When applied to contemporary cultural politics

but it reminds us to laugh at what’s stupid

Francisco de Goya. “Asta su abuelo (And So Was His Grandfather)” in “Los Caprichos” (Madrid, 1799). (National Gallery of Art)

canada goose clearance sale Goya’s “Ya van desplumados (There They Go Plucked),” 1797/1798 etching, burnished aquatint and drypoint. (National Gallery of Art) canada goose clearance sale

canadian goose jacket The only time I laughed out loud while viewing the National Gallery of Art’s “Sense of Humor” exhibition was at one of Goya’s biting satirical broadsides, known as “Los caprichos.” The artist’s aquatint canada goose outlet reviews from the late 18th century is among the most familiar images in this museum survey of comic drawings, prints and works on paper. Goya’s caprichos mocked the foibles of Spanish society, especially the pretension of its upper classes and the superstition and ignorance that cut across all social strata. The etching shows an ass with long ears, dressed in fine clothes, sitting on a chair, flashing a smug, self satisfied smile, while perusing a book filled with images of other asses. The title is: “And so was his grandfather.” canadian goose jacket

canada goose clearance The fun of the joke dissipates upon explanation: Aristocrats who slaver over their own pedigree are more ridiculous than barnyard animals. But what remains, more than two centuries later, is the comic look of utter stupidity on the canada goose outlet uk ass’s face. At a moment when we have become terribly self conscious about humor, especially how it often smuggles into polite discourse canada goose outlet store uk the most odious forms of bigotry and exclusion, this image remains funny in a mostly innocent way. It transfers human folly onto animals, thus distancing it slightly, and it aims its barb at something that is still commonly felt to be a vice; that is, a moral failing that is within our capacity to remedy. canada goose clearance

That distinguishes it from much of the rest canada goose outlet sale of what is on view in this small but satisfying exhibition, which surveys visual humor, from a small drawing by Leonardo’s studio to the work of the Guerrilla Girls, feminist artists who cogently skewer the reflexively male centric art establishment. Most of the older images aren’t particularly funny anymore, not just because the social context has been lost, but because the humor now seems cruel. Artists regularly mocked people they deemed ugly, bodies they considered deformed, and vices, such as drunkenness or gluttony, that we understand as physiological afflictions, not moral failings. If you don’t you think big noses or hunched backs or fat men lying inebriated on the ground are funny, then most of this show isn’t funny at all.

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canada goose coats on sale Guerrilla Girls. “The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist,” 1988. (National Gallery of Art) canada goose coats on sale

That’s only canada goose outlet canada goose outlet parka to be expected. A museum of humor, if it were comprehensive and unflinching canada goose outlet online uk in its catalogue of all the things that once made us giggle, would be no laughing matter. In his 1900 “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic,” the French philosopher Henri Bergson pointed to three fundamental characteristics of humor: It is limited to the realm of the human; it is intellectual, meaning things are funny without reference to canada goose outlet feelings; and it is fundamentally social and requires an audience. The second of these, that it is primarily intellectual, is perhaps the most important of his insights. Bergson says of laughter, “Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion.”

buy canada goose jacket cheap There is an important distinction in this, and one that has canada goose outlet nyc ramifications for contemporary debates about humor. Bergson isn’t saying that laughter is by definition cruel, only canada goose jacket outlet that it canada goose outlet in usa operates outside the canada goose outlet uk sale realm of things like pity, sympathy and fellow feeling. We laugh with the thinking part of our brain, not the feeling part. Memories of Christmas morning, for example, might warm our hearts; but seen dispassionately from the outside, the whole frenzied spectacle is bizarre and absurd and delightfully funny. “Highly emotional canada goose factory outlet souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every event would be sentimentally prolonged and re echoed, would neither know nor understand laughter.” buy canada goose jacket cheap

Roger Brown. “The Jim and Tammy Show,” 1987. (National Gallery of Art)

canada goose store Bergson’s insight adds nuance to Baudelaire’s view of the comic as essential to our fallen condition: In paradise, there is no need or occasion for laughter. When applied to contemporary cultural politics, Bergson confirms what is sometimes seen as a fatal indictment of liberalism, that it is humorless. Of course it tends to be humorless, or at least very self conscious about humor, because underlying the liberal impulse is a desire to expand ideas of inclusion, sympathy and human understanding. The liberal impulse not to laugh, even to scold others for laughing, is a natural extension of what the liberal mind feels to be an enlightened understanding of a welcoming social order. canada goose store

cheap Canada Goose The cultural divide in America today cuts across old ideas about humor in complex ways. Late night talk show comics have a monopoly on one kind of humor, generally from the center left side of the discourse, while the outer reaches of the canada goose outlet new york city academic left often seem to go well past an canada goose black friday sale aversion to cruel humor and into the gray realms of the sour and saturnine. Meanwhile, the far right has developed a fascinating and deeply subversive form of satire, based on embracing its own caricature, often unconsciously. When two men were canada goose outlet store photographed wearing “I’d Rather be a Russian canada goose outlet black friday than a Democrat” T shirts at a rally for President Trump, the reaction from much of the country was one of disgust. cheap Canada Goose

canada goose uk outlet Richard Hamilton. “The critic laughs,” 1968. (National Gallery of Art) canada goose uk outlet

cheap canada goose uk If you think that satire is fundamentally a form of social critique, that it must have a purpose or an idea behind it, then these T shirts don’t seem much like satire. But satire is also used as a social tool, to divide those canada goose outlet online who get the joke from the those who don’t and make the latter look ridiculous. These T shirts are that kind of satire. They are a provocation, meant canada goose outlet canada to unmask those who disagree as dull and humorless, even if that comes at the cost of two men endorsing a message that they might not believe, or are too stupid to understand. cheap canada goose uk

Canada Goose online That word, stupid, is important, and it is the best hope for humor in an age that seems increasingly humorless. Goya’s ass is still funny because stupidity is still funny, and it must always remain funny. Mere ignorance, a vice that some people can’t help because they lack access to education, is excusable. But people who are willfully ignorant, or who embrace unreason https://www.winterdownparkas.com canada goose outlet shop because it serves their immediate advantage, are stupid in a way worth deploring with all the available tools of discourse, including humor. Canada Goose online

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Canada Goose Jackets The ass in Goya’s image is one of several that appear in the published volume of “Los caprichos,” including in five consecutive plates that mock the arts, teaching and medicine. These are followed by perhaps the most famous image of all, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters,” an iconic representation of an Enlightenment fear. Perhaps the contiguity isn’t an accident: Vigilance against stupidity is essential in all aspects of life, even among those who may be convinced that what they do is entirely in the service of humanity. Hypocrisy is everywhere. Canada Goose Jackets

uk canada goose outlet Walking through this exhibition might leave you, at first, with a feeling familiar from the everyday world: What if we run out of things to laugh at? So much humor truly is cruel, based on tribal feelings and the ugly need to differentiate the self from a social mass that feels overwhelming. But this anxiety is easily exploited by those who resist the idea of a truly goose outlet canada inclusive society. If we can’t laugh at misogynist jokes, or racist jokes, or homophobic jokes, or jokes about people with disabilities, than perhaps we can’t laugh at all. But Goya’s ass allays that fear. uk canada goose outlet

Canada Goose Online Indeed, although humor is subject to an ongoing process of obsolescence jokes become unfunny as we advance as a society it is also a realm of perpetual renewal. We can laugh at ourselves, and productively. And we can laugh at stupidity, which is cunning and powerful and reborn everyday in devious new guises. Canada Goose Online

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