a key element in the production of humour, and in Semerau’s work, but what Semerau is surprising us with is perhaps our recognition of our own inhibitions and our taking delight in seeing a naughty, taboo act elevated to joy and art.

Julia Kunin Julia Kunin is another American sculptor who fuses the erotic with the humorous. In her sculptures, Kunin draws on influences from Surrealism, in the juxtaposition of incongruous, yet sensuous materials, and from feminist art in the use of organic forms that refer to female genitalia and sexuality. In her sculpture, Red Suede Saddles (1993), she has taken horse saddles and covered them in soft, red suede. Such sensuous saddles defy logic and function as we view them hanging them from the ceiling.35 These abstract, organic-shaped objects with undulating folds and crevices that disappear into shadow flip flop between recognizable saddle forms, female genitalia, and exotic, rare flower specimens. Yet, the irony is that the saddle, which is meant to be mounted, cannot be; it is an object only to desire and to admire. Here, Kunin uses humour-evoking techniques of contradiction to create a very sensuous saddle, and the technique of transportation is used as she installs the saddle in a gallery context that has little association with saddles. Substituting a soft velvety fabric like suede, Kunin transforms the saddles and allows us through free association to create in our minds something surprising and metaphorical. About her saddles, Kunin writes: The saddle series addresses the representation of female sexuality through an examination of desire inherent in the body’s relationship to functional objects. The works speak to the senses and are rich in texture, smell and colour, inviting the viewer to vicariously ride the sculptures themselves. Also evident is the absence and presence of the body. In addition, the works reference a girl’s power when she controls a horse, a being other than herself.36 About the installation of her saddles, Kunin writes: There are six different saddle pieces: Double Split Saddles hangs on the wall, as does Crimson Blossom. Three other pieces, Squid in Love, Red Tandem and an untitled double flower-like piece, rest on the floor or can be placed upon

Humour, Sex and Death in Art

105

a pedestal. The important issue here is the relationship between the piece and the viewer’s body. The first piece, Red Suede Saddles, hangs at horse height, tempting the viewer to participate in the piece and jump on. Here two saddles face each other, implying that the riders will face each other in romance, in a game etc., although they are floating in the air, as the horse’s presence is just implied. The work is completed in the mind of the viewer when he or she imagines someone, or a couple, riding on the piece and imagines the horses (horses being also a symbol of prince charming coming to claim his bride, in a sense, as we might imagine red saddles resting upon a white horse). The work is sensual, humorous and absurd, as the saddles hang from the ceiling as temptations, as potential riders really could not get very far. The temptation is there, however, for romance, performance or farce. In addition, the concept of symmetry (two saddles) standing in for a homosexual subtext is an important part of the piece.37 The historical references for Kunin’s saddle works ‘pay homage to 1970s feminist art, including the work of Hannah Wilke and Judy Chicago. They are a 1990s comment upon the essentialist feminist theory of the 1970s, and as such add a bordello punch and make what was taken very seriously in terms of “female imagery” in the 1970s, into a playful object, such as a sex toy, of the 1990s.’38 About the humorous aspect of her work, Kunin writes: The saddle series addresses female sexuality and sexual identity with a sense of humor through the exaggerated imagery and use of overly and overtly sensual material, red suede, which can be seen as cheap and overly decorative. It is the strategy of communicating a controversial or political idea with humor, that is key here. Perhaps the question is, why is humor important in communicating feminist politics? It makes the politics more palatable, and in addition, allows the artist and the viewer to laugh at themselves, to take themselves less seriously, and enjoy sexuality and lesbian sexuality with pleasure.39 In many of Kunin’s works that include the saddle, she uses the colour red. The blood red of the suede refers to colour of love, romance and passion – blood, skin and sexual desire. Red shoes and hats are also symbols for female wisdom and becoming. The horse, for whom the saddle is made, is a symbol for freedom and appears frequently in the fantasies and drawings of many teenage girls. Horses in films are typically seen on beaches galloping against a sunset, or running on the open range on a cloudless day. Red saddles may not only be a symbol for unbridled passion but a symbolic colour for women who have arrived into their wisdom, and who ride with a joie de vie, but without illusion.

106

Art and Laughter

Jake and Dinos Chapman Jake and Dinos Chapman are fascinated with the horrors or war and deformity. From their small plastic figurines that parody the Goya’s Disasters of War to their life-size sculptures of children, the Chapmans explore moral and ethical questions related to war, technology and genetics. This collaborative artist duo uses mannequins to create life-size installations and groups of figures that bear bodily mutations, and to explore social taboos, such as sex. The Chapmans’ sculptures often produce laughter, an uneasy laughter, supporters would say, but perhaps it is just laughter at these oddly familiar objects.40 Their sculpture, Death I (2003), of a heterosexual couple in gallery spaces may be both shocking and humorous at the same time. This seven-foot-long painted bronze sculpture depicts a couple lying on a two-toned blue air mattress in a joined position, male on top of female, on the gallery floor. The couple has been cast in bronze from plastic, inflated sex dolls and then painted with an overall flesh tone that increases its association with sex dolls. This sculpture was exhibited with another sculpture entitled Sex, which included an assortment of rotting carcasses. The Chapmans worked for Gilbert and George, the British performance art couple before turning to small and large sculptural installations. While their subjects and forms may be repellent in their disfiguration of bodily parts and the realities of physical deformation as a result of war, genetic experimentation or sexual acts, the work Death is particularly and peculiarly humorous within their oeuvre of work. The sex dolls are cast in bronze and set up a humorous incongruity as they replace the cheap, flimsy and impermanent plastic with permanent and expensive bronze. Why didn’t the artists just place the actual dolls on an inflatable mattress in the gallery? Giving permanence and respectability through the use of bronze material with an impermanent form is cause for a chuckle. The second incongruity lies in the titles, Death and Sex, which seem to be intentionally and comically reversed. Could death be playful, arousing, inhibiting, and really be more about sex? Could sex be as rotten and unappealing as rotting carcasses? The Chapmans rely on the humour-evoking techniques of contradiction and substitution of materials to entice humour, or as Sarah Kent writes, ‘flippancy as a method for appropriating subject matter that is just too hard to deal with’.41 Death is not an instructional piece, which many erotic sculptures can be. Gallows humour, or dark humour, relies on morbidity and absurdity, and in the sculpture, Death, we find sex. Sex and death are probably the two most taboo of subjects in Western culture. In the Chapmans’ Death sculpture, cultural taboos smack us in the face. We can laugh because we feel superior, or because we think it is obscene and we are embarrassed. We may laugh to hide our fears of death or sex, or may just take delight in the fact that some artists are confronting the two probably most feared of life experiences – sex and death – in one art piece.

Humour, Sex and Death in Art

107

Richard Prince Richard Prince makes paintings of sex jokes that are typically told in conversation or through the cartoon. The content of these jokes primarily centres on disillusionment and loss of romanticism within long-standing husband and wife relationships. In his series of joke paintings from 2000 to the present, he uses the canvas to display jokes that are painted in capital letters or sometimes hand-drawn at the bottom of the canvas. The jokes in his most recent paintings are typically centred slightly above the middle of the canvas. The placement of the text here serves as a ‘zip across the canvas [and] parodies the Abstract Expressionist vertical drips of paint seen in the monumental works by Barnett Newman’.42 Not all his joke paintings are about sex, but he does have quite a few that are worth exploring. The jokes that he uses appear to be the kind of 1950s or 1960s sex jokes that were told between martinis, or by stand-up comics. These kinds of jokes also appeared in cartoons, and in some of his paintings, it looks like Prince has silkscreened these cartoons right on to his canvases. The text from his sex joke paintings may be explained by a variety of types of humour. Self-deprecating or self-disparaging humour can be found, which is characterized by making the reader or listener feel superior to the comedian or writer. The comedian or writer engages in self put-downs and many American comedians of the 1960s, such as Phyllis Diller, Rodney Dangerfield, Jackie Mason and Joan Rivers engaged in selfdeprecating humour.43 Richard Lewis is an example of a contemporary stand-up comic who uses this kind of humour. One of Prince’s canvases reads: ‘With my wife I got no sex life. She cut me out to once a month but hey I’m lucky. Two guys she knows she cut out completely.’ In the painting entitled Just Married (1990), the text reads: ‘Do you know what it means to come home to a woman who gives you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you’re in the wrong house, that’s what.’ Another joke, in the painting Boyfriend and Girlfriend (1998), reads: ‘My boyfriend just married a girl who is bisexual. He claims that he is going to change her. He did, three years later she’s a lesbian.’44 Prince does other jokes that in the genre of joking can be called paradoxical. Consider this joke in the painting entitled Cannibals and Clowns (2000): ‘Two cannibals were eating a clown when one turned to the other and said does he taste funny to you?’ And this: ‘OK. I never had a penny to my name so I changed my name.’ In these two jokes, the statements seem contradictory, unbelievable or absurd, but in some sense may be true and thus be paradoxical. According to Nilsen and Nilsen, ‘paradoxes highlight the breakdowns in our expectations of a logical universe’,45 and these jokes accomplish this through endings with a twist that defies our expectations. As well as self-deprecating, Prince’s sex jokes also fall into the category of sexual humour and ‘dirty jokes’. Another of Prince’s canvases reads: ‘A guy goes to the psychiatrist wearing saran wrap. The psychiatrist says to the guy, I can clearly see your nuts. See your nuts you nut.’ The title is Nuts (2000). John Bancroft in ‘Sex and

108

Art and Laughter

Humor: A Personal View’ writes: ‘A lot of jokes are by men at the expense of women … many jokes disparage the sexual competence or performance of individuals.’46 In Nuts, there is certainly poking fun at exhibitionism, or the practice of indecent exposure, compounded by the pun of the use of the word ‘nuts’. His other joke about the sex life, or lack thereof, is really about a guy complaining about his wife’s adulterous affairs. Poking fun of his inferior position to her lovers, perhaps because of his sexual incompetence, may make him feel better, and is a masochistic joke because the joker is the butt of the joke. The joke becomes a relief from embarrassment, shame and anger at the wife’s adultery and sexual rejection. Gershon Legman, author of The Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor, a compendium of over two thousand jokes, writes that the dirty joke ‘is an attempt to make rationale something that is irrational’.47 Prince’s works may be also explained by what is revealed by his jokes and his public joke making may be an attempt to reassure himself on the subject of one of our most desperate fears.48 Since the late 1970s, Prince has been working with appropriation, whether of photographs, jokes or images from consumer culture. Associated with other ‘Picture Theorists’, such as Cindy Sherman, Sherry Levine and Barbara Kruger, Prince has appropriated photographs from consumer magazines, photographed photographs and used his ‘rephotographs’ to explore issues of desire, consumption, and masculinity and femininity. In his joke paintings, Prince recycles jokes to explore issues of sex, sexuality, masculinity and femininity while exploring some our deepest and darkest fears – sexual rejection.

Concluding Thoughts The works by the artists in this chapter may be described as defying good taste; that is, if good taste means artworks are aesthetically pleasing, match the sofa and living room colour scheme, and induce pleasantries and light conversation. The artists discussed in this chapter aim to shock through the subject and their representation of the subject of sex, sexuality and death. The exploration of sex and sexuality has been a theme in contemporary art since that 1970s in performance art, but more recent contemporary art has embraced this subject in paintings, sculptures and photography. Guy Trebay, art critic writes: Carolee Schneemann pulled a paper scroll out of her vagina at a performance, and Hannah Wilke adorned her body with sculptural multiples of vulvas cast in hardened chewing gum. A decade later, the performance artist Karen Finley smeared her naked torso with chocolate syrup and publicly performed acts – using a yam – that are not advisable to mention in these pages. For many years, Annie Sprinkle, a sex worker turned artist, gave performances at which she invited members of the audience to examine her cervix through

Humour, Sex and Death in Art

109

a speculum. Vito Acconci, in his legendary Seedbed (1972), secreted himself naked beneath a ramp on the floor of the Sonnabend Gallery in SoHo, muttering obscenities as he … well, never mind. Stunts designed to set artworld sensibilities aquiver are practically a rite of career passage.49 These artworks, as well as artworks that embrace the subject of death, lie in the penumbral zone within the art world; their very subject often results in their marginalization within the discourse of art, and their display to the public. As result, when these kinds of works surface, we are shocked as they confront our fears and deepest emotions. All the artists in this chapter may be described as shockers who remind us that we are sexual beings, always in conflict as Freud would have it between sex (eros) and death (thanatos), and that only through death may we be relieved of our sexual desires. Erotica and death will continue as a vibrant strand within the art world. Chapter 7 explores other important issues in contemporary art, such as desire and consumption, and how we are lured to visual images via cuteness and nostalgia.

