In 1967 the conceptual artist Bruce Nauman made a neon spiral in blue and pink that said, tongue in cheek, “The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths.”
That was funny, if you got the self-effacing irony.Then in 2008, another artist named Bert Rodriquez made a suspiciously similar spiral of neon in blues and pinks. It said, “The True Artist Makes Useless Shit for Rich People to Buy.” That was funny, too, especially if you knew that Nauman, by poking fun, had sold his neon works to rich people.
For better or worse, the question of humor in art has tended to be like the proverbial tiger chasing its tail. One artist makes jokes on another artist—making jokes on other artists. Most art does not intend to be funny, and perhaps that’s way the wider topic is addressed only occasionally.
This month, at least, the venerable Artnews devotes its year-end issue to “What’s So Funny,” and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is getting attention for its “Infinite Jest” exhibit of satirical prints across history. Everyone realizes that most humor is not strictly visual (in a fine art sense), and when it is, it’s usually in the form of comics or sit-com “sight gags” (something to see that evokes immediate laughter).
As the “Infinite Jest” exhibit suggests, the best documented form of visual humor is the satirical drawing. Every day, newspaper cartoonists still do this, a tradition that goes back to such fine art greats as Leonardo da Vinci and Francisco Goya. Satire usually relies on caricature or exaggeration, or by turning people into animals or objects to make an editorial point. Doing this well can be a rare talent, says graphic artist Steven Heller in his book Design Humor, but it makes communication easier: “Humor lowers defenses, releases steam, and excites the mind.”
Humorists from Mark Twain to Woody Allen have warned about dissecting humor, but it’s been done nevertheless. The still-dominant “incongruity” theory of humor was well put by the French essayist Pascal long ago: “Nothing produces laughter more than a disproportion between that which one expects, and that which one sees.” All rapid surprises are not pleasant, of course, but humor fills this benign role (with punch lines, timing, etc.) Two other theories are common, that humor offers “relief” (a Freudian anti-repression idea) and that it allows us to feel superior, since much humor is about laughing down at the absurdity and misfortune of others.
Traditionally, art has generated amusement through straight-forward images that create surprising incongruity or exaggeration. The painter Red Grooms’s large 2003 canvas, “'Manet at the Met,” is funny for its ability to caricature every kind of city person who jams into big art museums. This is not laugh-out-loud humor. But the pleasure is augmented by Grooms’ painting and rendering skills.
Today we have postmodern artistic humor, according to Sheri Klein in her book Art and Laugher. Since the 1980s, she says, art humor has increased by way of more literary forms, or use of events and technologies. “Postmodern artists my not produce any objects at all,” Klein says. Postmodern art humorists often look like entertainers, a long tradition in cabaret or theater. Meanwhile, if there are four uses of humor—group solidarity, reduction of malice, pleasure, and criticism of norms—the last two best characterize postmodern art, Klein suggests.
Postmodern humor may be a revival of “blague,” a French term for a condescending prank. The revival may be a mystery. “Why has the past century in particular been rich in jokes, hoaxes, forged identities, subversive graffiti, and mass and solo performances with an aim to shock or annoy, as well as shenanigans that some would be loath to qualify as art?” art writer Ann Landi asks in Artnews. The instigators of pranks as a form of art claim that they provide helpful commentary on problems in society, and problems in the art world, at least by getting attention. One art theorist is advocating “prank theory” to explain these in and outs, if they need explaining.
Landi cites art historian Simon Anderson’s assertion that humor is probably hidden across all of art history, even in its great works. We just don’t know the times, clues, and incongruities—indeed punch lines—that might have existed, say, in the Sistine Chapel in its day. “I think there are jokes going on throughout the history of painting,” Anderson said. Uncovering that context is a challenge, according to the “Infinite Jest” curators. They found “humorous” prints, but could not find an obvious punch line. “We have to dig through the historical record to reconstruct not only the event to which a print refers but also to figure out what people thought about it at the time,” said Nadine Orenstein, the Met’s curator of drawings and prints.
Trying too hard to be funny can backfire. A good deal of contemporary joke-art is hard to “get,” seems forced, or is simply too bitter to be funny. Still, no medicine has a better vehicle than humor. As design guru Heller says, amid the constant parade of art and design books and annuals he sees, the “most memorable” pieces tend to provide humor and information all at once. And it's not easy to do.
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