Caricature, Comic Strips, and Beyond: Humor in the Art and Visual Culture in the Modern Age

3 units

This course will consider the development and role of humor in the art and visual culture in the modern era, from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the present day. We will explore this thematic as it develops in several countries, including Great Britain, France, the United States, and Mexico, focusing especially on resonant mass-produced forms that exploded alongside the emergence of an urban modern culture. The course will discuss developments such as the emergence of the satirical journal, the comic strip, and early animated cartoons, as well as the role of humor for well-known artists such as Winslow Homer, Marcel Duchamp, and Cindy Sherman. It will also consider the diverse theoretical, cultural, and social roles that visual humor has played in relation to politics, gender, race, and class. Students will learn the technological, economic, and social factors contributing to the development of comic forms, and will come to understand visual humor as an unstable and contradictory category of art that has alternatively acted as both a subversive and hegemonic cultural force.