{"id":19415,"date":"2013-03-07T02:37:14","date_gmt":"2013-03-07T08:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=19415"},"modified":"2021-01-30T17:15:12","modified_gmt":"2021-01-30T23:15:12","slug":"humor-in-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/humor-in-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightening the Load: A New Generation Uses Humor in Art"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Work by Chad Crane<\/p><\/div>\n

How many Contemporary artists does it take to change a lightbulb?<\/p>\n

Four. One puts on a blindfold and throws lightbulbs against the wall; two paints burned out bulbs blue; three dons a sweater and explains to a lightbulb lying on a couch that meaningful change must come from within; four, tagged as curator, explains to visitors what it all means. The artists take turns being the curator.<\/p>\n

Well then, how many visitors to an art gallery does it take?<\/p>\n

Two: one to change it and one to say, \u201cMy five-year old could do better!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cognitive science has made great strides in understanding how the human brain works, going so far as to guess how the survival value of its operations may have favored their evolution and retention. But one ubiquitous human behavior rarely seen in the animal world continues to resist theoretical explanation: humor. No one knows why something is funny or what, exactly, a joke does for those who laugh. One thing that is clear about humor is that the worse things are, the more likely it is that someone will lighten the load with laughter. So it should come as no surprise that today\u2019s young artists, better educated than ever before but with few job prospects, facing a potentially apocalyptic future, and this on top of the timeless disrespect of those whose only advantage was to have gotten here first, sometimes mock their predicament. Of course, in the wider world an element of scorn often drives the joke. Solemn, portentous works still crowd the galleries, many of them crying out to be taken down a peg. A welcome leavening of disrespect is evident in the work of some of our newest artists, but instead of blatant sarcasm or outright mockery, preferences run to subtler takes that foreground the natural humor in the human predicament\u2014the kind to be found in plain sight for the artist sensitive enough to spot it, and clever enough to call proportionate attention to it.<\/p>\n

A good place to start is with \u201cRejected.\u201d Isolated in a photographic close-up (the way we see most artworks), Alex Foster\u2019s carved maple figure looks like a conventional\u2014if technically nostalgic\u2014sculpture, a well-modeled human figure lying face down on the ground. The title seems to say it all: in truth, aren\u2019t we all still children inside, wishing we could fall on our faces in a rigid tantrum when we feel we have been measured and have come up short? But in the gallery, we eventually see past the defeated figure to the pedestal from which he fell. The universal reading is still valid, but shot through by one more specific, and far more painful: not the shortcoming of who we cannot help being, but rather the failure of what we strive to become. Foster reveals the hidden comedy of body language, whether expressing a loss of self-esteem in \u201cWorthless,\u201d or in the abstract \u201cBelonging,\u201d contrasting the complacent relaxation of the in-crowd with the striving posture of the outsider.<\/p>\n