Chapter 7

The Desire for and Consumption of Cuteness

Humor puts everything in its place. Arthur Koestler, Act of Creation Desire and consumption represent two major concerns in postmodern art that reflect human activity in the commercialized nations of the world that are connected by advertising, technology, the Internet, credit cards, instant banking and one-stop shopping. Desire is to long for, want, or crave physical or emotional satisfaction. The basic philosophy of consumerism is that we strive to be different, unique and to differentiate ourselves.1 We consume to fulfil our desires to be different, unique and wanted. Consumption is the process of destroying, using up, whether it is goods or services, or natural resources. Shopping, always a pastime of the middle class, has become a major form of entertainment and recreation; teenagers now have credit cards and purchasing power. The strip malls and mega-malls around the world in urban and suburban areas have become tourist destinations, and a testament to the power and attraction of buying ‘stuff’ to meet our needs, desires and fantasies. We have become a culture of desiring desirable goods, services and experiences, and Barbara Kruger’s posters and paintings of the 1980s ‘cross examined our relationships to desire, race, gender, and consumerism’,2 in ways that set the stage for the artists discussed in this chapter. A result of the Industrial Revolution was the production of mass-produced goods for working-class and middle-class consumption. Since that time, advances in manufacturing and printing have resulted in the development of plastics and printing processes that can replicate the illusion of glass, marble and other materials. This is all fuelled (no pun intended) by petroleum and its by-products. Manufacturing has resulted in bringing luxury goods to the masses, all of which are made for desire and consumption. The toy industry and other forms of kitsch production were built on the

112

Art and Laughter

premise of bringing cuteness to the masses as a marketing strategy for primarily the working class to bring pleasure, happiness and smiles into their lives. Many a novelty, such as dolls, games, cards and pranks, are created for pure amusement, and a defining characteristic of these items is cuteness. Cute images or objects may be described as endearing, ‘melancholic, adorable, yet, in the case of toys or dolls, they may be maimed or deformed’.3 These characteristics can be seen in toys, dolls and cartoons characters. No facet of visual culture that includes art as well as advertising has escaped the cute factor. Examples of cuteness are the dopey-eyed animals with high pitched voices, talking horses, images of smiling, happy bunnies, dogs and ponies typically found on greeting cards and calendars, ‘droopy eyed puppies, kitty cats in raincoats all of which are the embodiment of innocence’.4 In Happy Kitty Bunny Pony: A Saccharine Mouthful of Super Cute,5 Nelson discusses how images of the kitty, bunny and pony, as well as the duck, lamb, pig, squirrel, deer and bear have permeated pop culture since the late 1940s in fabric and wallpaper design, cards and calendars, paint by numbers, inflatable and stuffed toys, and chocolate. Later examples can be found in adult collectables, such as ‘Precious Moments’, which are characterized as sweet, lovable, adorable and fuzzy; they smile and grin at us, and engage in many human-like activities. We desire these images and objects because they are cute, and they make us feel good. While these images may be over the top with their oversized heads, tiny bodies and exaggerated features, we desire them and they desire us. We feel sorry for them because they are slightly deformed, and we want to care for them and protect them. As Daniel Harris points out: ‘The element of grotesqueness in cuteness is deliberate … the grotesque is cute because it is pitiable, and pity is the emotion of this seductive and manipulative aesthetic.’6 The images, toys and novelty items bearing the brightly coloured hair, big heads, sad eyes, short limbs or huge bellies seduce us. We begin to collect them, and before you know it, our lives are filled with cuteness. Contemporary artists rely on the aesthetic of cuteness to lure viewers, in particular, in the works by William Wegman and Jeff Koons. This may help explain why the images by these artists have such tremendous popularity and acceptance with mass audiences, as well as the critics. It may also help to explain why people are drawn to images of birds and other cute animals. Wegman relies on anthropomorphism in making his dogs appear human-like to gain attention and empathy through their fashions and poses while Koons uses the scale and cuteness of puppies to draw us in. The relationships between cute and funny will be addressed with these two artists’ works, and how these artists exploit cuteness through humour-evoking techniques. Many contemporary artists have begun to address issues of desire and consumption as it relates to shopping and culture. Sylvie Fleury addresses status and branding in our culture as part of the lure of consuming in her installations that are reminiscent of retail store set design. Cary Leibowitz and Isabel Samaras both poke fun at nostalgic popular and television images, yet at the same time, recycle these images in their work to re-

The Desire for and Consumption of Cuteness

113

contextualize the past and to explore their own personal, social and sexual identities through characters and objects of their childhood and adolescence. Addressing issues of consumption, re-consumption and nostalgia combined with a bit of a satiric bite and an anti-cute aesthetic, they detach from notions of preciousness, infantilism and fuzziness that are found in the cute. Fleury engages us in parody of commercial retail environments and our retail experiences, and irony, where labels on bags represent not only a shopping experience, but also one’s identity and personal iconography.

Sylvie Fleury In shopping and retail spaces, words are painted on shop walls to lure us in to consuming; we begin to desire through the text that surrounds a product. Sylvie Fleury is an artist who creates installations that replicate scenes from everyday shopping experiences, blurring the line between art and fashion. Drawing on the traditions of Pop Art, where art as a commodity and product became a focus, Fleury creates installations that simulate retail-shopping spaces. Fleury’s installations pay homage to Claus Oldenburg who created Bedroom Ensemble (1968), a complete interior of a bedroom with bed, dresser, lamps and fake fur covers. Similarly, Fleury has created Untitled (1992),7 which is comprised of a large 8 x 10-ft pink rug that is placed in a gallery. On this rug, she displays a bench and shopping bags filled with clothing that has references to art history. This life-sized installation, recalling a TV set, could be someone’s living room right after they have returned home after a ‘shop till you drop’ day, though the items in the bags may be hidden from the viewer, at least in the photograph version of this piece. Fleury works with notions of revealing/concealing, and letting the logos and brands do the talking. The designer label and its status as a symbol of material success, is something that interests Fleury, and many others in our culture today. There are even people who collect shopping bags with designer labels and use them in their shopping excursions to carry purchases from other stores. In one gallery installation, she painted the word ‘EGOISTE’, the name of a Chanel cologne for men, on the wall. The signage is something that may appear in an highclass department store to advertise a new line, or welcome shoppers to a new section of the store. Weakening the line between museum space and retail space is relevant today. So many people engage in shopping for aesthetic pleasure: the feel of fabrics, the delight of colours. Similarly, so much of a museum experience today is both an aesthetic experience courtesy of corporate and retail sponsorship: galleries named after local, regional or international stores and corporations. Fleury acknowledges her influences in art and fashion and believes that reconceptualizing fashion in art contexts gives it new meanings. In one piece, she altered a women’s high-heeled shoe with a Mondrian pattern and placed it atop a Carl Andre minimal sculpture, which, apparently, Mr Andre was not pleased about. Fleury

114

Art and Laughter

has also placed classic American cars painted in cosmetic tints and shades in galleries as art objects.8 In her installations, Fleury parodies contemporary shopping experiences. She appropriates images and objects associated with shopping, calling our attention to issues of excess, desire, femininity and status with the flair of a set designer, and the knowledge of an experienced shopper. Like Wegman, she uses props to bring realism to her subject, but in the case of Wegman, his ‘props’ are very much alive, and panting under all that costuming.

William Wegman Photographer William Wegman has used his weimaraners – Man Ray, Fay and their pups – as subjects for over two decades. Wegman poses the dogs in various settings often with objects for human use and consumption resulting in expressive, poetic and funny images that cause you to look at dogs, products and fashion in a new way. In a recent exhibit of Wegman’s photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, he included large-format Polaroid portraits of his dogs dressed in contemporary designer fashions. The deadpan humour of his photographs is a result of his subjects as they assume human qualities and characteristics. His portraits of his dogs grace books, calendars, in what seems to be a multimilliondollar industry. Paradoxical, cute and mildly grotesque in the way that he contorts the dogs to fit in clothing and a variety of positions, they are manipulated, but never in an alarming way, to make the viewer feel pain for the animals. His dogs are loyal and willing subjects. Wegman creates what he calls ‘anthropomorphic verticals’;9 his dogs are seated on stools while assistants’ arms and legs peer out and become added appendages. The dogs and the assistants are then concealed with props and clothing to created these elegant, tall dog/beings. Fay, Wegman’s second dog after Man Ray died, had three pups: Chundo, Batttina and Crooky. Wegman notes: ‘Chundo is Esquire … Crooky is sportswear. The weimaraners are perfect fashion models. Their elegant slinky forms are covered in grey, and everyone knows that grey goes with everything.’10 Wegman’s photographs also recall the saying by Charlie Chaplin: ‘In the end, everything is a gag.’ His photographs are gags in the sense that they are set up for the laugh. Employing body humour,11 Wegman contorts the bodies of his dogs while making use of their face and eyes. Deformed bodies have long been associated with humour dating back to the Middle Ages with dwarfs and clowns. The dogs, even when standing, take on the size of a short person or a dwarf, and in this sense, they keep good company with other short comedians, such as Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Danny DeVito. Wegman creates portraits that are parodies of contemporary urban chic, jet set life, and art. In 1970, Wegman posed Man Ray with a guitar next to a reproduction

The Desire for and Consumption of Cuteness

115

of Picasso’s Blue Guitar painting. He has also created parodies of paintings, such as Arcimboldo (1994). Fay wears a red felt hat that is covered with bulging, novelty, plastic fruits and vegetables that recall Arcimboldo’s series of portraits comprised of fruit and vegetable heads. In Glamour Puss (1999), Fay is posed in a pair of Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses with a big blond wig. Posed against a hot pink backdrop, she is all glamour and a glamour puss; she knows she is his #1 fashion dog.12 His most recent photographs of Fay and her pups reflect a simplicity, and a return to hats made of leaves and the dogs placed in front of painted backdrops to resemble nature.13 Because so many of Wegman’s photographs are commercial – many of his clients are high fashion, shoe and perfume companies – his photographs are created with the intent to create desire. To sum up Wegman’s oeuvre of work over the last thirty years, Edward Leffingwell, art critic, writes: William Wegman has long and patiently drawn deep from the shallow end of the reservoir of silly ideas … studiedly deadpan, one-liner pencil drawings from the early 1970s, a suite of witty postcard drawings from the past few years and gaga videos. Taken together, the sum remained charged with Wegman’s unflappable flair for the distinctly Dada.14 Art critic Donald Kuspit comments on Wegman’s ability to create irony: ‘Wegman treats his dogs like human beings, he creates an ironic reversal … yet they remain comically honest’ in their dog-ness.15 Cary Liebowitz shares a love for Dada and like Wegman he combines props as a means to comic effect. His intent to incite laughter, however, relies not on the glorification of the pun, or desire to substitute animals for humans. Liebowitz is very intent on a satirical, mocking of kitsch and the residue of capitalism using a self-depreciating humour akin to vaudeville schtick.

Cary Leibowitz (Candyass) This contemporary artist creates work using everyday castaway objects from contemporary pop culture to poke fun at art and collecting art. He is known for his installations where he accumulates such objects and displays them as Accumulated Crap for Collectors, an installation shown at the Jewish Museum in New York, entitled Too Jewish? Challenging Traditional Identities.16 In an exhibit entitled The Multiples of Cary Leibowitz (2003), Candyass and the Pathetic Aesthetic includes Don’t Steal My Car Stereo, I’m Queer, a car windscreen. He is known for his self-loathing, self-deprecating humour, and as a self-doubter who employs techniques of satire to expose his critique of the pretentious commercial art world. In his show, Leibowitz makes his work in the form of schlock and tacky knick-knacks. He inscribes mundane objects such as teddy bears, Frisbees,

116

Art and Laughter

baseball bats, pennants, rain ponchos, shopping bags, buttons, trashcans, wallpaper, coffee mugs and T-shirts with his expressions of doubt and self-loathing. The purpose of self-disparaging or self-deprecating humour is to break the ice; many stage comedians are known for this, such as Billy Crystal and Rodney Dangerfield. This kind of humour often surprises the viewer or listener, leaving them in a position of feeling superior.17 His open references to being queer as part of his work, and his selfdeprecating humour surrounding it, has been made possible by gay activism and the increasing number of gay comedians who have worked to create a culture of openness. His works are really biting satires, and at the same time parody minimalist art through techniques of repetition, appropriation and transposition – taking objects and relocating them into unfamiliar contexts. Cary Liebowitz may be the ‘Gilligan’ of contemporary art with his castaway objects. Like other artists who use second-hand objects and junk, Liebowitz exploits the cute and demonizes it at the same time, leaving the sentimentality in nostalgic and vintage ‘schlock’ for others to appreciate.

