ART ALSO A LAUGH

1. Fragment from Play it again Sam , a film by Woody Allen (1972)

Here Allen is quoting his great fetish film Casablanca.

E.g. She is great!

Is it Jackson Pollocks painting, is it the girl in front of the painting?

2. The incomplete, vague and indeterminate definition of humor, an apps each one of us knows.
There is no definitive way of defining humour. I believe humour is the unexpected in the right
context. The right context depends on the observer: e.g. my wife doesnt think Fawlty Towers is funny, I think
it is sublime. The reaction of laughing could be a sign of nervousness, of cruelty, of admiration.
Humour and laughter might very well differ from one person to another. An example: when VW explodes in
scandals about isleading the worldpopulation and multimillion dollarclaims by various governments, the
Belgian finance minister, a former journalist announces a support of 200000 euros to VW. Imagine the VW
directors discussing the bonus of their fired managers and hearing the good tidings from Belgium.
Another example: boarding a plane in London I was asked for my preference in seating, bored by spending
hours in the suffocating airport, I answered the terrace, upon which the lady replied:Smoking or nonsmoking, Sir?
In his book The Painted Word (1975) Tom Wolfe writes after reading an article by Hilton Kramer, the leading
art critic at the Times, telling Wolfe: these days, without a theory to go with it, I cant see a painting All these
years, in short, I had assumed what is art, if nowhere else, seeing is believing. Well how very shortsighted!
Now at last, on april 28, 1974, I could see. I had gotten it backward all along. Not seeing is believing, you
ninny, but believing is seeing, for modern art has become completely believing,the paintings and other works
exist only to illustrate the tekst.

3. Saul Steinberg
Steinberg was born in Romania in 1914. He studied in Bucarest and Milano. The fascist
government in Romania issued anti-semitic laws and Steinberg had to move to Italy where soon
Mussolini took power and once more Steinberg had to leave. He wanted then to travel to the
USA . In need of a passport he started according to later stories- forging passports. Hence his
book Passports and the many references in his drawings to stamps, photographs, signatures and
incomprehensible texts.
Finally thanks tot the influence of the New Yorker redaction he obtained the necessary papers to
stay in the USA. As he spoke several languages and originated from a rather exotic country the

American army enlisted Steinberg as an agent in China. His stay there resulted in a number of
watercolour landscapes. Steinberg had numerous wellknown friends like Woody Allen and
Charles Addams.
His work is intelligent, deceptive and briljant.
4. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) and Man Ray (1890- 1976)
Duchamps Bicycle Wheel (1951)
Dada and Surrealist groups focus on humour and antagonism: the unexpected. Their
overall ambition was a re-definition of art.
The Bicycle Wheel is mounted on a stool, two common everyday objects combined into a
nonsense object, an unexpected and non-utilitarian object. Both items here have lost
their meaning but not their presence.
Man Rays The Gift (1958)
Again we see two common household objects: a flat iron and a set of nails. Useless and
non-sensical. The object breathes a certain uneasiness , something cruel.
The surrealists try to break away from ordinary life, they try to disjoint the fabric and
texture of everyday. A similar activity is perceived in literature e.g. Andre Breton,
Raymond Roussel, de Lautreamont, Boris Vian or Alfred Jarry. And surprisingly also

5. Picasso is also a writer

Pome (1954)
Miracle que le torero fut dans la place du poivron la prcision du vol travers la
nue que le cristal brise de sa cape passe lt tranche de melon que la cigale
allume et trane dans sa blessure la cape de lespada
Picasso wrote for theater and he also wrote poetry during the 40s and the 50s. The
texts look like cut up and glued together similar to ready-mades. They show an aspect of
the painter and sculptor Picasso, his thinking and creativity and the scope of his art.
Dada Tristan Tzara
6. Jackson Pollock and Abstract Expressionism
In general no one dares laugh with Pollocks drip paintings, his action painting though
every child left its cultural ambitions on table cloths, on upholstery and carpets. I believe
that the general look at or interpretation of abstract expressionism shows an ambivalent
attitude:

The first and common one are in the

dont kid me attitude. Here the observer reacts negatively, here he wont be taken for a
fool. The second is that of the idea that Clement Greenberg planted in the heads of the
American public:
I enter an expositionroom and my first glance after two or three seconds only,tells me
this is great art or this is bullshit
I am not going to convince you of either of these perspectives but let me tell you my own
confusion: during the sixties Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) an Argentine-Italian artist
fabricated his Concetto Spaziale, whereby he cut or perforated the monochrome linen of
his painting. His work, his action opens up to new spaces, it leaves the two-dimensional
world of his initial painting to enter another dimension, a mystery evolves. This in
contrast to Pollock who freezes his actions on the linen, he runs and drips paint on the
horizontal surface of the linen.
My brother in law one day showed me a carefully framed white linen painting with three
slashes across its surface and he pronounced proudly to have acquired a Fontana. Three
glasses of beer later he confessed that he made it himself.

7. Pop Art - Comic strips

Pop Art and the comic strip are close family. The style is clear, the lines are well defined, there is
no atmospheric adventure, the colouring is simple and primary, all is very recognizably though far
from reality. Several pop artists worked in the advertising industry before venturing into the
artworld. Well known is the conversation between Warhol and Johns walking around in
Manhattan and discussing access and recognitions by the art galleries. Johns remarked to Warhol
that he knew a gallery whose owners even would try to sell a can of soup if one would bother to
paint it. Warhol exactly did this he started painting soup cans and he found the gallery to sell
them. Cartoons knew their great successes, the filming of certain cartoons by Disney boosted the
selling. Their influence on pop artists is remarkable: a good example is Roy Lichtenstein.

8. In history: Arcimboldi (1537-1593) - Ancient Greeks

We are trained to admire Rubens, Titian and Velazquez. Rarely one hears about
Arcimboldi. He is the odd one, the painter of fruits, vegetables treebranches e.a. that
show amazingly portraits of Renaissance citizens. He was a court painter and seemingly
quite succesfull as such. Up to now there are numerous followers and epigones of his

concept. I wonder if his clients laughed with his paintings or admired their technical
ingenuousness.
Some painters live only in our imagination like the Greek court painter of Philippus of
Macedonia and his son Alexander the Great, Apelles (4th c.BC). Apelles was that kind of
incredible painter that once the king tried to swap away a fly Apelles had painted on his
portrait. Another story was a kind of rivalry with another painter when the other artist
painted some flowers and the king wanted to sniff their perfume. Apelles then painted a
curtain over the painting and the king then tried to swipe away the curtain to see the
painting. While there are no known paintings by Apelles there are numerous stories
about his legendary craftmanship.

9. Today Alain Willette

Willette is a French painter living in Arcachon. He told me about his beginning as a
landscape painter and his competition with hundreds of other landscapepainters. Soon
he realized that he would never be able to live as a landscapepainter. He then started
painting the life of his uncles and aunts in the Basses Pyrenees, the good uncomplicated
life of these people and their bottles of wine, their cheeses and sausages, their baguettes
their dogs and cats, their bicycles and 2CV. Now he has a small gallery and happily
continues to paint his cartoonesque relatives, often accordingly to the demands of his
clients.

10. Brueghel Bosch

The Spanish kings and their erotic collections. The portraits of royalty