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.
List of Plates List of Figures Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction, Mette Gieskes (Radboud University, the Netherlands) and Gregory Williams (Boston University, USA) Part One: Africa and The Middle East 1. Negotiated Space: Visual Satire in Contemporary Diasporic Nigerian Art, Yomi Ola (Spelman College, Atlanta, USA) 2. Lerato Shadi's Sugar & Salt: Laughter beyond Languages, beyond Generations, in South Africa and in the World, Katja Gentric (École Supérieure d'Art et Design le Havre Rouen, France) 3. Humorous Art Practices in the Contemporary Middle East: Reacting to Cultural Stereotypification, Hamid Keshmirshekan (SOAS University of London, UK) 4. Humor and the Enactment of Statehood: Khalil Rabah and Anticipatory Aesthetics in Palestine, Chrisoula Lionis (University of Manchester, UK) Part Two: Asia and Oceania 5. Crossing the Line: Artistic Jests about the Border Struggles of Pakistan and Palestine, Atteqa Ali (Newark Museum of Art, New Jersey, USA) 6. Humor/Youmo in Chinese Contemporary Art and Online Visual Culture: Oblique Resistances to Authority and the Traces of Confucian-literati Aesthetics, Paul Gladston (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) 7. We Require Clear Slogans: Humor in the Russian Monstration, Maria Sidorkina (University of Texas at Austin, USA) and Jacob Stewart-Halevy (Tufts University, Medford, USA) 8. The Trickster, Provocateur, Clown, and Joker: Radical Humor in Contemporary Indonesian Art, Michelle Antoinette (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia) 9. “It's Funny Now, Aye”: Humor and Contemporary Art from Oceania, Caroline Vercoe (University of Auckland, New Zealand) Part Three: South and North America 10. In the State of Play: Slapstick Enactments and Carnivalesque Humor as Political Subversion in Brazilian Contemporary Art, Denise Carvalho (School of Visual Arts, New York, USA) 11. Reír por no llorar: Black Humor in Contemporary Venezuelan Feminist Art, Tatiana Flores (University of Virginia, USA) 12. Mordacious Humor and Happy Oblivion in Colombia: Bernardo Salcedo's Distinguishing Features, Gina McDaniel Tarver (Texas State University, USA) 13. The Necessity of Jimmie Durham's Jokes, Richard Shiff (University of Texas at Austin, USA) Part Four: Europe 14. Droll “Observations”: Roman Ondak's Comic Displacements, Sophie Knezic (University of Melbourne, Australia) 15. The Ersatz Art School and Councils within Councils: Playful Dutch Institutions of Critique in the 1960s, Janna Schoenberger (Amsterdam University College, the Netherlands) 16. Žižek's Joke: Humor and Over-identification in Post-Yugoslav Art, Marko Ilic (University of Oxford, UK) 17. Aesthetic Incongruity: Art and Humor in Post-Independence Azerbaijan, Monica Steinberg (University of Hong Kong) Index
Mette Gieskes is Assistant Professor at Radboud University, The Netherlands. Gregory H. Williams is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art at Boston University, USA.
Reviews for Humor in Global Contemporary Art
There is a specter haunting contemporary art and its name is humor. Gieskes and Williams have assembled an impressive group of scholars who span continents and contexts, exploring the work of artists who know how to provoke laughter while spurring critical thinking. Comedic gadflies of the globe unite! * Louis Kaplan, Professor, Department of Art History & Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto, Canada; author of Photography and Humour (2016) * A topic long overlooked, this book shows that artistic humor comes in many guises: as parody, irony, (tragi)comedy, anecdotes, trickster’s pranks, jokes, puns, or mocked clichés; as (self)criticism, dark humor, tongue-in-cheek jest, or fake news. In all cases, though, the humorous signifiers are culturally and politically coded and context-dependent. * Kitty Zijlmans, Professor Emeritus of Contemporary Art History and Theory/World Art Studies, Leiden University, the Netherlands * This timely anthology offers a uniquely wide-angled perspective—from Pakistan and Palestine, to Asia and Aotoroa/New Zealand—on formations of global, national, regional and local humor. Tracking how comedy plays out in border conflicts, stereotypes, activism and community and identity formations, it plays with our whole earth catalogue of woes. * John C. Welchman, Distinguished Professor of Art History, University of California, San Diego, USA; editor of Black Sphinx: On the Comedic in Modern Art (2010) *
