A Friend of the Family
Charles Addams was born January 7, 1912, making him about the same age as Jackson Pollock and Woody Guthrie. Social and political events would have formed the artistic sensibilities of all three. The cartoons of Charles Addams first appeared in The New Yorker Magazine in 1932. His cartoons appeared regularly, and, by 1935, had evolved into his generally recognized style. His darkly humorous visions of deviance, dereliction, death and weirdness, in general, appeared (posthumously) in the publication until 1989.
Charles Addams believed that if the cartoon needed a caption he had failed in some way, even if the caption was clever. When I was a kid I scrutinized such caption-less cartoons by Addams at length, uncomprehending, while waiting for the dentist. Mother noticed my interest and purchased several of Addams's bound editions. One was titled Homebodies. How bizarre! Mother despised comic books -action heroes, and the like; she would not allow me to obtain or read them -and I obeyed.
Without the developed sense of humor needed for appreciation of gallows humor, I had to asked what they meant, both captioned and not. I rarely received an answer, or, if I did, I still didn't "get it." As an adult I still do not rate his wit very highly, though it is agreeably diverting at times, but it was preferable to his humor. Wit, you see, can be defined, while humor is a matter of the heart. The droll way in which he pokes fun at convention can scarcely be compatible with the assertion that he had no humor. The absence of humor is also humor. It tests your ability not to laugh.
I find homeless people (the subject of my art work) of the no-laughing-matter variety of humor. I take Addams at his word that certain kinds of humor are a grave matter. What do you say to the bereaved at a funeral? Humor is largely a product of civilization, and the vagrant (perhaps insane) is therefore only half-human. I can see little genuine humor in either death or the "undead." Among the young, vagrancy is rationalized as a limbo state, but a misfortune, and if regarded as ridiculous, not ridiculed. The homeless unfortunates are humorous, to an extent, but they are despite, not because, of their misfortune. Addams is a shrewd American wit, and while wit is never sympathetic, can scarcely be counted among the true humorists in literature.
My father eventually struck a note of resolution by explaining Addams's cartoons, such as the one, for example, of a graffitist with a moustache defacing a moustache on a subway advertisement, as "sight gags." This deficiency of humor is to be traced to the apparent care-free attitude of the homeless. The child is without responsibility, but has a developing curiosity to know how a thing happened, and who is to blame. The ne'er-do-well vagrant doesn't have a sense of humor, is himself humorous, amused and amusing -like a child. The entire problem of homelessness might be dismissed as an unrealistic desire to return to childhood.
The estate of Charles Addams requested that none of his cartoons appear on the Internet. Before discovering this fact I had already searched a few, old favorites, which I cribbed for my own enjoyment. Still a mischievous child, you see? Reprints of his books can be purchased from booksellers and information about back issues can be obtained from The New Yorker Magazine, and, of course, the graphic art of Brian Higgins can be viewed at: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/8-brian-higgins and one-of-a-kind works of art can be viewed at: https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/1840403