Gerald Purdy, The Avant Garde, 1990, oil on panel, 11x14”, Courtesy the artist.

Visual humorists elicit laughter by presenting inverted pictures of the serious world.
The writer Balthasar Gracian once observed that “sometimes the things of this world can be truly perceived only by looking at them backwards.”
Whether in literature or in visual art, the term symbolic inversion points to a form of creative expression in which commonly held cultural concepts, values and norms are inverted or contradicted. The artist’s world therefore is a reversible world — a world viewed and analyzed with the telescope turned backwards. Images conjured by inversion, contradiction, free-association and incongruous analogy reflect the idiosyncratic modus operandi of comic creativity. Witticisms and jokes are products of perspective reversal, of twisting things around. This mode of thinking — of turning the world upside down — fires the procreative brain synapses of the artful jesters. The comically-inclined artist, it seems, cannot originate a single thought without having an opposite or contrary one emerge at the same time. Fortunately for these people (and for us) this pathological affliction can be developed into a highly effective work ethic.

Robert Hudson, Hot Water 1982, steel and paint

The universe of humor is made up of many satellites such as wit, whimsy, irony, parody, satire, and comic absurdity.
By definition, visual humor is “funny art” but it is never funny by itself. Because it is content-oriented, that is, about something, it is used by artists to produce not only comic associations, but not-so-comic witticisms which deal with social and political issues. Clearly, the genres of whimsy and comic nonsense have no ax to grind; their raison d’etre is to simply provide a few laughs and momentary diversion from the world’s troubles and woes. Parody and satire, on the other hand, are genres that incite laughter with wry humor, but at the same time tweak our conscience by holding forth a mirror which reflects our diminished humanity and its foibles. When Confucius said, “an ounce of mirth is worth a pound of sorrow,” he alluded to humor’s value as a restorative and sustainer of psychological health. Plato once remarked , “serious things cannot be understood without laughable things,” alluding to humor’s importance as a learning tool. The fact of the matter is that visual humor is directed to both objectives, diversion and education, and provides an essential service on both counts.

Each of us invents humor as we discover the humor invented by others.
Accordingly, each work of visual humor is a conundrum waiting to be solved, an invitation to the viewer to engage in a participatory experience. For visual humor to triumph, however, it must succeed in enticing the viewer into a willing and constructive collaboration. Smiles and laughter in the gallery therefore, are signs of successful collaborations; they denote an admiration for the clever witticism of the visual joke, and at the same time, satisfaction with one’s own cleverness in seeing the joke. Regardless of their difference, most forms of humor work the same, by analogy and metaphor: they use the images of one reality to describe by implied comparison some other reality. Visual humor may sometimes be cruel but, paradoxically, it is invariably thoughtful insofar as it always allows the viewer to have the last laugh.

© 2006 Nicholas Roukes. All Rights Reserved