From the Archives: Finding Humor in Art

By Jill Vuchetich

Walker Publishing Filed to Visual Arts · Part of No Joke: Humor as Resistance

Sherrie Levine, Fountain (after Marcel Duchamp: A.P.), 1991. T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 1992. Image courtesy Walker Art Center.

Humor is difficult to describe but we know it when we encounter it. Humor may not make us laugh but it usually makes us think. Humor is tricky because it is different for everyone. Here we look at a few moments in time when humor and art intersected at the Walker Art Center. 

One definition of humor from the Merriam Webster Dictionary is “That quality that appeals to the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous.” And in art, Marcel Duchamp perfected the absurd. In the early 20^th Century, Duchamp began creating what he termed readymades, artwork made from found objects, including Bottle Rack and In Advance of a Broken Arm.

His found works created a sensation for their boldness and absurdity. In an interview with Walker Art Center Director, Martin Friedman, in 1965 for the exhibition Not Seen and/or Less Seen of/by Marcel Duchamp/Rrose Selavy 1904-1964 Duchamp explained that he did not want any aesthetics of beauty to influence what objects became readymades.

He wanted to free the objects from traditional notions of art. It was a very selective process, and more difficult than he imagined because as he said, there is always something in any object that attracts you. He joked that it was such a difficult decision that in 40 years he only made 13 readymades. Listen to an excerpt from his interview here.

Duchamp is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20^th Century. Almost thirty years after Duchamp’s solo show, in 1994 the Walker presented a tribute show entitled Duchamp’s Leg, including artists who were influenced by Duchamp’s anti aesthetic. Featured in the exhibition was The Fountain: After Marcel Duchamp (1991) by Sherrie Levine.

Levine’s work, a urinal like Duchamp’s Fountain only beautifully constructed in bronze, and not a readymade like Fountain. Similarly, Shigeko Kubota’s Duchampiana: Bicycle Wheel One (1983/1992), a mixed media work with bicycle wheel, stool, videodisc player, and television, was inspired by Duchamp’s readymade, Bicycle Wheel. Both Levine and Kubota question the aesthetics of art as Duchamp did, and the viewer is left to wonder what it all means. 

Playfulness can be an aspect of humor like absurdity. And Fluxus, a conceptual art movement that began in the 1950s embraced both absurdity and playfulness. Founded by George Maciunus as an anti-art establishment movement, Fluxus artists were more interested in actions rather than the final product, or objects. The movement was active through the 1970s and, like Duchamp’s work, became very influential.

In 1993 the Walker presented In the Spirit of Fluxus, an exhibition filled with playful art including George Maciunas and Larry Miller’s Flux-Labyrinth, a maze constructed in the Walker’s galleries where museum visitors walked through an obstacle course of objects that confronted their senses and tested their balance. A huge hit with visitors where sometimes the lines extended out of the galleries as people waited patiently to walk through the maze.  

The exhibition also recreated Ben Vautier’s Living Sculpture, also known as Ben’s Window (1962/1992-1993) a replica of Gallery One where Vautier lived on display in front of anyone who wandered by as part of Festival of Misfits, London, 1962. One might see him eating, sleeping, watching TV, or performing any number of everyday activities. While Vautier did not live in Walker’s recreation, the window of everyday objects captivated visitors nonetheless, as if the ghost of Vautier was occupying the space. 

Humor was an essential part of Fluxus. Finding humor in everyday life and the actions of living was the art. It is a deceptively simple concept, liberating and joyful at times, yet difficult to describe or understand when confronted with it. Instead of trying to understand it, I will end with this bumper sticker created for the Walker installation Global Conceptualism, 1999.

Interested in learning more about Marcel Duchamp, Fluxus, and humor's history at the Walker? Stop by the Walker Library and peruse our archives or check out the free resources available online.

Want your very own Think about Honking if You Heart Conceptual Art bumper sticker? Good news! They are again available at the Walker Shop here.