Pursuing a new and timely line of research in world art studies, Humor in Global Contemporary Art is the first edited collection to examine the role of culturally specific humor in contemporary art from a global perspective. Since the 1960s, increasing numbers of artists from around the world have applied humor as a tool for observation, critique, transformation, and debate. Exploring how humorous art produced over the past six decades is anchored in local sociopolitical contexts and translated or misconstrued when exhibited abroad, this book opens new conversations regarding the functioning of humor and the ways in which art travels across the globe. With contributions by an impressive array of internationally based scholars covering six major continental regions, the book is organized into four distinct geographical sections: Africa and the Middle East, Asia and Oceania, South and North America, and Europe. This structure highlights the cultural specificity of each region while the book as a whole offers a critical perspective on the postcolonial, globalized art network. Reflecting on present-day processes of globalization and biennialization, which confront viewers with humorous art from a variety of cultures and countries, this book will provide readers with a culturally sensitive understanding of how humor has become vital to many contemporary artists working in an unprecedentedly interconnected world.

Pursuing a new and timely line of research in world art studies, Humor in Global Contemporary Art is the first edited collection to examine the role of culturally specific humor in contemporary art from a global perspective. Since the 1960s, increasing numbers of artists from around the world have applied humor as a tool for observation, critique, transformation, and debate. Exploring how humorous art produced over the past six decades is anchored in local sociopolitical contexts and translated or misconstrued when exhibited abroad, this book opens new conversations regarding the functioning of humor and the ways in which art travels across the globe. With contributions by an impressive array of internationally based scholars covering six major continental regions, the book is organized into four distinct geographical sections: Africa and the Middle East, Asia and Oceania, South and North America, and Europe. This structure highlights the cultural specificity of each region while the book as a whole offers a critical perspective on the postcolonial, globalized art network. Reflecting on present-day processes of globalization and biennialization, which confront viewers with humorous art from a variety of cultures and countries, this book will provide readers with a culturally sensitive understanding of how humor has become vital to many contemporary artists working in an unprecedentedly interconnected world.

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.

Ever since Freud's Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious appeared in 1905, humor both light and dark has frequently surfaced as a subversive, troubling, or liberating element in art. The Artist's Joke surveys the rich and diverse uses of humor by avant-garde and contemporary artists. The texts collected in this new reader from London's Whitechapel Gallery examine what André Breton called the "lightning bolt" of the unsettlingly comic, as seen in the anarchic wordplay of Duchamp, Picasso, the Dadaists, and Surrealists; Pop's fetish for kitsch and the comic strip; Bruce Nauman's sinister clowns and twisted puns; Richard Prince's joke paintings; art ambushed by feminist wit, from the Dadaism of Hannah Höch in the 1920s to the politicized conceptualism of Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger in the 1980s; the serenely uncanny in Mike Kelley's installations and the risibly grotesque in Paul McCarthy's; and the strangely comic scenarios of artists as various as Maurizio Cattelan, Andrea Fraser, Raymond Pettibon, and David Shrigley. Artists' writings are accompanied and contextualized by the work of critics and thinkers including Freud, Bergson, Hélène Cixous, Slavoj Zizek [haceks over z's], Jörg Heiser, Jo Anna Isaak, and Ralph Rugoff. Jennifer Higgie is the coeditor of frieze magazine. She has published writings on such contemporary artists as Ricky Swallow, Magnus Von Plessen, and David Noonan.Artists surveyed include Leonora Carrington, Maurizio Cattelan, Marcel Duchamp, Marlene Dumas, Fischli & Weiss, Andrea Fraser, the Guerilla Girls, Hannah Höch, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Barbara Kruger, Sarah Lucas, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenberg, Raymond Pettibon, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Richard Prince, Arnulf Rainer, Ad Reinhardt, ED Ruscha, Carolee Schneemann, David Shrigley, Robert Smithson, Annikia Ström, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol Writers includeHugo Ball, Henri Bergson, André Breton, Hélène Cixous, Sigmund Freud, Jörg Heiser, Dave Hickey, Jo Anna Isaak, Ralph Rugoff, Peter Schjeldahl, Sheena Wagstaff, Hamza Walker, Slavoj Zizek

Essays by Dominic Molon and Michael Rooks. Excerpt by David Sedaris. Foreward by Judith Richards.

'What happens when professional craft artists are allowed to let loose-when they get to explore their mischievous and irreverent sides? Find out in this groundbreaking book, which, for the very first time, reveals an entirely different side of "serious" craft. Hundreds of images and essays from all over the world allow you to gain insight into the creative minds of contemporary artists like never before. A variety of traditional craft media are shown, such as furniture, ceramics, glass, fiber, jewelry, and metal, as well as a number of unique, nontraditional techniques. Even a bus shelter in London gets a creative make-over that's sure to make you smile! The topics range from the playful to the serious, but the message is always most enjoyable. Humor in craft is a treasure trove for craft aficionados and humor enthusiast alike.'

Comedy is a powerful contemporary source of influence and information. In the still-evolving digital era, the opportunity to consume and share comedy has never been as available. And yet, despite its vast cultural imprint, comedy is a little-understood vehicle for serious public engagement in urgent social justice issues – even though humor offers frames of hope and optimism that can encourage participation in social problems. Moreover, in the midst of a merger of entertainment and news in the contemporary information ecology, and a decline in perceptions of trust in government and traditional media institutions, comedy may be a unique force for change in pressing social justice challenges. Comedians who say something serious about the world while they make us laugh are capable of mobilizing the masses, focusing a critical lens on injustices, and injecting hope and optimism into seemingly hopeless problems. By combining communication and social justice frameworks with contemporary comedy examples, authors Caty Borum Chattoo and Lauren Feldman show us how comedy can help to serve as a vehicle of change. Through rich case studies, audience research, and interviews with comedians and social justice leaders and strategists, A Comedian and an Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice explains how comedy – both in the entertainment marketplace and as cultural strategy – can engage audiences with issues such as global poverty, climate change, immigration, and sexual assault, and how activists work with comedy to reach and empower publics in the networked, participatory digital media age.

Timeless advice about how to use humor to win over any audience Can jokes win a hostile room, a hopeless argument, or even an election? You bet they can, according to Cicero, and he knew what he was talking about. One of Rome’s greatest politicians, speakers, and lawyers, Cicero was also reputedly one of antiquity’s funniest people. After he was elected commander-in-chief and head of state, his enemies even started calling him “the stand-up Consul.” How to Tell a Joke provides a lively new translation of Cicero’s essential writing on humor alongside that of the later Roman orator and educator Quintilian. The result is a timeless practical guide to how a well-timed joke can win over any audience. As powerful as jokes can be, they are also hugely risky. The line between a witty joke and an offensive one isn’t always clear. Cross it and you’ll look like a clown, or worse. Here, Cicero and Quintilian explore every aspect of telling jokes—while avoiding costly mistakes. Presenting the sections on humor in Cicero’s On the Ideal Orator and Quintilian’s The Education of the Orator, complete with an enlightening introduction and the original Latin on facing pages, How to Tell a Joke examines the risks and rewards of humor and analyzes basic types that readers can use to write their own jokes. Filled with insight, wit, and examples, including more than a few lawyer jokes, How to Tell a Joke will appeal to anyone interested in humor or the art of public speaking.

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.

Intertwines a dual emphasis on evolving institutional priorities and major shifts in artistic production.