Jeff Koons’ Puppy Jeff Koons is probably one of the most talked about and richest artists living today. Perhaps his interest in consumerism as a subject for art grew out of his experiences as a stockbroker in the 1980s, and his work is a hybrid of glamour, art, technology, advertising and kitsch. I Michael Danoff writes: ‘Since 1979, Koons has been making art that provokes thought … his work addresses major social issues, such as class roles and consumerism.’18 Easy Fun, his 1990s series of large-format paintings of collaged images from advertising and fashion magazines, looks at how fashion and glamour photography lure us into ‘easy fun’, through seductive colour, surfaces, exposed flesh and alluring poses. His sensationalist sculptures and billboards from the late 1980s and early 1990s of his then-girlfriend, Ilona Staller (Cicciolina), from his Made in Heaven series, and sculpture of Michael Jackson with a monkey, Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988), explore the subject of media icons, and our fascination with them. Koons has created sculptures using basketballs suspended in aquarium tanks, as in One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (1986), and placed new vacuum cleaners in art museums as in New Hoover Deluxe Shampoo Polishers (1980/86). Koons writes that ‘I don’t want to make consumer icons, but decode why and how consumer icons are glorified’.19 Like other appropriation artists, Koons continues in this tradition of bringing images and objects into the art gallery and museum, images the artist did not make, but that are part of our consumer consciousness. Consumption of goods and merchandise is at an all-time high in the culture of industrialized nations, and many of Koons’ works mirror our obsessive consumption of ‘the new’. We buy more gadgets than ever before,

The Desire for and Consumption of Cuteness

117

and we have to ask ourselves: Are we better off for having a shampoo polisher? Are we happier, healthier, and more secure? Is our world all the better for it? The placing of consumer goods in an art gallery also breaks down divisions between high art and design. Many examples of product design, small appliances and furniture design are in art museum collections and are recognized for their aesthetic, functional and historical value. The basketball as a sports icon certainly begs the question why it is that our culture glorifies sports and sports figures? Cute animals have not escaped Koons as subject matter; he has created rabbits, bears, dogs, pigs and birds: Stainless Steel Rabbit (1986), Bobtail (1991), Westhighland Terriers (1991), Bear and Policeman (1988), Pink Panther (1988) and Stacked (1988). What is fascinating about his oeuvre of animal sculptures, as well as his other sculptures of pop culture images, is that, except for the stainless steel rabbit, they tend to be very large, colourful, realistically painted, and very cute. Critic Bernard Cooper writes, citing cultural critic Daniel Harris and his essay on the aesthetics of consumerism: Cuteness is not an aesthetic in the ordinary sense of the word and must by no means be mistaken for the physically appealing, the attractive. In fact, it is closely linked to the grotesque, the malformed. The grotesque is cute because the grotesque is pitiable, and pity is the primary emotion of this seductive and manipulative aesthetic. Koons knows that cuteness has the power to pique, especially when translated into the heroic scale, costly materials, and exorbitant price tags associated with high art.20 In a recent show at Sonnabend, he continues this with ‘smirking lobsters, multicolored caterpillars, and spotted dogs … pursuing the saccharine to the point of nausea’.21 The often saccharine, yet saturated and glossy colour that Koons uses in his sculptures – pinks, yellows, blues and greens – give the sculptures that candy-coated look that makes them luscious, attractive, yet a bit over the top. Koons’ work is about contrasts and absurdities: his juxtapositions of pop colours, expensive and artful materials such as glass, porcelain and stainless steel with kitsch subject matter. This is the raison d’être for irony. In his sculpture Stacked (1988), a chirping bird rests on a puppy’s bag that rests on a beagle that rests on a goat on top of a sitting, grinning pig. While this may speak to the interdependency of all of us on the food chain, on a lighter note, the sculpture is a visual display of folly and impossible combinations. In Koons’ Westhighland Terriers (1991), a pair of terrier pups stands side by side as if they are sewn together at the hips. In this work, Koons sets the stage for the creation of Puppy, an enormous public art sculpture in Manhattan. Puppy is ‘the cutest most purely pleasurable public sculpture. It wows people … it’s classic, utopian, sincere, and silly,’ says critic Jerry Saltz.22 Puppy is a 43-ft high, 44-ton stainless steel sculpture of a

118

Art and Laughter

West Highland Terrier. The sculpture is covered in a variety of flowering plants and is located in front of the Rockefeller Center, NYC. Koons also made smaller versions of the Terrier, Puppy, in white ceramic about two feet high, which also functions as a vase. Puppy is a cute, loveable and happy sculpture. The scale and placement of the sculpture create a paradox. Katharina Fritsch, a contemporary of Koons, recycles motifs from consumer culture and creates sculptures, such as Pudel (Poodle) 1995, a black poodle, which is featureless and life-size, and not very cute. Perhaps Puppy, in its grandness, colour and lightness, is the sculpture that represents a kinder and gentler nation.

22. Jeff Koons, Puppy Vase, 1998.

Birds Birds in art were certainly made notorious by James Audubon in his Birds of America print series. Since that time, many contemporary artists have used bird imagery, and some with humorous intent. As birds often take on human characteristics, artists have used bird imagery in satire. Meyer Vaisman in the early 1990s chose the turkey to play the fool in explorations of themes of vanity, excess and indulgence. He ‘put an ironic spin on the phrase “turkey dressing” by dressing up stuffed turkeys in wild and crazy costumes made from snakeskin, silk, men’s underwear to cover and mask a fowl’s body, transforming the bird into a vividly, tactile, sensual being’.23 Another artist who embraces satire through bird imagery is Laurie Hogin, who ‘exaggerates the fanciful qualities of exotic plants and animals to create hybrids’.24 Similar to William Wegman, contemporary artist Andrew Brandou, an LA-based artist, poses dogs and birds in nature settings with outrageous costumes and creates watercolour paintings that he signs ‘After Audubon’. In his ‘After Audubon’ series, he parodies the infamous prints by creating detailed animal renderings in landscapes with castles and parks with incongruous combinations of animals that are majestic, whimsical and outrageous to call our attention to issues of extinction and the consumption of such rare and artful birds for decoration, status and feathers. The ‘satirical lampooning of bird watching would not be complete without some

The Desire for and Consumption of Cuteness

119

reference to Audubon’; Carlee Fernandez’s sculptural parodies of Audubon’s bird illustrations that become wall assemblages, and John Salvest’s arrangement of stuffed sparrows on cable wire spell out the word ‘FLY’ are more examples of how contemporary artists are employing the bird to acknowledge the past, as well as issues of desire and consumption of these species.25

Isabel Samaras Drawing from American television sitcoms of the 1960s, such as The Munsters and I Dream of Genie, Isabel Samaras takes characters from these shows and places them in her own narrative portraits and narratives. Juxtaposing figures and objects that parody and mildly mock the television sitcom drama, Samaras merges sitcom culture with art. In Wish (2003), she paints Genie in a pose, in a very Middle Eastern decor and with her back turned toward the viewer; she smiles wider than Courbet’s Odalisque.26 Her paintings are very small, 12 x 16 inches, and about the size of a 1960s television screen. To further exaggerate the parody of these television sitcoms, she paints these narratives on vintage TV trays of the kind that frozen TV dinner’s were eaten from. Her painting style is realistic and meticulous and reminiscent of the Old Masters and fleshy nudes in exotic interiors, surrounded by opulent and luscious fabrics. Home Sweet Home (2003)27 is another small painting that packs a parody to Mona Lisa and the television sitcom, Green Acres, starring Eva Gabor.28 In Home Sweet Home, Eva Gabor is set in a shallow interior space, a veranda, backed by a red velvet curtain that is pulled back to reveal a pastoral landscape. Eva, decked out in a white formal gown, holds a pink pig. Another sitcom is immortalized in Samaras’ TV tray canvas: Gilligan’s Island. Here a main character, Ginger, is placed in the figure position in the Birth of Venus composition. Ginger becomes Venus, the goddess of love. In the television show, Ginger was the Venus of the island, and she became a cult figure for thousands of fans of the show. In a typical, Pop Surrealist fashion, Samaras explores humour through parody and satire, and pulls her sources from horror movies, television imagery and entertainment news. Her TV tray paintings of Tiny Bubbles, Michael Jackson with a Chimp, and Mia Farrow with Frank (Frankenstein, not Frank Sinatra) are a pastiche of visual culture and art historical references that cause the contradictions and incongruities necessary for humour and laughter.29

Concluding Thoughts As a culture, we are hungry for the cute – just look around in art museums, galleries, in shopping malls and card shops. This is what we desire and consume; the market feeds our wishes. Many contemporary artists rely on cuteness and nostalgia, sometimes

120

Art and Laughter

turning to parody, to lure us in to more pressing matters of consumerism, desire, vices and virtues, beauty and sexuality. The abundance of objects that speak to cuteness, located in our visual culture landscape, has provided contemporary artists with a plethora of subjects to draw upon. There is a social function to viewing the cute and nostalgic; we can be diverted to something more pleasant, kinder, gentler and more hopeful, while distancing our melancholic tendencies. While cute may be only a temporary anaesthetic until we get to the next bit of cuteness, it is probably the closest thing to entertainment in art. Performance artists also rely on theories of cuteness, in their selection of costuming and props, how they construct language, and parody the everyday experience. Chapter 8 explores performance as a path for individual and collective laughter in public spectacle.

Chapter 8

The Public Spectacle Performance Art and Laughter

Comedy is a sane type of madness. Henri Bergson The public spectacle can be witnessed in the blurring of the line between public and private worlds as television talk shows and tabloids become public confessionals for private matters. Other kinds of public spectacles that rely on the visual and are more conducive to laughter include the circus and parade. In these spectacles, bodies are adorned, perhaps even distorted and masked, through costuming and cosmetics. Other spectacles, such as weddings, funerals and graduation ceremonies, may be cause to display symbols of wealth and status (gold, flowers and mirrors), but may not arouse our laughter. The spectacle is a public display of glamour and projected fantasy into our everyday life that in comparison seems pretty dull. The theatre and opera as sites for the spectacle combine the visual and the spoken language and operate to temporarily displace us and take us into the world of the poets. All public spectacles rely on exaggeration, excess, contradiction, distortion and the absurd. The humorous spectacles found in comedy, sitcoms or the circus glorify the farcical side of life and, in doing so, exploit our human penchant for laughing. Public spectacles today provide for a collective experience for group laughter that has potential for social catharsis. In addition, they provide a link to the ancient spectacle, the parade, and a celebration of victory in battle or in sports. The public spectacle in the art world plays out in museum and gallery openings, blockbuster shows, and in performance art, a twentieth-century art form that takes its cues from the parade. Contemporary artists use a wide variety of unconventional materials and methods of exhibiting, including installation and performance art. Artists today are no longer tied to displaying their work in galleries or museums, exhibiting on the white cube

122

Art and Laughter

pedestal, or using solely art materials in their works. Graffiti art by Keith Haring and others brought art to the streets and to the people, with the notion of the city as an urban ‘canvas’. Performance art, or art that is time-based and spectacle-driven, relies on gestures, sound, lighting and interaction, grew out the ‘Fluxus’ movement and ‘Happenings’ of the 1960s. Artists influenced by these movements combined notions of chance and interests in Surrealism, Eastern thought and philosophy with historical, autobiographical, social and political content. Performances may be very well planned, improvisational or loosely structured, and involve audience participation. The aspect of audience participation aims to challenge the boundaries between artist / art object / performer and viewer while making it more interactive. Ultimately, performance involves the movement of the human body to convey what cannot be expressed solely through visual or spoken language. Contemporary performance artists combine dance, sound, props and content that fuse the personal with the political. Many performances aim to parody life and art, as well as expose the inner workings of the art world. The work of BANK, for example, a group of British performance and installation artists, relied on techniques of parody and satire to mock the art and corporate world. This collective group of artists – Simon Bedwell, John Russell, Milly Thompson and Andrew Williamson – worked collaboratively to create exhibitions of ‘corrected’ press releases that parodied the curatorial process viewed as elitist and self-serving.1 Like the performance and video artist Alex Bag, BANK attacked the museum and gallery exhibition process, which may also be viewed as highly subjective and exclusive. The Guerrilla Girls have noted in their posters the small number of women who get one person shows, and get invited by curators into the big New York museum shows.2 Unlike the Guerrilla Girls, BANK did not address gender as an issue, but they called attention to the inequities in the art world through a gentle mocking or swift bite, depending on your point of view.

The Art Guys Like BANK, The Art Guys, Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing, are a collaborative performance-based duo, based in Houston, Texas, who engage in antics on the subject of art to draw attention to the inner workings and culture of the art world and the artistic process. The Art Guys met in art school back in the 1980s in Houston, and they have stayed in Texas and continued to work on a variety of projects that include performance, video, colouring books, paintings, drawings, commissions and public art. The Art Guys are funny and they know they are funny. Described in the New York Times as ‘a cross between Dada, David Letterman, John Cage and the Smothers Brothers’, The Art Guys are the court jesters of the postmodern age. The Art Guys present a blend of performance, conceptual and visual art that explores the absurdities of contemporary life and pokes fun at the art world.3

The Public Spectacle

123

The cover of ARTnews (January 1998) depicts The Art Guys wearing funny glasses as a disguise. The Art Guys are a couple of really creative guys who obviously enjoy collaborative working relationships and seeing the absurdity in the mundane, the preposterous, and cultivating the child-within. The Art Guys state: ‘Mundane things are used in a funny way to imply deeper meanings … Common materials meets postmodern Minimalist and Conceptualist attitudes.’4 Like Tom Friedman, The Art Guys use the everyday common materials, including food, to create carrot wheels, drawings made from pencil shavings and glued cigarettes to paper. They seem to work by their inspiration in a serendipitous way that recalls child’s play, delighting in the big and small.

