Infinite Jest – satirizing human weakness

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‘Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine’

Alexander Adams looks at the arts of satire and caricature, at New York's Met

Satire and caricature take as many forms as they have sources of origin. ‘Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine’ (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 4 March) presents a range of comic drawings covering the foundations and furnishing examples from many different periods and countries.

The exhibition traces the origins of caricature back to Leonardo da Vinci’s grotesque head studies from the 1490s. Leonardo had a habit of following individuals with peculiar countenances so that he could observe them and commit their features to memory before drawing them. What purpose his drawings served – beyond satisfying his boundless curiosity – is debated. Are they allegories, embodiments of sinfulness or depravity or part of a scientific analysis of human types? Leonardo is represented by a head on a small snippet of a page and copies by later hands.

Broader satire, as opposed to character studies, originated in Northern Europe. The Flemish artists Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder pilloried the foibles and foolishness of people in ways as savage and serious as any of the artists who followed. They made no concessions to decorum or modesty and mercilessly mocked hubris, gluttony, pride and every manner of human failing. In The Thin Kitchen and The Fat Kitchen (both 1563), engraved by Pieter van der Heyden (c. 1530 – after 1572) after Bruegel’s designs, we see the starving denizens of the thin kitchen scrapping for slivers of bread and oysters contrasted with gluttons reminiscent of Botero’s bloated figures gorging in the fat kitchen, surrounded by a profusion of rich food. The fat kitchen’s beams groan under the weight of the hanging hams and the dog is as portly as its masters. Bruegel satirizes the vanity of Man, mortifying himself at Lent after succumbing to excessive greed at Carnival.

What the Italians and Flemish artists invented, the British perfected, at least in the realm of satire. The golden age of British satirical cartoonists is well represented here. James Gillray (1756–1815), Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827) and George Cruikshank (1792–1878) all get a generous showing, alongside their more high-minded forerunner William Hogarth (1697–1764), who was too torn between art and satire to make entirely satisfying achievements in either sphere. Hogarth was too genteel, haunted by the chimera of academic recognition, to get his hands dirty. The trio who followed had no such qualms and plunged their hands elbow-deep into the filth and absurdity of Georgian England. In the political section, Gillray’sThe Plumb-Pudding in Danger (1805) demonstrates how memorable and pervasive good satire can be. Napoleon is forever immortalized as a tiny, megalomaniac general when he was in fact of average height (5 feet 7 inches).

There are examples of French satire inspired by British prints, some by artists of note. In his youth, Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) trained himself by imitating Gillray and became a proficient satirist, though his output was not large. His artistic successes soon diverted him from the course of satire and social comment. Naturally, Honoré-Victorin Daumier (1808–79), the most celebrated and prolific satirical graphic artist of 19th-century France (with an estimated 5,000 different prints) is included. Daumier was a master craftsman whose work was esteemed and sought after by general readers and discriminating print collectors. His visual and verbal sophistication and technical skill make him the figure who perhaps best straddles the art-satire division, such as it is. The Legislative Belly (1834) shows bizarre parliamentary deputies bloated and beastly in their chamber, arrayed as in a rogues’ gallery. Daumier has taken care to shade the lithograph in a realistic way, imagining a single overhead light source. The rearmost characters are dim and softly defined and those in the foreground shown in crisp contrast, making them dramatic and lively.    

The exhibition and accompanying catalogue are divided into sections covering the topics fashion, foreigners, politics, eating and drinking, celebrities, and so forth. The explanations for individual works are provided in labels and in the catalogue. These comments are often vital for understanding the symbolism and context for the prints, though all the art is of visual interest in itself. There are many striking designs by obscure (even anonymous) artists that reveal how rich this genre is. 

Wisely, the curators have selected only a few recent drawings and prints. It would have been easy to swamp the display with a multitude of recent images. The newest pieces are relatively safe choices – elegant Al Hirschfeld cartoons, a David Levine caricature from The New York Review of Books and three mild political cartoons. A few omissions do not prevent Infinite Jest being an informative and comprehensive overview of satire and caricature, including some of the best prints in the genre and some absorbing images that will be new to most viewers.

The catalogue to this exhibition, Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine (Metropolitan Museum of Art)   by Constance C. Mcphee and  Nadine M. Orenstein is published by Yale University Press,  2011. 208 pp.,  fully illustrated. ISBN 978-0300175813