This is the first book to take seriously (though not too seriously) the surprisingly neglected role of humour in art. "Art and Laughter" looks back to comic masters such as Hogarth and Daumier and to Dada, Surrealism and Pop Art, asking what makes us laugh and why. It explores the use of comedy in art from satire and irony to pun, parody and black and bawdy humour. Encouraging laughter in the hallowed space of the gallery, Sheri Klein praises the contemporary artist as 'clown' - often overlooked in favour of the role of artist as 'serious' commentator - and takes us on a tour of the comic work of Red Grooms, Cary Leibowitz, 'The Hairy Who', Richard Prince, Bruce Nauman, Jeff Koons, William Wegman, Vik Muniz and many more. She seeks out those rare smiles in art - from the Mona Lisa onwards - and highlights too the pleasures of the cute, the camp and the downright kitsch.

“Bravo! I’ll say nothing funny about it, for it is a superior piece of work.” —P. J. O’Rourke “F. H. Buckley’s The Morality of Laughter is at once a humorous look at serious matters and a serious book about humor.” —Crisis Magazine “Buckley has written a . ne and funny book that will be read with pleasure and instruction.” —First Things “. . . written elegantly and often wittily. . . .” —National Post “. . . a fascinating philosophical exposition of laughter. . . .” —National Review “. . . at once a wise and highly amusing book.” —Wall Street Journal Online “. . . a useful reminder that a cheery society is a healthy one.” —Weekly Standard

WINNER — 2020 Choice’s Outstanding Academic Title During the Mao years, laughter in China was serious business. Simultaneously an outlet for frustrations and grievances, a vehicle for socialist education, and an object of official study, laughter brought together the political, the personal, the aesthetic, the ethical, the affective, the physical, the aural, and the visual. The ten essays in Maoist Laughter convincingly demonstrate that the connection between laughter and political culture was far more complex than conventional conceptions of communist indoctrination can explain. Their sophisticated readings of a variety of genres—including dance, cartoon, children’s literature, comedy, regional oral performance, film, and fiction—uncover many nuanced innovations and experiments with laughter during what has been too often misinterpreted as an unrelentingly bleak period. In Mao’s China, laughter helped to regulate both political and popular culture and often served as an indicator of shifting values, alliances, and political campaigns. In exploring this phenomenon, Maoist Laughter is a significant correction to conventional depictions of socialist China. “Maoist Laughter brings together prominent scholars of contemporary China to make a timely and original contribution to the burgeoning field of Maoist literature and culture. One of its main strengths lies in the sheer number of genres covered, including dance, traditional Chinese performance, visual arts, film, and literature. The focus on humor in the Maoist period gives an exciting new perspective from which to understand cultural production in twentieth-century China.” —Krista Van Fleit, University of South Carolina “An illuminating study of the culture of laughter in the Maoist period. Focusing on much-neglected topics such as satire, jokes, and humor, this book is an essential contribution to our understanding of how socialist culture actually ‘worked’ as a coherent, dynamic, and constructive life experience. The chapters show that traditional culture could almost blend perfectly with revolutionary mission.” —Xiaomei Chen, University of California, Davis

Permission to Laugh explores the work of three generations of German artists who, beginning in the 1960s, turned to jokes and wit in an effort to confront complex questions regarding German politics and history. Gregory H. Williams highlights six of them—Martin Kippenberger, Isa Genzken, Rosemarie Trockel, Albert Oehlen, Georg Herold, and Werner Büttner—who came of age in the mid-1970s in the art scenes of West Berlin, Cologne, and Hamburg. Williams argues that each employed a distinctive brand of humor that responded to the period of political apathy that followed a decade of intense political ferment in West Germany. Situating these artists between the politically motivated art of 1960s West Germany and the trends that followed German unification in 1990, Williams describes how they no longer heeded calls for a brighter future, turning to jokes, anecdotes, and linguistic play in their work instead of overt political messages. He reveals that behind these practices is a profound loss of faith in the belief that art has the force to promulgate political change, and humor enabled artists to register this changed perspective while still supporting isolated instances of critical social commentary. Providing a much-needed examination of the development of postmodernism in Germany, Permission to Laugh will appeal to scholars, curators, and critics invested in modern and contemporary German art, as well as fans of these internationally renowned artists.

Laugh, Think Neutral, and Save Your Life uses laughter, spirituality, and yoga to help to innovate, be entrepreneurial, and live a full life.