23. The Art Guys, Bucket Feet, 1993.

Yet, their works make reference to art history, to the Fluxus movement, to kitsch, and the tinkering that goes on in a garage full of stuff. Their performances include dipping their hands in paint, shaking hands over a primed canvas to create a ‘painting’. Some of their other performances include working at a 24-hour convenience store, selling newspapers all night on the streets of Houston, kissing everyone in an audience, soliciting female volunteers to weigh in on a scale until the collective weight equals one ton. Other works include: All The Gum On The Sidewalk Outside Our House At 65 Capp Street, Penny Column, Cheese Grid, The Definition of Metaphysics By Gustave

124

Art and Laughter

Flaubert, Suitcase Tower Maquette, Suitcase Wheel and various bottle sculptures. These sculptures beg the question: Is this art? This question lies at the heart of performance and postmodern art. The Art Guys are now burgeoning into public art, in the form of airport sculptures. In the last few years, they have been commissioned by two US airports to create sculptures. The airport in Houston, Texas has a piece that includes fibreglass suitcases that light up with LED lights and a lit sign that says ‘Travel Light’. This visual pun is undoubtedly a travel reminder for those who may tend to pack the kitchen sink. The Art Guys have a website that tells all about their works, lectures, reviews, and past projects.5 It is important to think about the work of The Art Guys in its totality to get a holistic sense about who they are, and what their works are about. Their minimalist schtick, one dollar bills glued together, suitcases combined to create a complete freestanding open circle is the absurdity that laughter is born from. The Art Guys have brought the silly and ridiculous into the art discourse in a way that demands that we come out and play, too. Art critic, Shaila Dewan, writes about The Art Guys: Like many a court jester and fool of old, The Art Guys save their own skins through humor. Sometimes the joke is dry and formal, as in the piece Beat It, Burn It, Drown It, where they performed the title operations of a book on product testing on the book itself. Other times it’s naughty, as in the piece where they asked museum patrons to chew gum and stick it to a chair.6 To sum up the humour in The Art Guys, they write: There’s a history of us talking about making different things or working on projects, and really choosing those that make us laugh the most. So, we’ll think of something and it will be funny, but then we’ll think of something else and it will be funnier and we’ll go with the funnier one. Groucho Marx is a good example of a humor that we like. It hits on a lot of different levels. There’s a certain amount of slapstick, but then there’s a rich language and rich conceptual quality to his humor and wrong-headedness, which is an important factor.7 Like the Art Guys, Pat Oleszko is a performance artist and tinkerer extraordinaire who commits to art being fun-tastic and art-taining.

Pat Oleszko Pat Oleszko is a performance artist whose costume-driven work is normally zany and fanciful. She says: ‘My work as an artist is playing the fool.’ Some of Pat Oleszko’s

The Public Spectacle

125

costumes have included a saw, a teapot and an Eiffel Tower hat. ‘Pat Oleszko makes a spectacle of herself – and doesn’t mind if you laugh. Known as the Ms Tricks of Dis Guise, she has a large body – of work’8 ranging from elaborate costumes, multifarious inflatables, films with spatial effects, installations with lithe accompaniment and much pun-tification. At best, she can astonish, amuse or offend.9 Oleszko uses concepts of mimicry with intent to ridicule. Her techniques include exaggeration of scale and the camouflage, distortion and disguise of her body through costuming. Through her performances, Oleszko becomes a walking and talking pun. Her costumes, according to her website, are one aspect of her work. Costuming has been an integral part of performance art since the early 1960s with Allen Kaprow’s Happenings and Claes Oldenburg’s The Store, and Oleszko takes it one step further to the hilarious and outrageous; Oleszko is not afraid play the fool. Some examples of her costumes include: Tom Saw-yer, a costume of an anthropomorphic tool out of her ‘tooljest’; Knee-O-Fascism, a costume staged on legs and using her kneecaps; and Garden Variety Glad-He-Ate-Her, a parody of a gladiator using plastic garden planting pots. Oleszko creates these costumes for performances and films as well as for still photography in magazine advertisements. Oleszko takes the everyday, historical figures and political topics and turns the historical to the hysterical.10 Her oeuvre of work also includes her inflatable sculptures made from nylon with some inflatables as high as fifty feet. These too are outrageously funny, and the subjects for these inflatables include birthday cakes, presents, elephants and penis-shaped forms. She sometimes takes these inflatables to new locations, such as on boats, in forests, in parades and installations in New York’s Central Park, and then photographs these ‘scenes’ in colour photographs that are equally as hilarious and paradoxical as her sculptures. 19. Pat Oleszko, Garden Variety GladTo fully appreciate the humour in He-Ate-Her, 1999. Oleszko’s works, all the components need to be experienced – from the

126

Art and Laughter

costumes to the lighting and sounds and her comic timing. Oleszko’s work is living proof of the saying by Charlie Chaplin that ‘Everything is a gag’. Yet, through her visual mischief and pun-making and artistic reverie, we may get lost too in the magic and see the farcical side of life, and the art world.

Concluding Thoughts BANK, The Art Guys, and Pat Oleszko are some of the farceurs of the art world worth noting. Their works combine humour-evoking tactics of exaggeration and contradiction in ways that expose the irony and the flaws of our imperfect but ridiculous world. They spice up the mundane and the everyday through whimsy, wit, punning and jabs, being naughty and nice at the same time. The social and emotional function of the public spectacle, which includes the genre of performance art that aims to mock or parody, is to create amusement, enliven spirits and provide enjoyment. While the aims of most performance art are not to humour, some performance artists embrace either content or methods of delivery that may result in humorous incongruities. Performance art has tremendous potential as an art medium for the expression of humour because it relies on experimentation, improvisation and serendipity, all of which can result in the unexpected and humorously incongruous. Artists have found ways to document performances through the use of video and photography so that all the performances can be shared with new audiences and presented in varied exhibition contexts. As contemporary artists continue to explore the in-between spaces of life and art, art and technology, traditional media and conceptual art, performance art will likely emerge in ways that redefine art and the public spectacle. In conclusion, I will explore analogies between the artist and clown and offer some concluding thoughts about the role and value of visual humour.

Conclusion

I suppose it’s OK to stand in front of a picture and weep, but I think my collection makes the point that it’s OK to laugh, too. Rene di Rosa, di Rosa Preserve & Art collection; http://mag. leftcoastart.com/html/di_rosa_preserve_.html Gombrich says that even when he wrote an entire book on caricature, he hardly smiled.1 I can’t say that I have had the same experience; the artworks and artists that I have written about in this book have given me cause to smile and laugh along the way. Historians and critics are finally recognizing that artworks compel us to laugh,2 and this may not be a bad thing. I think it is healthy for the art world that artists express their comic intent, their love for the absurd, and their appreciation for all the forms of humour discussed in this book. Finally, viewers of art, through the exhibition of these works, and reproductions of these works in books, can have a response of laughter to art with the knowledge that laughter in art is serious business. Visual art today might be described as pluralistic, contradictory and humorous, and focused on exploring the boundaries between artist and culture, nature, science and technology. We live in a time when art is very dialogic, that is, artists talk back to other artists vis-à-vis their works, and to other historical artworks, as in the case of parody. Contemporary art asks that viewers of art become more participatory rather than passively observe art. Art museums and galleries are now spaces where art is considered lived practice as artists ‘move in’ to gallery and museum spaces to construct environments for spaces for interaction with the public. This shift in how artworks are presented has resulted in some humorous installations and encounters with art that are reason to smile. The art of the 1990s to the present has been very concerned with identity and representation issues as artists as citizens of the world struggle with issues of

128

Art and Laughter

consumption, corporate greed, death, sex and morality. While these are serious social issues, contemporary artists have used humour to expose the vices and human foibles that satirists for centuries have loved to mock. The satire and irony in much of contemporary art has thrived in both US and UK societies because we have societies that are open to free expression and the critique of social and political structures. We are able to laugh freely, and engage in public laughter, and the exhibition of these works may even spur changes in private and public consciousness, with citizens and public officials, which may lead to changes in social structures and policies. We have seen from previous chapters that art can be funny, amusing, witty, entertaining, enlightening and educative in many different ways. The five forms of humour – pun, parody, paradox, satire and irony – play out in contemporary artworks in a variety of complex ways that provoke thought and invite laughter and smiles. Artists can capture our attention and seduce us through incongruities, distortion, juxtaposition of text and images, repetition of absurd forms, play with scale, the transformation and hybridization of forms, and transposition and placing these forms in new contexts. Contemporary artists who inspire laughter take on the role of entertainer in many ways because humour does have an entertaining function; it results in smiling, laughing and relaxation, which divert our attention from our personal problems or sorrows. This diversion can be engaging, as in the case of art, hold our attention and our gaze. Art can be entertaining, as the works in this book support, and that is not a bad thing. The Latin root word for entertainment is ‘intertenere’, which means ‘keeping in the midst’. Art that is entertaining through its abilities to incite laughter enables us to be kept in the midst of the most current and pressing issues facing us on the planet. The landscape of contemporary art is ever changing and artists continue to reinvent art. Regardless of the type of humour used, the artists discussed in this book may be described as artist/clowns. The artist as clown has a comic intent and a desire to engage audiences to amuse and bemuse us with their visual displays. Bemusement is not a bad thing but a necessary component in the juncture between experiencing our reality and experiencing the reality of the artist through his or her works. Bemusement is a pleasant confusion that becomes integral to the experiencing of humour. The metaphor of artist as clown has significance for contemporary artists today as they create works with the intention of seeking to amuse their audiences.3 The clown, like the artist, is a non-verbal performer who communicates through the visual, the smiles and the grimaces, whether in traditional art forms or through performance art. The clown, like the artist, is a master of the art of extreme emotions as expressed through exaggerated facial expression or contortions of the body, or rantings. The clown, like the artist, is master of masquerade and the mask who captures our attention through garish colours or lurid lighting to reveal something darker and more macabre. The clown, like the artist, has an interest in juxtaposing seemingly opposite and contradictory patterns, shapes and images. Like the clown who wears checks and plaids,

Conclusion

129

contemporary artists juxtapose patterns of colour as well as language to disrupt our notions of a seemingly orderly universe. Didier Ottinger writes that the ‘modern clown has moved toward the moral and the aesthetic’.4 Certainly, contemporary clown/artists draw upon moral, social, political and aesthetic issues, and in doing so, they embrace the role of rebel. Today’s clown/artists are contemporary rebels as they ‘challenge the seriousness of our certitudes’,5 casting doubt on our certainty with the world as we see it. The clown as artist understands that suffering permeates the world and strives to meet this head on while balancing the tragic with the comic. The clown as artist is a colourist who uses pure colour as well as the colour of language, form, and medium to attract viewers. The clown as artist is not afraid to be ridiculous or the fool. The temptation for artists to depict themselves in a ridiculous manner began in visual art in the Middle Ages, was ‘galvanized in the Romantic period’,6 and continues today in contemporary art. While contemporary artists may be humorous, they are no buffoons; the artists in this book are savvy, commercially and professionally successful, and often celebrities in their own right. Their celebrity status as clown/artists gives great credibility and status to the role of humour in art. The increasing number of contemporary artists in the last decade who look to humour as a mechanism to convey ideas reaffirms the necessity for humour in a world that appears to have become increasingly violent and unpredictable. If artists may be likened to clowns, then the art world may be likened to that of a circus in its pageantry, excess, the bright lights of blockbuster exhibits, the sequins and the glitter, costumes, affected gesturing, smiling and posturing, the hysteria and commotion, and marketing and sales of illusionary worlds. Jean Starobinksi writes that ‘the circus is a glittering oasis of magic, an unspoiled piece of childhood’,7 and the art world, too, is a glittering oasis of magic in a world ridden with sorrow, despair and unhappiness. The circus ring, where the lights meet the lively trapeze artists, jugglers, dancers on elephants and clowns on bicycles, is a metaphor for the art world where artists who work in all media meet in the centre stage to interact with their public. All are on parade as the audience of curators, critics and the public measure their worth and decide how artists will be recognized, rewarded and remembered. The humour theorist John Morreall likens the humorist to a painter, a composer or an artist who is constantly looking at things from new and unusual perspectives.8 In this sense, contemporary artists are still seeking novelty and newness in their works in spite of their postmodern aversions to concepts of originality. Postmodern artists take postmodern concepts of banality, for example, and make us see them in new ways with humour. They have appropriated and questioned art and cultural icons, artistic practices and materials, and artistic contexts for viewing art. The irony of postmodern art is that it has become that which postmodern artists have sought to oppose: the new and the original. The artworks in this book were born of a rebellious spirit that celebrates human ingenuity.

