On the cover of the book of parodies by A. Arkhangelsky one can see a drawing of an author's smiling face, and one eye is sharply magnified, as if he looks through a magnifying glass... Parody is always based on hyperbolae, on sharpness.

In 1840s O. Daumier tried to interpret ancient myths with the help of parody. Comparing ancient Greek heroes to people of his time the artist depicted a sharp contrast between idealizing academic art and living reality.

The beginning of the XXth century was marked with the carnival freedom of parodying everything. Thus, N. Evreinov mocked Italian opera in the theatre "Distorting Mirror". One of the performances was "Kitchen of Laughter". At the beginning of his career as a puppet theatre director S. Obraztsov created caricatured puppets of some people of art.(e.g. Nemirovich-Danchenko). He imitated not only the appearance, but speech, as well, mocked stock phrases and manners. "The epoch before October 1917 blessed the genre of parody, it ridiculed itself. Merry world of its stories and drawings laughs, banters, ridicules, mocks, and holds up for derision everything." (Sasha Chyorny). Literary parodies were very popular, the most famous writers among numerous humorists were A. Izmailov, Avel, A. Bukhov ("Parodies of Futuristic Poems"), E. Vensky

("My Hoof" -a literary-satiric encyclopedia").

In 1912 a book "Art Treasures in Caricatures" was published, it carried a series of drawings by the artists of "Satiricon"; there were parodies of great masterpieces like "Mephistopheles" by P. Antokolsky, "Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci, etc. Later, literary and art parody was widely published in "Krokodil".

The word "parody" originated from Greek "against", and "song"; it means something opposite this or that piece of art. Parody can humorous and friendly (e.g. pictures of L. Samoilov); it does not try to make a monkey out of the work of art. On the other hand, satiric parody criticizes and laughs at deride. (a series of portraits by Kukriniksi "From Renaissance to Abstractionism", 1958). Basically, parody uses the same expressive devices as in the original work, only exaggerates them.

Literary parody has long history begun in Ancient Egypt and Greece (War of Mice and Frogs" - a parody of "Iliad"). Ancient Russian parody was a part of "laughing world", its goal world was to create anti-world, the world of absurd and foolishness. ("Kalyazin Petition", "Service to a Drinking House", "Ridiculous Prescriptions and Advice").

Caricature parody is younger. Its founders are P. Bruegel and F. Goya. Perhaps, anamorphosis influenced caricature greatly; Leonardo da Vinci. Durer, and Holbein made a valuable contribution to the development of Western caricature and left some examples of anamorphic drawings. Many humorous artists think of M. Eshere, a master of graphic paradoxes, as the person to have inspired them. It is quite funny, but sometimes parodies happened to become more viable than the original. Who remembers Benediktov now? But thanks to his ever-forgotten works Kozma Prutkov was born. Just few people remembers the magazine of the 1920s "Buzotyor", but everybody knows the character of Ilf and Petrov - Nikifor Lyapis.