Met’s history of caricature shocks and delights
In our current, celebrity-obsessed media, snark is an attempt at leverage, a means of both wielding and flattering power that deflects from the perpetrator. Snark is cowardly caricature, but the Met’s Infinite Jest show provides an enlightening background to what caricature truly is and why modern day snark is deficient.
Beginning with Leonardo DaVinci’s 1490 “Head of a Man in Profile,” the Met shows how caricature began in the scientific desire to know more about our species. “Caricature” comes from Italian carico and caricare, “to load” and “exaggerate.” Viewing the centuries of examples that follow Leonardo brings us to realize: Snark deprives us of empathic curiosity.
Enrique Chagoya (American, born in Mexico, 1953) after George Cruikshank (British, 1792-1878), “The Head Ache,” 2010 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Stewart S. MacDermott Fund, 2010
The Infinite Jest show defines the public practice of deliberate mischaracterization as an art form. It is a history of “Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine.” Despite displays of pencil and full color drawings that move from art to tabloid illustration, this wide-ranging show has been largely ignored by the media. Probably because it especially suits the Internet age of anarchy, spite and partisanship, which is not automatically an art form but easily a shameless and hostile corruption of journalism.
Infinite Jest (the title quotes the gravedigger scene from Hamlet: “I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest”) presents the irony of what mankind’s wit leaves behind. The show forces a judgment on the habit and value of media characterization. Each drawing raises the question of truth and the recognition of ourselves in others. Invective doesn’t become literature just because a blogger who thinks he’s clever abandons rules of decorum and truth; in these drawings, a practiced hand mediates ire with style and curiosity into the nature of human form and observable behavior.
The great names are represented: Brueghel, Hogarth, Daumier, Cruikshank, Nast and less familiar but key figures such as Thomas Rowlandson, who importantly mixed caricature with public and political satire to create a new, particularly British genre. Using wit to criticize, Rowlandson drew with daunting purpose and integrity. What remains is his fully imagined draftsmanship, not simply the urge to snipe, The great caricaturists realized common vulnerabilities and strengths as signs of character—these artworks survive without political urgency because they detail essential traits even while addressing social controversy.
Smug self-satisfaction (the basis of snark) is not enough to justify museum sanction. That’s why Siegfried Woldhek’s “The Bush Years: A Summary 2008” is outclassed in this exhibition. It’s insipid use of graphs and chart lines to exaggerate a former president’s face is facile and unimaginative, an attack typical of an era whose humor won’t likely stand the test of artistry.
Anonymous British, 18th century, “Top and Tail,” 1777, Hand-colored etching, plate: 12 11/16 x 7 13/16 in. (32.3 x 19.9 cm), sheet: 14 1/16 x 8 9/16 in. (35.7 x 21.8 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1959
In Infinite Jest, the daunting past of artistic caricature and satire overshadows contemporary snark. A superb piece of visual characterization like Foulguier’s 1773 “All Who See Me Jeer at Me” marks the difference between insight, empathy and simple defamation. It should be studied by all those journalists who misused the terms satire, mockery, spoof and caricature when promoting the Obamas-as-radicals New Yorker magazine cover. Infinite Jest is more than a fascinating exhibition of holdings in the Met’s Department of Drawing and Prints collection; it’s also a panoply of human frailties.
The show’s modern relevance cries out in Louis-Leopold Boilly’s “The Grimaces,” where caricature was indeed more than just a tool of power and flattery but a reflection of common anxieties. Like Leonardo’s early exaggerations of human deformities, Boilly dramatized varieties of stress and huddled-together—mobbed—social and psychological concerns that speak to the present condition. It’s a great caricature. It’s also a timeless mirror.
Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine
Through March 4, 2012, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710, www.metmuseum.org.
Museums
American Museum of Natural History: “The Butterfly Conservatory.” Opens Oct. 8. “Picturing Science: Museum Scientists & Imaging Technologies.” Ends June 24, 2012, Central Park West at W. 79th St., 212-769-5100, amnh.org.
The Jewish Museum: “Maya Zack: Living Room.” Ends Oct. 23. “The Snowy Day & the Art of Ezra Jack Keats.” Ends Jan. 29, 2012, 1109 5th Ave., 212-423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org.
El Museo del Barrio: “The (S) Files 2011.” Ends Jan. 8, 2012, 1230 5th Ave., 212-831-7272, elmuseo.org.
Museum of American Illustration: “Rolling Stone & The Art of the Record Review.” Ends Oct. 22, 128 E. 63rd St., 212-838-2560, societyillustrators.org.
Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology: “Sporting Life.” Ends Nov. 5. “Daphne Guinness.” Ends Jan. 7, 2012, 7th Ave. at W. 27th St., 212-217-4530, fitnyc.edu.
Museum of Modern Art: “De Kooning: A Retrospective.” Ends Jan. 9, 2012. “Thing/Thought: Fluxus Editions, 1962–1978.” Ends Jan. 16. “New Photography 2011.” Ends Jan. 16, 2012, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400, moma.org.
Rubin Museum of Art: “Pilgrimage & Faith.” Ends Oct. 24. “Human Currents.” Ends Nov. 13. “Once Upon Many Times.” Ends Jan. 30, 2012, 150 W. 17th St., 212-620-5000, rmanyc.org.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: “Pop objects & Icons from the Guggenheim Collection.” Opens Sept. 30. “Intervals: Nicola López.” Oct. 11–25. “Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity.” Ends Sept. 28. “THE HUGO BOSS PRIZE 2010: Hans-Peter Feldman.” Ends Nov. 2, 1071 5th Ave., guggenheim.org.
Studio Museum: “Spiral: Perspectives on an African American Art Collective.” Ends Oct. 23. “Evidence of Accumulation.” Ends Oct. 23. “Lyle Ashton Harris: Self/Portrait.” 144 W. 125th St., 212-864-4500, studiomuseum.org.