130

Art and Laughter

Art that evokes laughter will continue to be challenging to art professionals and the public as to their purpose, meaning and value because the emphases on rationality is so prevalent. Historically, humour has been shunned from the art historical discourse with the exception of satire and parody. Interestingly, parody and satire are probably the most entertaining kinds of visual humour. The stigmas still attached to humour, that is, it can harm one’s character, result in a loss of self-control, rationality, irresponsibility and anti-social behaviours, that it is associated with child’s play, not work, still impede a full acceptance of humour into art historical scholarship, and a change in public perception about visual humour is needed. John Morreall noted twenty years ago that traditional art criticism says little about humour and that humorous art may be viewed as a break from the serious business.9 Humour is being addressed by many critics today but in ways that do not fully analyse the techniques used by the artists, the kinds of humour, or the success of the comic effect. It is evident that many contemporary critics and curators are addressing the humour dimension of contemporary artworks, but this aspect of the art remains relatively unexplained in art exhibition catalogues and books. Throughout the chapters, many kinds of artists’ works have been discussed, including painters, printmakers, photographers, sculptors, media artists, installation artists and mixed media artists whose works do not fall easily into one category. Their works may also employ a variety of types of humour-evoking techniques. Humour is a complicated matter, and while it may be easy to laugh at an artwork, it is important to understand how theories of humour may give insight into the nature, meaning and complexity of the humour, and the artwork. Hopefully, the descriptions and explanations in this book with the artworks presented will be useful in looking at other artworks that are similar in subject, and in type of humour. As stated in the beginning of this book, this is not a comprehensive survey of humour in contemporary art; there are many contemporary European, American and Asian artists who are creating funny artworks not included due to time and scope of this book. I have aimed to address some very well-known artists whose works have not been previously discussed specifically in terms of their humour associations. The works by contemporary emerging artists in the book, whose content and stylistic devices are also humour evoking, deserve attention because their works are unique and exude a spirit that is ancient – the comic spirit. It is hoped that the discussion of these works will dispel some myths that funny art cannot be serious, a serious artist would never employ humour, and art museums are always serious places. This book is proof that humour is a force in art to be reckoned with, and that galleries and museums should take notice. Yet there is more work to be done, and it is my hope that this book will inspire and encourage more scholarship on art and humour. Art that provokes our humorous responses also requires different things from us

Conclusion

131

the viewers. Looking at art that invites our laughter asks that we remain open to imaginative images, to ambiguity and to play. This is not easy for adults who have been conditioned through education, religion and other socializing and cultural systems, but as Morreall reminds us, ‘humor involves a non-serious use of reason’.10 Appreciating humour both involves reason and is a reasonable thing to do. It also asks that we view museums differently. Jerry Saltz, art critic, writes: ‘Museums are graveyards, shrines, or storage rooms. Usually you go [there] alone, mostly you’re silent; almost invisible … you walk in, drift around, pause here and there, look and tell yourself things.’11 Laughter is pretty much not in this equation, but if the work begs this from us, we need to allow ourselves to break the silence within these sanctioned and revered art spaces. Artists who invite our laughter ask that we emancipate ourselves, and engage in laughter so that it becomes public and communal. Jo Anna Isaak writes: ‘Laughter is meant to be thought of as a metaphor for transformation, a catalyst for social change.’12 While some forms of humour, such as satire and irony, may evoke the kind of laughter that may prompt social change, most laughter can prompt a personal and individual transformation – a lightened heart or a joyous moment. There will always be artists who have a natural inclination to amuse their audiences. In the coming years we may see even more examples of art that invite us to laugh. We should pay attention to these works when we encounter them because they may speak to our deepest and darkest fears, hopes and desires, and liberate us from the mundane. Encounters with artworks that arouse laughter can help us to keep a healthy distance from being overcome with the tragic, and self-indulgence. Finally, these works offer us an opportunity to have a pleasant experience with art that may establish a pattern for experiencing art on a more frequent basis. I disagree with Donald Kuspit’s most recent assessment of contemporary art: that much of it is pure entertainment,13 that is, easy, exciting, glamorous, fun, but as a result is vacuous, bankrupt and spiritually empty. Artworks that provoke laughter may be thought of as entertaining and shallow; however, we must be careful not to dismiss these works easily. Entertainment according to Kuspit is enjoyment ‘without enlightenment or without changing habits and attitudes’.14 We cannot assume that viewers are merely being coddled and delighted from looking at contemporary and postmodern works, particularly, works that embrace humour. The works in this book embody the potential to both entertain and jostle our attitudes, and provoke thought that may lead to personal and social transformations. We never know where the experience of art may lead us. The five forms of humour employed in the visual arts – parody, pun, paradox, satire and irony – allow artists to acknowledge the absence of the sacred from contemporary life, and at the same time, allow us, the viewers, to reassess what is sacred. The creation of humour is a redemptive act by contemporary artists to infuse art with a comic spirit that becomes a ‘clever, social mirror’15 and a force against disillusionment.

132

Art and Laughter

Humour is hope and a generous act by artists that may lead viewers to more emotional responses with art. Through laughter, we can move beyond cynicism, alienation and self-indulgence to a state of interconnectedness and personal enlightenment and new modes of communication, relating and living. While much of postmodern art may be theory and concept driven, it is also driven by desires of artists to connect with viewers in more intimate and meaningful ways, and one of the ways is through humour. All humour is subversive, that is, it aims to disrupt our assumptions, emotions, patterns of thinking, ways of knowing and the world as we know it. The works by the artists in this book are evidence that humour is alive and well in contemporary and postmodern art, and here to stay. Art that evokes laughter is a wake-up call for consciousness, and a reminder that humour, like illusions may bear uncanny truths.

Notes

Introduction Alleen and Don Nilsen, Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Humor (CT: Oryx Press, 2000). 2. ‘What’s Funny About Contemporary Art?’, ARTnews, 103, 8 (September 2004), a themed issue on humour in contemporary art. 3. Daniel Harris, Cute, Quaint, Hungry, and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 109. 4. Clive Bell, Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 5. Donald Kuspit, The End of Art (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 29. 6. Ibid. 14. 7. Ibid. 158. 8. Nigel Warburton, The Art Question (London: Routledge, 2003), 3. 9. Ibid. 54. 10. Kuspit, ‘Tart Wit, Wise Humor’, Art Forum, 13 (January 1991), 97. 11. Warburton, The Art Question, 133. 1.

Chapter 1 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

John Marmysz, http://users.aol.com/geinster/Humor.html (accessed 22 June 2005). André Breton, Surrealism and Painting (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 130. Nilsen and Nilsen, Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Humor, 163. Simon Critchley, On Humor (New York: Routledge, 2002), 3. Marmysz, http://users.aol.com/geinster/Humor.html (accessed 22 June 2005). John Morreall, Taking Laughter Seriously (New York: State University of New York Press, 1983), 39. Ibid. 39.

134 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Art and Laughter Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (New York: Macmillan, 1928). Morreall, Philosophy of Laughter and Humor (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1987), 5, 14. Ibid. Nilsen and Nilsen, Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Humor, 163. Mahadev Apte, Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), 13–26. Avner Ziv, ‘Introduction’, in National Styles of Humor (CT: Greenwood Press, 1988). Morreall, Taking Laughter Seriously, 2–3. Ibid. 2–3. Ibid. 6. Ibid. Ibid. 16–17. Ibid. 23. For more information, see Herbert Spencer, On the Physiology of Laughter (London: JM Dent, 1911). See Morreall, Taking Laughter Seriously, 27–8. Ibid. 38–9. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 181. Ibid. 72. Robert Provine, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (New York: Viking, 2000), 2. Nilsen and Nilsen, Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Humor, 310. Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth Century Art Forms (New York: Methuen Press, 1985). Matei Calinescu, Faces of Modernity: Avante-garde, Decadence, and Kitsch (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, 1977). Karal Ann Marling, Norman Rockwell (New York; Harry N. Abrams and the Smithsonian Institute, 1997). Constance Naubert-Riser, ‘Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin’, in Jean Clair (ed.), The Great Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown (New Haven, CT: Yale University and Ottawa: National Gallery of Ontario, 2004), 73. Stan Herd, Crop Art and Other Earthworks (New York: Abrams, 1994). Calinescu, Faces of Modernity. Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody. Kuspit, ‘Tart Wit, Wise Humor’, 93–101. George A. Test, Satire and Spirit in Art (FL: University of Southern Florida Press, 1992). Nicholas Roukes, Humor in Art: A Celebration of Visual Wit (MA: Davis, 1997), 32. Lionel Lambourne and Amanda-Jane Doran (eds.), The Art of Laughter (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1992), 11.

Notes to Chapter 1

135

38. Steven Heller and Gail Anderson, Graphic Wit: The Art of Humor in Design (New York: Watson-Guptill, 1991), xxi. 39. Edmund Burke Feldman, Varieties of Visual Experience (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 20. 40. Nilsen and Nilsen, Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Humor, 46. 41. Rourkes, Humor in Art, 14. 42. Kuspit, The End of Art, 43. 43. André Breton, Surrealism and Painting, 351. 44. Ken Friedman, Fluxus Reader (Chichester: Academy Editions, 1998), 92. 45. Ibid. 46. Eleanor Heartney, ‘Review of Peter Saul’, Art in America, 92, 5 (May 2004), 155–6. 47. Victor Musgrave, ‘Introduction’, in Who Chicago? exhibition catalogue (Sunderland: Sunderland Arts Centre, 1995), 9–14. 48. Dennis Adrian, ‘Critical reflections on the development of Chicago Imagism’, in Chicago Imagism: A Twenty-Five Year Survey, exhibition catalogue (IA: Davenport Museum of Art), 4. 49. Jo Anna Isaak, ‘Laughter Ten Years After’, in Helen Reckett and Peggy Phelan (eds.), Art and Feminism (New York: Phaidon Press, 2001), 271–2. 50. Marcia Tucker, Bad Girls, exhibition catalogue (New York: New Museum, 1994), 4–6. 51. Miwon Kwon, ‘One Place After Another’, in Z. Kocur and L. Sheung (eds.), Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing), 32–54. 52. Alan Kaprow, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 53. 53. Stephen Little, …ISMs: Understanding Art (New York: Universe Publishing, 2004), 141. 54. Nicolas De Oliveira, Nicola Oxley and Michael Petry (eds.), Installation Art in the New Millennium: The Empire of the Senses (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003). 55. Matt Dukes Jordan, Weirdo Deluxe (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2005), 12. 56. Robert Williams, ‘Introduction’, in Kirsten Anderson (ed.), Pop Surrealism: Rise of Underground Art (San Francisco, CA: Last Gap and Ignition Publishing, 2004). 57. Jordan, Weirdo Deluxe, 11. 58. Juxtapoz, see www.juxtapoz.com (accessed 11 July 2006). 59. Marc Bell’s work can be found on the website: www.adambaumgoldgallery.com (accessed 3 July 2006). 60. See James Elkins, Pictures and Tears (New York: Routledge, 2001) for an insightful analysis of why people have emotional responses of crying in front of paintings. 61. Mahadev Apte, Humor and Laughter. 62. George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (New York: Cornell University Press, 1974). 63. Arthur C. Danto, ‘The Art World’, Journal of Philosophy, LXI (1964), 571–84. 64. Rourkes, Humor in Art, 100.

136

Art and Laughter

Chapter 2 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

Angus Trumble, The Brief History of the Smile (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 56. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 90. Ibid. xxiii. Jean Clair, The Great Parade, 90. Trumble, Brief History of the Smile, 8. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 15–16. Ibid. 35–7. Sassoon, Becoming Mona Lisa (New York: Harcourt Brace, 2001), 13. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 273. Trumble, Brief History of the Smile, 29. Tietze-Conrat, Erica, Dwarfs and Jesters in Art (New York: Phaidon, 1957). Kim Carpenter, ‘Character Flaws in Clay: Humor, Satire and Caricature in Sculpture’, Sculpture Review, LIV 2 (Summer 2005), 10–17. Jerry Saltz, ‘Sanctify My Love’, in Seeing Out Loud: Village Voice Art Columns Fall 1998– Winter 2003 (MA: The Figures, 2003), 311–13. Robert Rosenblum, ‘John Currin and the American Grotesque’, in John Currin, exhibition catalogue (Chicago, IL: Museum of Contemporary Art; London: Serpentine Gallery; New York: Harry Abrams, 2003), 11–21. John Currin’s works appear in John Currin, exhibition catalogue. Dan Cameron, ‘The shadow of your simile: Karl Wirsum and His Art’, in Karl Wirsum, exhibition catalogue (New York: Phyllis Kind Gallery, 1986), 1. James Yood, ‘Introduction’, in Karl Wirsum, exhibition catalogue (Chicago, IL: Jean Albano Gallery, 2004). Karl Wirsum, written correspondence, 31 July 2005. Rich March and Jeff Potoscnak, Funny Face: An Amusing History of Potato Heads, Block Heads, and Magic Whiskers (WI: Krause, 2002). Karl Wirsum, correspondence, 31 July 2005. Dennis Adrian, Chicago Imagism: A Twenty-Five Year Survey, 28. Nicholas Roukes, Artful Jesters: Innovators of Visual Wit and Humor (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2003), 152. Images in Gladys Nilsson, exhibition catalogue (Chicago, IL: Jean Albano Gallery, 2000). Eleanor Heartney, ‘Review of Peter Saul’, Art in America, 92, 5 (May 2004) 155–6. Peter Saul’s works can be found at www.georgeadamsgallery.com (accessed 7 August 2006). Daniel Harris, Cute, Quaint, Hungry, and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 110.

Notes to Chapter 3 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

137

Ibid. 124. Nilsen and Nilsen, Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American Humor, 266. Harris, Cute, Quaint, Hungry, and Romantic, 11. Jean Clair (ed.), The Great Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown, exhibition catalogue (New Haven, CT: Yale University and Ottawa: National Gallery of Ontario, 2004), 336. For more information, see Clair, The Great Parade. Diane Keaton, Clown Paintings (New York: Powerhouse Books, 2002). Clair, The Great Parade. Ibid. 242, 244. Maik Schluter and Isabelle Graw, Cindy Sherman Clowns (Hanover: Schirmer/Mosel, 2004), 14. Jean Clair, The Great Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown, 272. Cindy Sherman, in Cindy Sherman Clowns, 54. Untitled #410, Untitled #414 and Untitled #425 are discussed in Cindy Sherman Clowns. Cindy Sherman interview in Cindy Sherman Clowns, 55. Ibid. 57. Adrian Searle, ‘Dressing up in public’, The Guardian, 5 June 2003; http://arts.guardian.co.uk/ critic/features/70.970764.00.html. Shag’s Masquerade (2003) appears in Anderson, Pop Surrealism, 130. Shag’s Fashionable Terrorist (2001) appears in Anderson, Pop Surrealism, 134. Robert Farris Thompson, ‘The Thousand Clowns of Kenny Sharf’, in Kenny Sharf (New York: Tony Shafrazi Gallery, 1997), 16. Ibid. 23. William Jeffert, Kenny Sharf, exhibition catalogue, 7. Ibid. 10. Tony Shafrazi, ‘Introduction’, Kenny Sharf, exhibition catalogue (New York: Tony Shafrazi Gallery, 1997).

