The Artist's Joke

Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art

by Jennifer Higgie (Editor)

Jokes and humor in avant-garde and contemporary art, as discussed by writers and artists ranging from Freud and Picasso to Andrea Fraser, the Guerilla Girls, and Slavoj Žižek. Ever since Freud's Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious appeared in 1905, humor both light and dark has frequently surfaced as a subversive, troubling, or liberating element in art. The Artist's Joke surveys the rich and diverse uses of humor by avant-garde and contemporary artists. The texts collected in this new reader from London's Whitechapel Gallery examine what André Breton called the “lightning bolt” of the unsettlingly comic, as seen in the anarchic wordplay of Duchamp, Picasso, the Dadaists, and Surrealists; Pop's fetish for kitsch and the comic strip; Bruce Nauman's sinister clowns and twisted puns; Richard Prince's joke paintings; art ambushed by feminist wit, from the Dadaism of Hannah Höch in the 1920s to the politicized conceptualism of Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger in the 1980s; the serenely uncanny in Mike Kelley's installations and the risibly grotesque in Paul McCarthy's; and the strangely comic scenarios of artists as various as Maurizio Cattelan, Andrea Fraser, Raymond Pettibon, and David Shrigley. Artists' writings are accompanied and contextualized by the work of critics and thinkers including Freud, Bergson, Hélène Cixous, Slavoj Žižek, Jörg Heiser, Jo Anna Isaak, and Ralph Rugoff. Jennifer Higgie is the coeditor of frieze magazine. She has published writings on such contemporary artists as Ricky Swallow, Magnus Von Plessen, and David Noonan. Artists surveyed include Leonora Carrington, Maurizio Cattelan, Marcel Duchamp, Marlene Dumas, Fischli & Weiss, Andrea Fraser, the Guerilla Girls, Hannah Höch, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Barbara Kruger, Sarah Lucas, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenberg, Raymond Pettibon, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Richard Prince, Arnulf Rainer, Ad Reinhardt, ED Ruscha, Carolee Schneemann, David Shrigley, Robert Smithson, Annikia Ström, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol Writers includeHugo Ball, Henri Bergson, André Breton, Hélène Cixous, Sigmund Freud, Jörg Heiser, Dave Hickey, Jo Anna Isaak, Ralph Rugoff, Peter Schjeldahl, Sheena Wagstaff, Hamza Walker, Slavoj Žižek

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Humor

Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

Reviews

[Aslı Can]

I didn't like the way of editor chooses the texts. I think it could be more complete compilation thereby chooses more proper texts.

[Jairo Salazar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly good. For those thinking they were going to find a great book on witty jokes... I am sorry. The MIT series clearly states that this is a series that integrates anthology texts on different subjects dealing with contemporary art issues. BUT... Seems a bit absurd to talk about artists and their ouvre and not to include images of them. Makes it extremely boring and not interesting at all. I congratulate the first half of the book, but the second half lacks of consistency.

[Ely · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the things in here were pretty interesting, even if they were kind of strange. I'm confused about a couple of things; what do most of these essays have to do with humour? And the ones that make sense in that context don't really make sense in the context of the art world. Nothing really connects any of the essays apart from maybe passing mentions and eras. Like I said, most of them were interesting at least.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book and trying to get a lot out of it is like going to a cocktail party where only hors d'oeurves are served and expecting to get full. There are some tasty morsels within, but they only make you want more. Also, this book is strange, there are interviews with artists who might be thought of as humorous, but there is very little that is actually funny or really goes in very much depth questioning the relationship between humor and art. For me the stand out essays were the ones by: Kristine Stiles, Peter Schjeldahl, Mike Kelley, Dave Hickey, Helene Cixious, and Tom Morton.

[Megan]

a pretty anthology of writing on humor/the joke/and art.

[Brian]

This book features a concise & incisive 1995 review of David Shrigley's artwork.

[Rob]

so far this is flippin weird, not funny, and not helpful. who wants to read what sigmund freud has to say about humor?

[Lindsay Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a book on a joke, this is pretty dry.

[Norman Conquest · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must-read for all Beuyscouts.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

WE did it! We finished this book. 15 months later.

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

more about how marginalized groups used humor as a strategy in contemp art.