Caricaturists - Inventors
History knows that some great artists were often not only caricaturists but inventors as well. One of the greatest seers was Leonardo da Vinci who thought of many useful things, but thanks to his sense of humour he did not invent a time-machine although some people dreamed of it and humorous magazines laughed at their optimistic projects. For example, in 1715 Dresden Royal mechanic Gartner proposed a model that looked like a mill and a large millstone. Caricaturists bantered failed inventions but the inventors of weapons were severely criticized. O. Daumier depicted the inventor of a new gun as a maniac and an executioner looking at the battle field. The inventor of "Spanish boot" decorated it with elegance, perhaps he was a kind of "black" humorist. Now this boot is displayed in the museum of torture instruments in Rotenburg...

Technical progress needs paradoxically-minded people - inventors. Caricaturists, being involved into work with humorous design of everyday things, are like inventors. They play an endless game making up fantastic and humorous things: they transform even letters and figures. "Clever" machines in their works are getting kinder, closer to a person, showing their hidden possibilities; in turn, "stupid" machines are shown as anti-human.

In humorous magazines of late XIXth and early XXth century one can find many caricatures of "inventions": a massage-box, a wind-up speaker on the gramophone box, different gear for fishing, gardening and home protecting. ("Budilnik", 1897)

A caricaturist N. Radlov and a writer M. Zotshenko presented an incredible tandem in 1920-1930s. Working together they created a wonderful series of wordy-picture parodies of unsuccessful inventors. Those parodies were printed in humorous magazines under the headings "Science-technical consultation" and "Progress".The result of their mutual work was the publication of albums "Funny Projects" and "Happy Ideas". N. Radlov's pictures were devoted to different absurd appliances like a lift-rocket, a shabby boot, a home-brew apparatus, or a croquet mallet...About home-brew, by the way. In one of the I. Malutin's caricatures published in "Krokodil", a reader saw a "technical wonder" invented by an artist, then the reader sent a letter of gratitude for the idea of a home-brew apparatus.

Any caricaturist has "invented" something. Kuriniksi turned a bureaucrat into a chair, Nazi leaders - into music instruments. There are interesting drawings by Y. Fedorov ("Well-bred things"), L. Samoilov ("Tables"), I. Durishin, J. Karelman. The caricatures were published in "Literaturnaya Gazeta" ("Literary Newspaper"), "Needle"("Week"), "Izobretatel i Ratsionalizator" ("Inventor and Rationalize"), and "Picker". in 1970s.
 


1. I. Malyutin. Home-brew prose. 1930s.


6. D. Grozdev.


2. N. Radlov. "Funny Projects"


7. Sh. Fukuda.


3. Kukriniksi. A bureaucrat. Detail. 1930.


4. S. Mikhailenko.


5. N. Radlov. 1930.


8. N. Radlov.


By Dmitry Moskin
Information supplied by: http://www.soros.karelia.ru