Chapter 3 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Joan Gibbons, Art and Advertising (London: I.B.Tauris, 2005), 9–10. James Elkins, Pictures and Tears, 66. Steven Heller, Design Humor: The Art of Graphic Wit (New York: Allworth Press, 2002), xx. Helen Reckitt and Peggy Phelan, Art and Feminism, 123. Miriam Seidel, ‘Kay Rosen at Beaver College’, Art in America, 86, 10, 141. Eileen Myles, ‘True to Type’, Art in America, 87, 9 (September 1999), 110–15. Kay Rosen, written correspondence, 31 May 2005. Nancy Princenthal, ‘Kay Rosen at the Drawing Room’, Art in America, 91, 4 (April 2003), 141. John Marmysz, condensation issues discussed in ‘Morreall vs. Freud: A battle of the wit(z)’, http://users/aol.com/geister/Humor.html (accessed 22 June 2005).

138

Art and Laughter

10. Patty Carroll’s website, www.pattycarroll.com (accessed 3 July 2006), has images of her photographs from all the series of works discussed, including Movie Posters. 11. Bruce Nauman’s Vice and Virtues work is discussed with images on the website http:// stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/StuartCollection/Nauman.htm (accessed 7 July 2006). 12. Thomas McEvilley, Les Levine: Media Sculpture/Art Can See (New York: DAP, 1997), 77. 13. Ibid. 77. 14. Ibid. 128. 15. Don Celender’s works can be viewed on the website http://artretran.com. 16. Don Celender’s work is discussed on www.askart.com (accessed 3 July 2006). 17. Adam Dant’s works can be seen on www.adambaumgoldgallery.com (accessed 3 July 2006). 18. Interviews by Paul Davis, Us and Them (New York: Architectural Press, 2004). 19. David Shrigley’s works can be viewed at www.davidshrigley.com (accessed 3 July 2006). 20. David Pagel’s 2002 article appears at www.davidshrigley.com/articles/dp_article.html (accessed 7 July 2006). 21. Tony Oursler’s works can be viewed on the website www.tonyoursler.com (accessed 7 July 2006). 22. Michael Kimmelman’s review of Tony Oursler’s work, ‘A Sculptor of the Air’, appears on www.tonyoursler.com (accessed 7 July 2006). 23. Tony Oursler, www.tonyoursler.com.

Chapter 4 Helen Reckitt and Peggy Phelan (eds.), Art and Feminism (New York: Phaidon Press, 2001). Ibid. 176. Arthur Danto, Saul Steinberg: The Discovery of America (New York, Knopf, 1992), x. Guy Trebay, ‘Sex, Art and the Videotape’, New York Times Review, June 2004. John Spiak, http://asuartmuseum.asu.edu/notquitemyselftoday/bag.htm (accessed 4 July 2006). 6. David Frankel, ‘Alex Bag’, review, ArtForum (October 2002), 153. 7. The many projects by the Guerrilla Girls can be found on www.guerrillagirls.com (accessed 4 July 2006). 8. For more information about The Warhol Project, see www.newcomb.tulane.edu/kass.html (accessed 7 July 2006). 9. Michael Plante (ed.), ‘Screened Identitites, Multiple Repetiitons, and Missed Kisses’, in Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project (New York: DAP, 1999), 40, 42. 10. Cherry Smyth, Damn Fine Art (New York: Cassell, 1996), 58. 11. Mary Ann Staniszewski, ‘First Person Plural: The Paintings of Deborah Kass’, in M. Plante (ed.), Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project (NY: DAP, 1999), 27. 12. Robert Rosenblum, ‘Cards of Identity’, in Plante (ed.), Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project, 17. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Notes to Chapter 5

139

13. Nicolas De Oliveira, Nicola Oxley and Michael Petry (eds.), Installation Art in the New Millennium: The Empire of the Senses (London: Thames and Hudson, 2003), 143. 14. Image of Liza Lou’s Trailer (1999–2000), 143. 15. Lindy T. Shepherd, ‘Sandy Skoglund: Selected Works’, Orlando Weekly, March 1998, www. orlandoweekly.com/artsculture/story.asp?id=240 (accessed 4 July 2006). 16. Rourkes, Artful Jesters, 94. 17. For Judy Onofrio’s website with many images of her sculptures and environments, see www. judyonofrio.com (accessed 7 July 2006). 18. Ibid. 19. Allan J. Ryan, Trickster Shift: Humour and Irony in Contemporary Art (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999), 38. 20. Ibid. xiii. 21. Ibid. 10. 22. Ibid. 101. 23. Ibid. 101. 24. Black humour as a result of looking at tragedy from a distance is discussed in Jerome Zolten’s article, ‘Humor and the Challenger Shuttle Disaster: Joke Telling as Reaction to Tragedy’, WHIMSEY, 6 (1988), 134–6. 25. Michael Turner, ‘Not So Quiet on the Water Front’, The Globe and Mail, 14 July 2004. Jungen’s works can be found at the Vancouver Art Gallery website: http://www.vanartgallery. bc.ca/exhibitions_brianjungen.cfm.

Chapter 5 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Laurie Simmons’ works can be found on www.speronewestwater.com. Michael Hernandez de Luna’s works can be found on the Aron Packer Gallery website, www. aronpacker.com (accessed 4 July 2006). Ibid. Lamaretta Simmons, ‘Going Postal’, review of Michael Hernandez de Luna’s works, Chicago F News (March 2002) on www.badpress.com. Michael Hernandez de Luna, correspondence, August 2005. Ibid. Tom Friedman, www.fondazioneprada.org (accessed 8 July 2006). Tom Friedman (New York: Phaidon Press, 2002), 16. Ibid. 70–1. Ibid. 14. Jerry Saltz, ‘Dust to Dust: Vik Muniz’, in Seeing Out Loud: Village Voice Art Columns (MA: The Figures, 2003), 173–6. Mariana Harstein, Botero (Germany: Taschen, 2003). Harstein, ‘Why Does Botero Paint Fat People?’, in Botero, 48–64. Gaston Bachelard, 1989, 240.

140 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

Art and Laughter Yi-Fu Tuan, Passing Strange and Wonderful (Washington, DC: Island Press,1993), 156. Ken Johnson, ‘Tom Otterness: Art in Review’, New York Times, 3 May 2002. Tom Otterness’s images can be found on www.gothamist.com (accessed 4 July 2006). Tom Otterness’s images can also be found on www.tomostudio.com (accessed 4 July 2006). Daniel Harris, ‘Cutness’, in Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic, 1–22. Carla Schulz-Hoffman (ed.), Niki de Saint Phalle (New York: Prestel, 2003). Arthur Danto, essay in The World of Ruckus: Red Grooms (New York: Rizzoli, 2004), 57. Red Grooms on Marlborough Gallery website, www.marlboroughgallery.com/ARCHIVE_ PAGES_n_JPGS/Grooms_pages/Red_Grooms.html (accessed 8 July 2006). Bachelard, Poetics of Space, 198.

Chapter 6 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Nilsen and Nilsen, Encylopedia of Twentieth-Century American Humor, 138. Ibid. 49. Matt Dukes Jordan, Weirdo Deluxe (San Franciso: Chronicle Books, 2005), 48. Ibid. 25. Saltz, 177. Didier Ottinger, ‘The Circus of Cruelty’, in Jean Clair (ed.), The Great Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown (New Haven, CT: Yale University and Ottawa: National Gallery of Ontario, 2004), exhibition catalogue, 41. Jerry Saltz, ‘Backdoor Man’, in Seeing Out Loud: Village Voice Art Columns Fall 1998–Winter 2003 (MA: The Figures, 2003), 178. Morreall, Taking Laughter Seriously, 19. John Marmysz, ‘Humor and Incongruity’, in Laughter at Nothing: Humor as a Response to Nihilism (New York: SUNY, 2003), 144. Charles Krafft’s works are discussed in Kirsten Anderson (ed.), Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art (San Francisco: Ignition Publishing and Last Gap Press, 2004) 70–5. See Charles Krafft’s website: www.antiquesatoz.artatoz. ‘What’s So Funny About Contemporary Art?’ Special Issue, ARTnews, 103, 8 (September 2004). Linda Yablonsky, ‘How Far Can You Go?’, ARTnews, 103, 1 (January 2004), 104–9. Paul Mathieu, Sex Pots: Eroticism in Ceramics (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2003). Joan Gibbons, Art and Advertising (London: I.B.Tauris, 2005), 148–9. Carter B. Horsley, ‘Contemporary Art at Christie’s’, www.thecityreview.com/f00ccon.1.html (accessed 31 July 2005). Angus Trumble, The Brief History of the Smile (NY: Basic Books, 2004), 85. Matthew Collings, Sarah Lucas (London: Tate Publishing, 2002), 96. Matthew Collings discusses Lucas’ fried egg sculpture in Sarah Lucas, 39–41. Ibid. 40.

Notes to Chapter 7 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49.

141

Matthew Collings discusses Tisch in Sarah Lucas, 1969 image, 15. Ibid. 15, see the work Nude No. 2. Ibid. 81, see the work Au Naturel. Sarah Lucas, exhibition catalogue for Freud Museum, London 2000. Ibid. 87, see the work Hysterical Attacks. Ibid. 118–19, see the work Woman in Tub. Ibid. 118–19. Ibid. discussion of Koons’ and Lucas’ women in tub sculptures, 118–19. ‘Sarah Lucas’, in Uta Grosenick and Burkhard Riemschneider (eds.), Art Now: 137 Artists at the Rise of the Millennium (Germany: Taschen, 2002), 282. Author interview with Russel Semerau, 25 May 2005. Ibid. Ibid. Author interview with Russel Semerau, 25 May 2005. Ibid. Cherry Smyth, ‘Julia Kunin’, in Damn Fine Art (London: Cassell, 1996), 103–5. Julia Kunin, correspondence, August 2005. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Julian Stallabrass, ‘That’s Entertainment’, in High Art Life (London: Verso), 148. Sarah Kent, Time Out, 1 October 2003, 22. ‘Richard Prince’, in Bits and Pieces (Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Centre, 2005), 474. Nilsen and Nilsen, Encylopedia of Twentieth-Century American Humor, 273. Richard Prince, exhibition catalogue (Gantz, 2002). Nilsen and Nilsen, Encylopedia of Twentieth-Century American Humor, 219. John Bancroft, ‘Sex and Humor: A Personal View’, in Catherine Johnson, Betsy Stirratt, and John Bancroft (eds.), Sex and Humor: Selections from the Kinsey (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002), 9. Gershon Legman, The Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor (New Jersey: Castle Books/Grove, 1968), 50. Ibid. 19. Guy Trebay, ‘Sex, Lies and Videotapes’, New York Times, 6 June 2004.

Chapter 7 1. 2. 3. 4.

Daniel Harris, Cute, Quaint, Hungry, and Romantic, 101. Jerry Saltz, ‘Hostile Witness’, in Seeing Out Loud: Village Voice Art Columns Fall 1998–Winter 2003 (MA: The Figures, 2003), 236. Harris, Cute, Quaint, Hungry, and Romantic, 5. Ibid. 2.

142 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Art and Laughter Michael J. Nelson, Happy Kitty Bunny Pony: A Saccharine Mouthful of Super Cute (New York: Harry Abrams, 2005). Harris, Cute, Quaint, Hungry, and Romantic, 4. Sylvie Fleury image in Brandon Taylor, Contemporary Art Since 1970 (New Jersey: Pearson/ Prentice Hall, 2005), 113–14. Sylvie Fleury’s work is also discussed in an interview at www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/ sylvie_fleury.shtml (accessed 4 July 2006). These images are discussed in William Wegman: Fashion Photographs (New York: Harry Abrams, 1999). Ibid. Nilsen and Nilsen, Encylopedia of Twentieth-Century American Humor (CT: Oryx Press), 55. Images by Wegman in William Wegman: Fashion Photographs (New York: Harry Abrams, 1999). For more information about William Wegman, see www.wegmanworld.com. Edward Leffingwell, ‘William Wegman Review’, Art in America, September 2002. Kuspit, ‘Tart Wit, Wise Humor’, 100. For information on Cary Liebowitz, see www.cliffordsmithgallery.com (accessed 4 July 2006). Nilsen and Nilsen, Encylopedia of Twentieth-Century American Humor, 273. I. Michael Danoff, Jeff Koons, exhibition catalogue (Chicago, IL: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1988), 7. Ibid. 10. Daniel Harris, cited in Bernard Cooper, ‘Slick and Twisted’, Los Angeles Times Magazine, April 2001. Eleanor Hartney, ‘Review’, Art in America, May 2004, 156. Jerry Saltz, ‘Jeffersonian Koons’, 245. David S. Rubin, ‘Satirical Gaming’, in Birdspace: A post-Audubon Artists Aviary (New Orleans, LA: Contemporary Arts Center, 2004), 42. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 50. An image of Isabel Samaras, Wish, appears in Sherri Cullison, Vicious, Delicious, and Ambitious: Twentieth Century Women Artists (PA: Schiffer, 2002), 75. Other images by Isabel Samaras appear in Kirsten Anderson (ed.), Pop Surrealism (San Francisco, CA: Last Gap and Ignition Publishing, 2004), 118–23. For synopses of Green Acres, see www.tvland.com/shows/greenacres/ (accessed 8 July 2006. Images by Isabel Samaras can be found on Isabel Samaras’ webpage at www.astrocat.com/ samaras/paintings.html (accessed 8 July 2006).