In Devastation and Laughter, Annie Gérin explores the use of satire in the visual arts, theatre, cinema, and the circus under Lenin and Stalin. Gérin traces the rise and decline of the genre and argues that the use of satire in official Soviet art and propaganda was neither marginal nor untheorized. The author sheds light on the texts written in the 1920s and 1930s by Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment, and the impact his writings had on satirists. While the Avant-Garde and Socialist Realism were necessarily forward-looking and utopian, satire afforded artists the means to examine critically past and present subjects, themes, and practice. Devastation and Laughter is the first work to bring Soviet theoretical writings on the use of satire to the attention of scholars outside of Russia. By introducing important bodies of work that have largely been overlooked in the fields of art history and film and theatre history, Annie Gérin provides a nuanced and alternative reading of early Soviet art.

This is the first book to take seriously (though not too seriously) the surprisingly neglected role of humour in art. "Art and Laughter" looks back to comic masters such as Hogarth and Daumier and to Dada, Surrealism and Pop Art, asking what makes us laugh and why. It explores the use of comedy in art from satire and irony to pun, parody and black and bawdy humour. Encouraging laughter in the hallowed space of the gallery, Sheri Klein praises the contemporary artist as 'clown' - often overlooked in favour of the role of artist as 'serious' commentator - and takes us on a tour of the comic work of Red Grooms, Cary Leibowitz, 'The Hairy Who', Richard Prince, Bruce Nauman, Jeff Koons, William Wegman, Vik Muniz and many more. She seeks out those rare smiles in art - from the Mona Lisa onwards - and highlights too the pleasures of the cute, the camp and the downright kitsch.

This book is a philosophical investigation of the significance of humor and laughter, examining its relation to other human phenomena including truth, nihilism, dreams, friendship, intimacy, aesthetic experience, self-transcendence and education. The author addresses the relative neglect of humor and laughter among philosophers of education with this volume, where the focus is on the significance of humor and laughter for human flourishing. Central questions are threaded through this work: What does the study of humor and laughter bring to philosophy and specifically to philosophy of education? How is humorist thinking different from other modes of human knowing? What might happen if we were to respond to the absurdity of human existence with humor and laughter? What insights can be learned from a philosophical investigation of humor in relationship to other human phenomena such as dreams, friendship, intimacy, aesthetic experience and self-transcendence? And, finally, how can humor and laughter enhance human existence and flourishing? The author presents groundbreaking insights into what can be gained from a study of humor and laughter about human existence in general and flourishing in particular. This work will be of interest to philosophers, especially philosophers of education, as well as to teachers and educators. Its unique blend of philosophical investigation and humorous discourse is both a rigorous and accessible analysis of humor.

Can you really die from laughing too hard? Between 1870 and 1920, hundreds of women suffered such a fate—or so a slew of sensationalist obituaries would have us believe. How could laughter be fatal, and what do these reports of women’s risible deaths tell us about the politics of female joy? Maggie Hennefeld reveals the forgotten histories of “hysterical laughter,” exploring how women’s amusement has been theorized and demonized, suppressed and exploited. In nineteenth-century medicine and culture, hysteria was an ailment that afflicted unruly women on the cusp of emotional or nervous breakdown. Cinema, Hennefeld argues, made it possible for women to laugh outrageously as never before, with irreversible social and political consequences. As female enjoyment became a surefire promise of profitability, alarmist tales of women laughing themselves to death epitomized the tension between subversive pleasure and its violent repression. Hennefeld traces the social politics of women’s laughter from the heyday of nineteenth-century sentimentalism to the collective euphoria of early film spectatorship, traversing contagious dancing outbreaks, hysteria photography, madwomen’s cackling, cinematic close-ups, and screenings of slapstick movies in mental asylums. Placing little-known silent films and an archive of remarkable, often unusual texts in conversation with affect theory, comedy studies, and feminist film theory, this book makes a timely case for the power of hysterical laughter to change the world.

One thing magicians like to hear even more than oohs and ahhs is laugher. They know laughter means a happy, satisfied audience, which means more bookings and higher fees. If youd like to add new laughs to your act but have despaired of finding suitable material take heart. Here is the resource countless magicians have been waiting for: Carroll Lisbys Presto! Laughter: More Than 2,800 New Laugh-Lines for Your Favorite Magic Tricks. Not a batch of old, recycled jokes, Presto! Laughter is instead a goldmine of magic-themed laugh-lines that you can drop in at appropriate times during a performance.