Humor in Art Quotes

I have been accused of being a joker. But the most successful art to me involves humor.

I put it [picture "A still life of a pear" by Edouard Manet] there [on the wall, next to the picture "Jupiter and Thetis" by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres], for a pear like that would overthrow any god.

I like there to be a joke in practically every photo I take. Nobody has the right to make photography boring.

But I think frustration is hilarious. One of my missions is to bring humor into fine art. It's sacred.

Art must make you laugh a little and make you a little afraid. Anything as long as it doesn't bore.

I had always drawn, every day as long as I had held a pencil, and just assumed everyone else had too…Art had saved me and helped me fit in…Art was always my saving grace…Comedy didn’t come until much later for me. I’ve always tried to combine the two things, art and comedy, and couldn’t make a choice between the two. It was always my ambition to make comedy with an art-school slant, and art that could be funny instead of po-faced.

To me, the highest expression of life is art with jokes. It's very rarified, very difficult to accomplish if you want to be more than just funny and more than just jokes about human gaseousness.

Writing about something specific, in my mind, was overwhelming, so I wrote about art because I love art and I know I can say a couple of funny things about art.

I like art with a sense of humor. I don't have a huge art education to understand everything. I don't think that means that art has to be watered down to the lowest common denominator, though. I don't think you have to go to college to be able appreciate great art, but I like art that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Art is too serious to be taken seriously.

I think Damien Hirst is hilarious. And I think he's a true artist. He's not hilarious first; I think he is a real artist, and I also think he's got an amazing sense of humor.

The social dimension of the art world is fascinating to me, but I also want to entertain the reader, so I will let a character say something funny.

I've always thought that comedy was just another dramatic expression.

I have a painting where somebody's holding a chicken, and underneath the chicken is somebody's head.

The gummy bears tattoo was my idea. It's my son's favorite candy. The sketch was my other son's idea. It's a self-portrait of himself. I just showed the artist his sketch and had him tattoo it on my forearm. It looks like a stick person with big hair. It's pretty funny.

There is always an element of play in form, however 'serious' the expression.