Notes to Conclusion

143

Chapter 8 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Stallabrass, High Art Lite, 69. Guerrilla Girls website: www.guerrillagirls.com (accessed 4 July 2006). The Art Guys website: www.theartguys.com (accessed 4 July 2006). Ibid. Ibid. Shaila Dewan, review of the Art Guys on www.theartguys.com (accessed 8 July 2006). Statements by the Art Guys appear in full on www.theartguys.com (accessed 8 July 2006). Pat Oleszko website: www.patoleszko.com (accessed 4 July 2006). Patricia Thompson, interview with Pat Oleszko, www.indienews.com, 5 August 2002 (accesssed 4 July 2005). 10. Pat Oleszko website: www.patoleszko.com (accessed 4 July 2006).

Conclusion 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

James Elkins, Pictures and Tears, 97–8. Ibid. 66. Jean Clair, ‘Parade and Palingenesis: Of the Circus in the Work of Picasso and Others’, in Jean Clair (ed.), The Great Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown, 21–31. Didier Ottinger, ‘The Circus of Cruelty: A Portrait of the Contemporary Clown as Sisphus’, in Clair (ed.), The Great Parade, 35. Jean Starobinski, ‘The Grimacing Double’, in Clair (ed.), The Great Parade, 15. Clair, The Great Parade, 167. Starobinksi, ‘The Grimacing Double’, 16. Morreall, ‘Humor as an Aesthetic Experience’, in Taking Laughter Seriously, 89. Ibid. 89. Ibid. Jerry Saltz, ‘Museum as Muse’, 358. Jo Anna Isaak, ‘Laughter Ten Years After’, in Helen Reckitt and Peggy Phelan (eds.), Art and Feminism, 272. Kuspit, The End of Art, 172. Ibid. 96. Ibid. 131.

Bibliography

Adrian, Dennis, ‘Critical Reflections on the Development of Chicago Imagism’, in Chicago Imagism: A 25 Year Survey (Davenport, IA: Davenport Museum of Art, 1994) Adrian, Dennis, Karl Wirusm: A Retrospective Exhibition, exhibition catalogue (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1991) Adrian, Dennis, ‘The Background to the Fifties and the Artists of the Sixties’ in Who Chicago? (Sundlerland, UK: Sunderland Arts Center, 1980) Anderson, Kristin (ed), Pop surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art (San Francisco, CA: Ignition Publishing and Last Gap of San Francisco, 2004) Apte, Mahadev, Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985) The Art Guys, www.theartguys.com (accessed 4 July 2006) Bachelard, Gaston, The Poetics of Space (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969) Bancroft, John, ‘Sex and Humor: A Personal View’, in Catherine Johnson, Betsy Stirratt, and John Bancroft (eds.), Sex and Humor: Selections From the Kinsey (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002) Bell, Clive, Art (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1987) Bergson, Henri, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (New York: Macmillan, 1928) Birdspace: A Post-Audubon Artists Aviary, exhibition catalogue (New Orleans: Contemporary Arts Centre, 2004) Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole (Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Centre, 2005) Bowman, Russell, ‘Chicago Imagism: The Movement and the Style’, in Who Chicago? Sundlerland, UK: Sunderland Arts Centre, 1980) Breton, Andre, Surrealism and Painting (New York: Harpers Row, 1965) Calinescu, Matei, Faces of Modernity: Avant-garde, Decadence, and Kitsch (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, 1977)

146

Art and Laughter

Cameron, Dan, ‘The Shadow of your simile: Karl Wirsum and His Art’, in Karl Wirsum: A Retrospective (New York: Phyllis Kind Gallery, 1986) Carpenter, Kim, ‘Character Flaws in Clay: Humor, Satire, and Caricature in Sculpture,’ Sculpture Review, LIV, 1 (Summer 2005) Carroll, Patty, www.pattycarroll.com (accessed 9 July 2006) Celender, Donald, http://www.artetran.com/website/ARTPRESS/celender/celender.html Celender, Don, www.okharris.com (accessed 9 July 2006) Clair, Jean (ed.), The Great Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown (New Haven, CT: Yale University and Ottawa: National Gallery of Ontario, 2004) Collings, Matthew, Sarah Lucas (London: Tate Publishing, 2002) Cooper, Bernard, ‘Slick and Twisted,’ Los Angeles Times, April 2001. http://www.ourbigcountry. com (accessed 5 July 2006) Critchley, Simon, On Humor (New York: Routledge, 2002) Cullison, Sherri, Vicious, Delicious, and Ambitious: Twentieth Century Women Artists (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2002) Danoff, I. Michael, Jeff Koons, essay, exhibition catalogue (Chicago, IL: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1988) Danto, Arthur, C., The world of ruckus: Red Grooms & the spirit of comedy’, in Danto, Arthur C. Hyman, Timothy and Livingstone, Marco (Eds.), Red Grooms (New York: Rizzoli Books, 2004) Danto, Arthur C., ‘Introduction’, in Saul Steinberg: The Discovery of America (New York: Knopf, 1992) Danto, Arthur C., The Art World, Journal of Philosophy, 1964, LXI Danto, Arthur C. Hyman, Timothy and Livingstone, Marco (eds.), Red Grooms (New York: Rizzoli Books, 2004) Davis, Paul, Us & Them: What the British Think of the Americans/What the Americans Think of the British (New York: Architectural Press, 2004) Dewan, Shaila, Review of The Art Guys, on www.theartguys.com (accessed 8 July 2006) Dickie, Geroge, Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (Cornell, New York: Corrnell University Press, 1974) Elkins, James, Pictures & Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings (London: Routledge, 2001) Feldman, Edmund Burke, Varieties of Visual Experience (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1973) Frankel, David, Alex Bag Review, ArtForum, XLI, 2, October 2002 Freidman, Ken, Fluxus Reader (Chicester, UK: Academy Editions, 1998) Friedman, Tom, www.foundzionprada.org (accessed 8 July 2006) Freud, Sigmund, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1989) Gibbons, Joan, Art and Advertising (London: I.B.Tauris, 2005)

Bibliography

147

Grooms, Red, www.marlboroughgallery.com/artists/grooms/artwork.html (accessed 9 July 2006) Grosenick, Uta and Riemschneider, Burkhard (eds.), Art Now: 137 Artists at the Rise of the Millennium (Cologne, Germany: Taschen, 2002) The Guerilla Girls, www.guerillagirls.com (accessed on 4 July 2006) Hanstein, Mariana, Botero (Cologne, Germany: Taschen, 2003) Harris, Daniel, Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism New York: Basic Books, 2000) Heartney, Eleanor, ‘Peter Saul review’, Art in America, 92, 5, May 2004 Heller, Steven, Design Humor: The Art of Graphic Wit (New York: Allworth Press, 2002) Heller, Steven and Anderson, Gail, Graphic Wit: The At of Humor in Design (New York: Watson-Guptill, 1991) Herd, Stan, Crop Art and Other Earthworks (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994) Horsley, Carter B., ‘ Contemporary Art at Christie’s’, http://www.thecityreview.com/ f00ccon.1.html (accessed 9 July 2006) Hutcheon, Linda, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth Century Art Forms (New York: Methuen Press, 1985) Hernandez de Luna, Michael, artist interview and correspondence, August 2005 Hernandez de Luna, Michael, www.aronpacker.com (accessed 9 July 2006) Hulten, Pontus and Hulten, Karl Hunter Pontus (eds.), Archimboldo Effect: Transformations of the Face: Sixteenth to Twentieth Century. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1987) Indian humor, exhibition catalogue (San Francisco, CA: American Indian Contemporary Arts, 1995) Issak, JoAnn, ‘Laughter: Ten Years After’, in Helen Reckett and Peggy Phelan (eds.) Art and Feminism (NY: Phaidon Press, 2001) Jeffert, William, ‘The Barbaric Paradise of Kenny Sharf’, in Kenny Sharf, exhibition catalogue (St.Petersburg, FL: Salvador Dalí Museum, 1997) John Currin. (Chicago, IL: Museum of Contemporary Art & London: Serpentine Gallery, 2003) Johnson, Ken, ‘Tom Otterness: Free Money and Other Fairy Tales’, New York Times, May 3 2002, www.tomostudio.com/about_reviews.html. (accessed 9 July 2006) Jordan, Matt Dukes, Weirdo Deluxe: The Wild World of Pop Surrealism and Low Brow Art (San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2005) Juxtapoz, www.juxtapoz.com (accessed 9 July 2006) Johnson, Ken, ‘Tom Otterness,’ Art in Review, New York Times, 3 May 2002 Jungen, Brian, http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/exhibitions_brianjungen.cfm (accessed 9 July 2006) Kant, Immanuel, The Critique of Judgment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952) Kaprow, Alan, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993) Kass, Deborah, www.deborahkass.com (accessed 9 July 2006) Keaton, Diane (ed.), Clown Paintings (New York: PowerHouse Books, 2002)

148

Art and Laughter

Kent, Sarah, Time Out, London, 1 October 2003 Kimmelman, M.. ‘Alex Bag,’ New York Times, 28 June 2002 Kocur, Zoya and Leung, Simon (eds.), Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985 (UK: Blackwell, 2005) Kuspit, Donald, The End of Art (New York: Cambride University Press, 2004) Kuspit, ‘Donald, ‘Tart Wit, Wise Humor,’ ArtForum, 13 (January 1991) Kwon, Miwon, ‘One Place After Another’, in Kocur and Leung (eds.), Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985 (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publshing, 2005) Lambourne, Lionel and Doran, Amanda-Jane (eds.), The Art of Laughter (Oxford, UK: Ashmolean Museum, 1992) Leffingwell, Edward. William Wegman Review, Art in America, September 2002 Legman, Gershon, The Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor (New Jersey: Castle Books/Grove Press, 1968) Liebowitz, Cary, http://www.cliffordsmithgallery.com/01febcandy.html (accessed 11 August 2005) Little, Stephen…ISMs: Understanding Art (New York: Universe Publishing, 2004) March, Rich. & Potoscnak, Jeff, Funny Face!: An Amusing History of Potato Heads, Block Heads, and Magic Whiskers (Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2002) Marling, Karal Ann, Norman Rockwell (New York: Harry Abrams & Smithsonian Institution, 1997) Marmysz, John, ‘Morreall vs. Freud: A battle of wit(z)’, www.users.aol.com/geinster/Hum.html (accessed 22 June 2005) Marmysz, John, ‘Humor and Incongruity’, in Laughing at Nothing: Humor as a Response to Nihilism (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 2003) Mathieu, Paul, Sex Pots: Eroticism in Ceramics (Piscataway, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2003) McEvillery, Thomas, ‘A Boy Making Sculpture: Les Levines’ Mass Media Campaigns’, in Les Levine: Media Sculpture: ART CAN SEE (New York: D.A.P, 1997) McGhee, Paul, Humor: Its Origin and Development (San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman, 1979) Morreall, John, Philosophy of Laughter and Humor (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1987) Morreall, John, Taking laughter seriously (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1983) Musgrave, Victor, ‘Introduction’, Who Chicago? (Sunderland, UK: Sunderland Arts Centre, 1980) Myles, Eileen, ‘True to Type,’ Art in America, 87,9 (September 1999) Nauman, Bruce, http://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/StuartCollection/Nauman.htm (accessed 9 July 2006) Nelson, Michael, Happy Kitty Bunny Pony: A Saccharine Mouthful of Super Cute (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005) Nilsen, Alleen and Nilsen, Don (eds.), Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century American Humor (Westport, CT: Oryx Press, 2000) Nilsson, Gladys, exhibition catalogue (Chicago, IL: Jean Albano Gallery, 2000)

Bibliography

149

Oleszko, Pat, ‘Costumes’, ‘Inflattables’, www.patoleszko.com (accessed 4 July 2006) Oliveria, Nicolas, Oxley, Nicola and Petry, Michael (eds.), Installation Art in the New Millennium: The Empire of the Senses (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003) Onofrio, Judy, ‘Judyland’, www.judyonofrio.com (accessed 9 July 2006) Otterness, Tom, www.tomostudio.com (accessed 9 July 2006) Ottinger, Didier, ‘The Circus of Cruelty’, in Jean Clair (ed.), The Great Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown (New Haven, CT: Yale University and Ottawa: National Gallery of Ontario, 2004) Oursler, Tony, www.tonyoursler.com (accessed 9 July 2006) Plante, Michael, Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project (New Orleans, LA: Tulane University, 1999) Plante, Michael (ed). ‘Screened Identities, Multiple Repetitions, and Missed Kisses’, in Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project (New York: D.A.P., 1999) Princenthal, Nancy, ‘Kay Rosen at the Drawing Room’, Art in America, 91, 4, April 2003 Richard Prince (Zurich: Hatje Gantz Publishers, 2002) Provine, Robert, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation (New York: Viking, 2001) Reckitt, Helen and Phelan, Peggy (eds.), Art and Feminism (New York: Phaidon Press, 2001) Rosen, Kay. www.kayrosen.com (accessed 9 July 2006) Rosenblum, Robert, ‘John Currin and the American Grotesque,’ in John Currin, exhibition catalogue (Chicago, IL: Museum of Contemporary Art; London: Serpentine Gallery; New York: Harry Abrams, 2003) Rosenblum, Robert, ‘Cards of Identity’, in Michael Plante (ed.), Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project (New York: D.A.P.,1999) Roukes, Nicolas, Artful Jesters: Innovators of Visual Wit and Humor (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2003) Roukes, Nicolas, Humor in Art: A Celebration of Visual Wit (Worcester, MA: Davis Press, 1997) Royer, Catherine, Gladys Nilsson: Works on Paper (Adrian, MI: Stubnitz Gallery, 2003) Rubin, David S., ‘A Bird Tapestry‘, in Birdspace: A post-Audubon artists aviary (New Orleans, LA: Contemporary Arts Center, 2004) Russick, David, essay, in Gladys Nilsson, exhibition catalogue (Chicago, IL: Jean Albano Gallery, 2000) Ryan, Allan J., The Trickster Shift: Humor and Irony in Contemporary Native Art (Toronto: University of British Columbia Press, 1999) Saltz, Jerry, Seeing Out Loud: Village Voice Art Columns from Fall 1998–Winter 2003 (Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 2003) Saltz, Jerry, ‘Backdoor Man’, in Seeing Out Loud: Village Voice Art Columns Fall 1998–Winter 2003 (Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 2003) Saltz, Jerry, ‘Dust to Dust: Vic Muniz’, in Seeing Out Loud: Village Voice Art Columns (Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 2003) Saltz, Jerry, ‘Hostile Witness,’ in Seeing Out Loud: Village Voice Art Columns (Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 2003)

