Humor
Wit, jokes, absurdity and satire in art, from painted proverbs to objects that refuse to behave.
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About
Humour in art ranges from gentle wit to savage satire. Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Netherlandish Proverbs (1559) crams more than a hundred sayings into one village, with people banging their heads against walls, and Jan Steen's rowdy households made ‘a Jan Steen household’ Dutch shorthand for a chaotic home.
Modern humour often lies in objects that refuse to behave. Man Ray glued a row of tacks to the base of a flat iron in Cadeau (1921), and the designers Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni mounted a tractor seat on a steel spring for the Mezzadro stool (1957). Peter Fischli and David Weiss filmed a chain reaction of tyres, candles and kettles in The Way Things Go (1987), and Erwin Wurm's One Minute Sculptures ask people to balance buckets and fruit on their bodies. Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts ran for nearly fifty years with a wistful wit of its own.
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Hybrids and Imaginary Creatures
Implied Narrative
Improbable Physics
Individual Portrait
Industry
Infographics and Diagrams
Institutional Critique
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Interlaced Bodies
Intersectionality
Kawaii
Kitsch
Landscape and Nature Photography
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Line, Form, and Color
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