art 21 #1 "Humor"

The humor Episode of Art 21 was definitely not what I expected and in my opinion was quite bizarre. I cant deny that it was actually humorous, but in a unique way. One of my favorite quotes is from a Simpsons episode when one of Bart and Lisa’s classmates exclaims, "he's still funny, just not ha ha funny". I think that the chapter on Eleanor Antin demonstrates this saying very well. I was attracted to this episode because I, not unlike many other people, find humor very entertaining. I Particularly like British humor such as the British version of "The Office and Fawlty Towers because of the quirkiness. I think that this is where Eleanor’s sense of humor and mine overlap. When I think of humor and art together I immediately think of comic strips such as Calvin and Hobbes, or the peanuts, and I for some reason forget to associate the performing arts with humor. Eleanor’s art is really special and interesting because it achieves humor but not the typical way. While in comics strips and cartoons there are endless possibilities for making people laugh because you can draw incorporate the most outrageous and unreal situations and characters since the art is limited to a fictional canvas/paper, but it is very difficult to take a real life setting and manipulate it while working with the environment you are stuck with. I think that the 100 boots... series accomplishes the difficult task of making a typical everyday life situation into something truly humorous merely by adding a bizarre twist to the real world which we encounter everyday.

Raymond Pettibon. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that an artist who’s work I admired and knew prior to this video was featured in this episode of art 21. I am a huge fan of cartoons and comics and have been my whole life as well as animation. I am particularly a fan of stop motion animation which the basis for Raymond Pettibon's Gumby cartoon centering around a kind hearted alien looking green clay child and his trusty companion an orange donkey Pokey. I really admire the tedious yet rewarding method used in stop motion animation used to create Gumby and other stop motion animations and I loved making my own animations using the same method at my old school when I took animation as an art class. In Raymond's section there was lots of discussion about what his goals were for his projects and his different attempts and types of humor he used for the different works of his. A number of Raymond’s sketches or drawings were shown and while they were still meant to be humorous or satirical, it was clear that he had very different approach when he was trying to make adults laugh. Unlike Gumby which is made for kids to enjoy his other drawings were more grim and satrirical, parodying or contradicting issues he felt strongly about. He described his adult oriented work as sort of “film noir” though I don’t love all of his work Raymond has not only inspired my partly to maybe try animation for my final project but also has demonstrated that an artist can have a very wide variety of work and styles.

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