The (art) show must go on.
Art should be challenging but not punishing. Give me a break. Practicing art is neurotic. Laughter is good for the heart. Rehearse the masterpiece like an actor auditioning for a part in a play.
In theater, an “aside” (as we all know), breaks the Fourth Wall. Likewise, in writing, writing in the first person singular violates the Fourth Wall Rule of Writing.
When a painting violates the Fourth Wall the painting is said not to repose.
“Kayfabe” is a professional wrestling term corresponding to the Fourth Wall in stage plays. Antics, such as wrestlers leaping outside the boxing ring, make the audience howl with laughter. Art must have such a touch of madness.
A musical performance, in which the audience is encouraged to sing along, is camp. Camp entertainment is for the troops, the rank-and-file. It boosts morale. It makes me smile.
Definition of Trigger Speech: An audience hears a joke approach and, in anticipation of the punchline, laughs prematurely as if by conditioned reflex. Wait for it next time!
Then there's the geek show. The audience is dared to laugh, to not take it gravely, critically. It goes beyond camp. It goes beyond even farce. Geek humor crosses the line. A ticket buys an un-professional magician faking biting-off the head of a chicken. A geek show is not just in bad taste, it is an assault on taste.
Caricature is an artistic type of satire. It has its complement in the audience which enjoys mockery and being mocked. Thomas Browne was the first to write in English about caricature in his book Christian Morals (1716).
Derision is to folly as ridicule is to an exaggerated estimate of self-importance.
Quintilian, in the 1st century CE, analyzed wit in his Institutio Oratoria. He noted that “ethos” supplies a subject for comedy, as “pathos” does for tragedy. Ethos is considered a permanent condition, an attribute of the average person, a mild character flaw. Pathos, on the other hand, is an acute emotional state, often deviant, and not in character for the average person. Comedy makes the object of derision sympathetic, tragedy makes it repulsive.
The Enlightenment defined humor as representing the ludicrous as it is in itself. Wit is the exposing of it, and does so by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humor is seen as ridiculing an outgrowth of nature, a deformity, an unintended deviation from norm. Wit, on the other hand, is the product of art and fancy.
Sigmund Freud, in Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious (1905), said that wit is made, but humor is found. Around the same time, Henri Bergson revived Quintilian's analyses in his essay “Laughter,” classifying comedy as a class contradiction (ethos), and tragedy as an individual problem (pathos).
Comedy pinpoints peccadilloes that are not indissolubly bound to the individuality of a single person. It is the function of laughter to discourage any tendency by the individual to separate himself from society. The plight of fallen men seen everywhere in the streets (and my paintings) is tragic. For such a fate to befall you (or I) is, by contrast, risible.