The Novel Relationships of Images and Ideas
by John Sisko
Humor, like perceptions of beauty and even pornography, depends on the viewers–their memory of images and ideas, their personal and social contexts, and their level of engagement. Humor has many manifestations: it can be easy and lighthearted surprise, it can come out of setting up the viewer?s expectations, then thwarting those expectations, and humor can be a powerful form of social and political critique. Humor is often about an unexpected shift or change in accepted relationships of images or ideas, and often about testing or challenging the viewer?s limits and pushing a bit past the comfort level of the viewing audience. Humor is, ironically, often not funny, as, for example, some political or social satire is often not funny, but bites and unsettles. Humor is about the novel relationships of images and ideas; funny is when people laugh.
Humor in sculpture is a complex and changing theme. This article is not intended to be comprehensive, but the start of a conversation.
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Odd Couplings
by Valerie Carruthers
By More than five thousand years ago the sages of India saw the world as the play of the Divine. Within the play was almost every possible set of the polarities humans create?love and hate, praise and blame, joy and sadness, self and other. If the play was a cosmic joke, the polarities were the punch line. Polarities are maya, the illusion created by mankind?s egocentric mind, which has forgotten its oneness with the Divine. The four artists whose works are discussed here use humor to explore the cosmic play from perspectives that range from the angelic to the grotesque. Their unlikely pairings of concepts, meanings, and figures invite the viewer to make fresh associations.
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Béla Bácsi: Contemporary Realism with a Wink and a Smile
by Fran Severn
Béla Bácsi uses humor as an invitation to engage his sculptures. While some contemporary art can seem intimidating or esoteric to the viewer, Bácsi's humor often suggests a kind of intimacy between himself and the viewer, like a private joke shared between friends, because he executes his work with a gentle hand and a wink and a smile that helps the viewer make a real personal connection to his sculpture.
Bácsi is known for his sculptures of voluptuous, zaftig women in exuberant and luxuriating poses and caricature-like portraits, which reveal the foibles of both self–important people and the common man. While others might see them as a platform for social commentary, Bácsi says, with these works, he has just one intention "to make people smile. However defined, Bácsi thinks humor is an essential element in the social fabric that serves to counterbalance hardships and angst." There is so much devastation in the world.
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Sculpture News
by Staff
From renowned heroes of justice to unsung defenders of the country to obscure champions of everyday life, sculptors celebrated their legacies in bronze. American history and its history makers were the focal point of several outdoor memorials unveiled in the United States in recent months.
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