In 1852 in the USA W. Thackeray gave lectures "English satirists of the XVIIIth century. He himself was a well-known satirist and caricaturist, he made illustrations for his book ( "A book of Snobs", satirical stories). He drew hundreds of caricatures, a lot of funny pictures of his friends. Thackeray also worked in the "Punch" magazine.
E.T. A. Hoffmann was also a good artist. His fiction as well as his drawings is ironical, grotesque, and fantastic. When Hoffmann worked in Poznan he ridiculed the local aristocrats, after that he was sent into exile to Polotsk. During the French occupation Hoffmann drew anti-Napoleon caricatures.
The caricature of the British socialists with B. Shaw among them drawn by H. Wales is well-known. By the way B. Shaw was a witty man, the author of the "Shawisms". Once during a dinner he saw the best caricature of himself. It was a mirror.
The contemporaries valued A. Beardsley's wittiness. "Although the history of grotesque is not written, it is illustrated by Beardsley already". On one caricature he depicted Raphael, Titsiano, and Mantegna coming out of the National Gallery. Buffoonery was the important element in Picasso's works. Sad humour is in the works of E. Munch. H. Toulouse-Lautrec included graphic caricature in his pictorial art. The works of A. Modigliani and Soutine can not be imagined without humour.
On one of the drawings E. Lear pictured himself as a creature with glasses on the beak, with the donkey's eyes, dragon-fly-wing, kangaroo legs, a fish tail, and in a fashionable stretching waist-coat.
L.Carrol, Maupassant, Baudelaire, J. Verne, V. Hugo also were the painters. A. Breton once said that humour was the main nerve of today's art which tries to be light and ironical. The art of Dali's surrealism bears the philosophical humour: fish walking in the corridor; clock trickling from the dead trees... Dali was a jester in the art and his own life. Remember his frock-coat covered by 88 small bottles of liquor with a dead fly in each. Such costume reminds an old engraving - a young man in the trousers- jugs with bottles, bunches of grapes, and bells - a symbol of new grape wine.
The grotesque fantasies of R. Magritte are also remarkable. On his painting it rains out of umbrellas, the clouds-stone bread leaves fly in the sky, the coffins sit on the chairs.
If humour and satire could make one person it would be...not even Charlie Chaplin though he drew caricatures but rather Federico Fellini. In his youth together with friends from the "Mark Aurelius" magazine Fellini opened a "Laughing Faces Shop". It was very popular especially with the American soldiers who were always drunk and merry. In Paris getting ready for the film "Clowns" Fellini thought of an episode suitable for a caricature: a film character travelling in a town on a taxi saw funny features of the passers-by - old ladies in the foolish hats, women with bags on their heads to cover the hair from the rain, a bishop-mummy in the car...A lot of his drawings which are collected into the album are full of humour. The museums of Vatican bought all frivolous Fellini's caricatures, and do not expose them to the public. A locked smile is the last bitter joke of those who were laughed at by Fellini.
1. W. Thackeray. Sketch.
2. E. Caruso. Self-caricature.
4. E. Hoffmann. Two eldest counselors of
Prussian region administration in Warsaw.
3. H. Bosch. Monsters and evil powers. Detail.
5. E. Lear. Miss from Bugaino. 1846.
9. F. Leger. Caricature of Ch. Chaplin.0
6. K. Chapek. Caricature of B. Shaw.
8. J. Lennon. Illustration.
10. J. Cocteau. Caricature of S. Dyagilev. Early
XXth century
7. O'Henry. A Doctor.
By Dmitry Moskin
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