The notion "black humour" appeared in the XXth century, but its origin is lost in ancient times. To paraphrase Napoleon's words " there is only one step from greatness to laughter" we can say that the same distance is from horror to fun. Laughter - death!

In the XVth century death appeared like a tall and withered skeleton with terrible smile. Smiling and dancing death... Not a single epoch thrust people the idea of mortality like the XVth century. In H. Holbein's graphic series "Danse Macabre" there is an engraving "Skeletons of Mankind" (1525). Traditionally dance was understood as a round dance of death with its victims. In Holbein's character there is nothing horrible, it is more amusing than scary, and the accompanying rhymes are ironic. According to a later J. Chapek's remark "skeletons are always like terrible caricatures of human beings". In Mexico the image of Death is popular in political caricature as a symbol of freedom and protest against violence.

In 1975 V. Sidur created a tragicomic series "Coffin-art" One of his sculptures is "Self-portrait in the coffin with saxophone and in irons". It is an example of philosophical "black humour".Funeral rites of many peoples are accompanied with laughter. " What an odd fish is a deceased: died on Tuesday, should be buried on Wednesday, but he is looking through the window". Tradition of "buffoon" funerals is one of the oldest in Europe. In Austria, for example, there is an obsequial jestery. Vienna's population are crazy about funerals and cemeteries. Josef II in his wish to conduct democratic reforms invented "a multiple-use economical coffin". The people of Vienna could not stand such "black humour", and the emperor's reforms had come to an end.

Laughter and death are inalienable, because these notions are immortal and philosophical.

The first-footers of philosophical "black" humour in graphic were J. Callot, H. Bosch, P. Bruegel, W. Hogarth, and F. Goya.

"Black humour freezes naive smile and gives our mind food". (F. Durrenmatt).Besides "black humour" is fantastic, hallucination prevails in it - houses with eyes instead of windows, mills with hands instead of sail-arms, people-toads, skeletons with dogs sculls.

Love for abnormalities and wonders characterizes folk laughter. One should be wise and ironic to laugh at "black" jokes.