150

Art and Laughter

Saltz, Jerry, ‘Jeffersonian Koons’, in Seeing Out Loud: Village Voice Art Columns (Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 2003) Saltz, Jerry, ‘Museum as Muse,’ in Seeing Out Loud: Village Voice Art Columns (Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 2003) Saltz, Jerry, ‘Sanctify My Love,’ in Seeing Out Loud: Village Voice Art Columns (Great Barrington, MA: The Figures, 2003) Sassoon, Donald, Becoming Mona Lisa (New York: Harcourt Brace, 2001) Saul, Peter, www.georgeadamsgallery.com (accessed 7 August2006) Schopenhauer. A. ‘The World as Will and Idea’, in The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor, J. Morreall (Ed.). (New York: SUNY Press, 1987) Schluter, Maik, ‘Fun That Is No Fun’, essay, Cindy Sherman Clowns (Hanover, Germany: Schirmer/Mosel, 2004) Schulz-Hoffmann, Carla (ed.), Niki de Saint Phalle: My Art, My Dreams (Munich, Germany: Prestel, 2003) Searle, Adrian, ‘Dressing Up in Public,’ The Guardian, 5 June 2003. http://arts.guardian.co.uk/ critic/features/70,970764,00.html (accessed 11 July 2006) Semerau, Russel, artist correspondence, 25 May 2005 Sex and humor: Selections from the Kinsey, C. Johnson, B. Stirratt, & J. Bancroft (Eds.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, 2002) Shepard, Lindy T., ‘Sandy Skoglund: Selected Works, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Orlando Weekly, March, 1998, www.orlandoweekly.com/artsculture/story.asp?id=240 (accessed 9 July 2006) Shrigley, David, www.davidshrigley.com (accessed 9 July 2006) Simmons, Lamaretta, ‘Going Postal,’ Chicago F News (March 2002). http://www.badpress.com (accessed 7 July 2005) Simmons, Laurie, www.speronewestwater.com (accessed 11 July 2006) Smyth, Cherry, Damn Fine Art: New Lesbian Artists (London: Cassell, 1996) Spencer, Herbert, On the Physiology of Laughter (London: JM Dent, 1911) Special Issue, ‘What’s So Funny About Contemporary Art?’ ARTnews 103, 8 (September, 2004) Special Issue, ‘SEX,; ARTnews, 103, 1 (January, 2004) Spiak, John, ‘Alex Bag,’ http://asuartmuseum.asu.edu/notquitemyselftoday/bag.htm (accessed 5 July 2006) Stallabrass, Julian, High Art Lite: British Art in the 1990s (London: Verso Press, 1999) Staniszewski, Mary Ann, ‘First Person Plural: The Paintings of Deborah Kass’, in M. Plante (ed.), Deborah Kass: The Warhol Project (New York:D.A.P., 1999) Steinberg, Saul, The Discovery of America (New York: Knopf, 1992).Taylor, Brandon, Contemporary Art: Art Since 1970 (New Jersey: Pearson/Prentice-Hall, 2005) Test, George A., Satire: Spirit and Art (Tampa, FL: University of Florida, 1991) Tietze-Conrat, Erica, Dwarfs and Jesters in Art (New York: Phaidon, 1957) Thompson, Robert Farris, ‘The Thousand Clowns of Kenny Sharf’, in Kenny Sharf, exhibition

Bibliography

151

catalogue (New York: Tony Shafrazi Gallery, 1997) Tom Friedman (New York: Phaidon Press, 2002)/ Trebay, Guy, ‘Sex, Art, and Videotapes’, New York Times, 6 June 2004 Trumble, Angus, The Brief History of the Smile (New York: Basic Books, 2004) Tuan, Yi-Fu, Passing Strange and Wonderful (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993) Tucker, Marcia, ‘Bad Girls’, in Helen Reckitt and Peggy Phelan (eds.), Art and Feminism (New York: Phaidon Press, 1994) Turner, Michael, ‘Not So Quiet on the Water Front,’ The Globe and Mail, 14 July 2004, R5 Warburton, Nigel, The Art Question (London: Routledge Press, 2003) Wegman, William. www.wegmanworld.com (accessed 11 July 2006) William Wegman: Fashion Photographers (New York: Harry Abrams, 1999) Williams, Robert, ‘Introduction,’ In K. Anderson (ed.), Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art (San Francisco, CA: Ignition Publishing and Last Gap of San Francisco, 2004) Wirsum, Karl, artist interview and correspondence, August 2005 Who Chicago?, exhibition catalogue (Sunderland, UK: Sunderland Arts Centre, 1980) Yablonsky, Linda, ‘What’s So Funny About Contemporary Art?’ ARTnews, 103, 8 (September, 2004) Yood, James, ‘Introduction,’ Karl Wirsum, exhibition catalogue (Chicago, IL: Jean Albano Gallery, 2004) Ziv, Avner, ‘Introduction,’ in National Styles of Humor (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988) Zolten, Jerome, ‘Humor and the Challenger Shuttle Disaster: Joke Telling as Reaction to Tragedy,’ WHIMSEY 6. 134–6. 1988

Index

Agle, Josh (Shag), 7, 19, 26, 46 Fashionable Terrorist (2001), 46 Arcimboldo, Guiseppe 17, 133 Art birds in, 114 cuteness in, 111–13 dioramas, 80–1 disguise in, 65–78 erotic, 93–109 installation, 25, 72–3, 113 jokes in, 107–8 ‘low brow’, 26 modernism vs. postmodernism, 3–4 performance, 121–6 scale and, 79–92 sex and, 93–109 smiling in, 28, 35–48 Art Guys, the 8, 18, 122–4 Bucket Feet (1993), 123 Artist as clown, 95,128–9 as fool, 124 Artistic devices, 19

BANK, 8, 122 Bell, Clive, 4 Bell, Marc, 26 Black humour, 19, 94 Botero, Fernando, 8, 85–7

Bag, Alex, 7, 17, 24, 65, 68–70 McDonalds I (2002), 69

Dada, 20, 22 Dali, Salvador, 21

California Funk, 22 Carroll, Patty, 7, 19, 19, 55–6 Dead Ringer (2004), 17 Two Bad (2004), 56 Celender, Don, 7, 58–9 Art Preference Survey/Jenny Craig Response (1997), 59 Chapman, Jake and Dinos, 8, 19, 25, 106 Chicago Imagists, xii, 22–3 Clown as artist, 95, 128–9 painters, 44–5 paintings, 43–5 Collingwood, R.G., 5 Crumb, Robert, xi, 26 Currin, John, 7, 36–7 Cuteness, 112

154

Art and Laughter

Aphrodisiac Telephone (1938), 21 Dant, Adam, 7, 59–60 Danto, Arthur C., 28, 67 Dark humour, see black humour Davis, Paul, 7, 17, 60 De Saint Phalle, Niki, 8, 18, 89 Death and humour, 93–6 in art, 94 Desire, 111–13 Dickie, George, 28 Dirty jokes, 108 Doodling, 68 Duchamp, Marcel, 4, 20, 22, 100 Elkins, James, 27, 52 Ernst, Max, 20 Farce, 126 Feminist art, 24, 66 Fleury, Sylvie, 8, 19, 113–14 Fluxus, 22 Friedman, Tom, 8, 19, 21, 83–5 Gallows humour, 19, 96, 106 Gothic humour, 94 Grooms, Red, xiv, 17, 19, 90–1 Manet at the Met (2003), xiv Pastrami on Rye (2005), 90 Guerrilla Girls, 7, 17, 65, 70 Herd, Stan, 15 Hernandez de Luna, Michael, 8, 81–3 Infidelity Stories (2004), 81 Holzer, Jenny, 52 Humour and aesthetics, 28 and art movements, 20–7 and entertainment, 128 and kitsch, 19

appreciation of, 6 benefits of, 5 challenges of, 130–1 dark, 19 death and, 93–6, 108–9 definition of, 1, 9 feminist, 24, 70–3, 100–2, 104–5 goofball, 43 gothic, 94 kinds of, 13–19, 28 nonsense, 29 purposes of, 13, 76, 131–2 self-disparaging, 107, 115–16 sense of, 12 sex and, 93–108 socio-political, 75–6 techniques of, 19, 66–8 terms, 12 theories, 1, 9, 10, 11 understanding of, 27, 29 vs. laughter, 6 zaniness, 42 Incongruity theory, 10–11 Irony, 13, 18–19, 22, 24–5, 77 Jungen, Brian, 7, 18, 66, 77–8 Kass, Deborah, 8, 24, 70–2 Kitsch, 19, 75, 96, 123 Koons, Jeff, 8, 99–100, 116–18 Puppy Vase (1998), 118 Krafft, Charles, 8, 96 Kruger, Barbara, 7, 52–3 Kunin, Julia, 8, 18, 21, 24, 104–5 Kuspit, Donald, 9, 25, 131 Laughter definition of, 12, 32 and humour, 11

Index and performance, 121–6 and pleasure, 12 purposes of, 12, 132 theories of, 11–12 Levine, Les, 7, 18, 52, 58 Liebowitz, Cary (Candy Ass), 8, 115–16 Lisa, Mona, 33–4 Lou, Liza, 7, 18, 24, 65, 66, 72–3 Lucas, Sarah, 8, 18–19, 21, 24–5, 100–2 Magritte, Rene, 18 Time Transfixed (1938), 18 Marmysz, John, 55 McCarthy, Paul, 8, 22, 95–6 Modernism, 3, 4 Morreall, John, 10, 130 Muniz, Vic, 21, 85 Nauman, Bruce, 7, 19, 52, 57–8 Nilsen, Don and Allen, 2 Nilsson, Gladys, 7, 18, 22–3, 40–2 Me, Moiself, and I (1995), 41 Scene Eye to I (1999), 23 Noganosh, Ron, 8, 17, 76–7 Oldenburg, Claus, 24 Oleszko, Pat, 8, 18, 124–5 Garden Variety Glad-He-Ate-Her (1999), 125 Onofrio, Judy, 8, 18, 24, 66, 74–5 Three Jugglers (2004), 75 Oppenheim, Meret, 18 Otterness, Tom, 8, 87–8 Free Money (on Park Avenue) (2001), 88 Oursler, Tony, 18, 61–3 Blob (2004), 62 Paradox, 13, 18–19, 22, 24, 131 Parody, 13–16 Performance art, 121–6

Pop art, 23 Pop surrealism, 26, 47 Postmodernism, 3, 24–5, 28, 66 Prince, Richard, 8, 19, 107–8 Public spectacle, 121–6 Pun, 13, 17, 22, 51–64, 78, 131 Relief theory, 10 Rockwell, Norman, xi, 15, 37 Triple Self-Portrait (1960), 14 Connoisseur (1962), 15 Rosen, Kay, 7, 18–9, 53–5 Edgar Degas (1987), 54 Rossi, Barbara, 23 Samaras, Isabel, 8, 17, 19, 114–15 Satire, 13, 16, 22, 24, 114–15 Saul, Peter, 7, 17, 22, 42 Schorr, Todd, 19 Semerau, Russel, 8, 102–4 Big Mama (1993), 103 Sensationalism, 25 Sex and humour, 93–108 in art, 93–109 Shag, see Agle, Josh Sharf, Kenny, 18, 26, 47–8 Sherman, Cindy, 7, 19, 43–5 Shrigley, David, 7, 18, 61 One day a big wind will come and… (1997), 61 Simmons, Laurie, 8, 80–1 Skoglund, Sandy, 8, 66, 73–4 Smiles definition of, 31 famous, 33–4 historical smiles, 35–6 history of, 33 Sociological theory, 10–11 Steinberg, Saul, 8, 19, 67–8

155

156 Superiority theory, 10–11 Surrealism, 20, 31 Terms of humour, 12–13 Theories of humour, 1, 9, 10–11 of laughter, 11–12 Trumble, Angus, 31–2 Visual humour appreciating, 29–30

Art and Laughter challenges of, 26–9 kinds of, 13–9 Warbuton, Nigel, 7 Warhol, Andy, 23, 71 Wegman, William, 18–9, 114–15 Williams, Robert, 26 Wirsum, Karl, 7, 18, 23, 38–40 Plug Bug (1992), 39 Ziv, Avner, 11