Humour in art; now and then

17/08/2023

Author: Tammy Woodrow

Everybody loves a ‘Banksy’. Why? It’s the visualized jokery and mockery. The comedy makes it accessible. The political meaning of the artwork is immediately obvious. It’s about the people and for the people. The laughing mirror he holds up shows us in all our ugliness but from a comical angle.

The origins of wit in art can be traced back to as early as the ancient Greeks and Romans who made fun of each other in their plays and on their vases. Prehistoric men and women were most likely also guilty of making amusing cave drawings to pass the time during those long and dark ice age periods.

In modern art, it was certainly the experimental Dadaists who first started to seriously play around with wittiness and absurdism to stick up a middle finger to society. What better way to respond to the disasters of World War I than to laugh it off? We all remember Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ (1917), the urinal that changed art forever.

Since the 1960s Pop artists like Richard Hamilton and his collage ‘Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?’ made fun of consumer culture. The sight of the bodybuilder hiding his manly hood and the go-go dancer on the couch with her nipple decorations amongst their prized possessions in their living room is an iconic image. Humour can convey strong, memorable messages.

And what about the Surrealists? They might not have intended to be funny; they took their art-making very seriously when they talked about allowing the unconscious mind to develop itself. But you can’t help but smile when you look at Rene Margritte’s ‘The Art of living’, 1967, where the usual male figure of a man in a suit is depicted, but here there is a giant orange ball hovering above the collar. Painted on the ball are tiny facial features. Completely ridiculous but a great picture. It’s also an image that would never get to bore you because you would always be racking your brain; what was the painter trying to state here?

In the UK Artists collection of artists, there are a few that also use a touch of wit in their works. Have a look for example at Keith Pointing’s oil paintings. Some of his paintings are so imaginative that you sometimes feel that you are flicking through a Dr Seuss book, but Pointing’s pieces are not aimed at young viewers. Have a closer look at ‘Plenty of Fish’, 2018. Here there is such a clever and witty play around the title and the female organs of the fish. Another one that makes you smile is ‘Looking at you’. The big-eyed fleshy flowers are definitely eying you up.  And ‘Life cycle’ has a hint of Dali-ness to it; like Dali, Keith also likes to place absurd encounters and objects in a mysterious landscape.

So isn’t it a positive thing that artists inject their artworks with absurdity and humour? Can’t we all sometimes use a bit of escapism and laughter during our daily struggles? And when you hang your bit of escapism on the wall, it will always make you smile at the end of a difficult day.

Tammy Woodrow