Caricature
A caricature is a simplified or exaggerated representation of a person, typically in a visual form such as a drawing or cartoon. It often emphasizes prominent features or characteristics to create a humorous or satirical effect. In linguistics, caricature can also refer to an exaggerated or distorted representation of speech sounds or language features for comedic or illustrative purposes.
4 Key excerpts on "Caricature"
eBook - ePubEncyclopedia of Comparative Iconography
Themes Depicted in Works of Art
- Helene E. Roberts, Helene E. Roberts(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Caricature/Cartoon Margaret A. Sullivan DOI: 10.4324/9780203825587-21 The following periods are covered in the discussion of the theme Caricature/Cartoon: ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL RENAISSANCE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY NINETEENTH CENTURY TWENTIETH CENTURY Honoré Daumier, The Legislative Belly, 1834, Lithograph from L'Association Mensuelle, private collection. (Courtesy of Art Resource, New York) C laude Monet recalled that as a bored 17-year-old student he passed his time filling “the margins of my notebooks … in the most irreverent way, distorting as much as possible the faces and profiles of my teachers.” Although Monet’s fame rests on his impressionist paintings, he began his artistic career as a caricaturist, and although Caricature and the cartoon are often considered peripheral arts, outside the mainstream, they are psychologically powerful, with a long and venerable history, and both have played an important role in the development of modern art. Definitions Caricature can be described as an opinionated, often defamatory summation of those characteristics uniquely associated with an individual or group. It employs distortion and exaggeration to create an image that deviates from the norm, either as a departure from the “normal” features of an individual, as when Monet amused himself by caricaturing his teachers, or as a violation of the physiognomic norms considered admirable in a particular society. In England in the nineteenth century, the Irish were portrayed with simian features, a Caricature that equated them with monkeys and implied that they were less than human and closer to the beasts. When a patron commissions a portrait, the results tend to reflect the values, wishes, and aspirations of the sitter. In Caricature the personal bias of the artist dominates...
eBook - ePub- Kendra Schank Smith(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...He expressed the low and coarse in contrast to the extraordinary aesthetic importance of art. This dualism accents that laughter contains a measure of pain, reminding humans of their ‘…inferiority and mortality, of the dualism necessary to art, and thus of our potential for transcendence’ (Hannoosh, 1992). Architects, similar to artists, understand the multiple levels on which sketches convey impressions. DEFINITION OF Caricature A Caricature expressed by transformation and deformation emphasizes a certain characteristic of a person, animal, or thing which captures or helps us understand a specific personality. The role of Caricature in revealing a truth has occasional affinity to a monster (Frascari, 1991). A Caricature stresses specific aspects of a concept, and more of the image is involved, but both Caricature and monsters recombine complex narratives or forms into new compositions; these compositions convey a new meaning. Where Caricature demonstrates and employs the new combination ‘to show’, the monster presents the future and acts as a soothsayer in the role of architecture. A Caricature, on the contrary, emphasizes deformation to disclose the true state of affairs, to ascertain the inner nature of a specific personality, or, most often, to ridicule. Caricature takes important aspects of the character to the extreme so that the character’s visual likeness is recognized. To reiterate, Caricature depends on the combination of unique characteristics and the transformation of features. The transformation of dynamic features of the likeness must rely on the ability of that counterpart to emerge from behind to be recognized. Part of the humor and understanding is conveyed through the Caricature’s resemblance to the corresponding shape: ‘[r]esemblance is a prerequisite of Caricature’ (Kris, 1934: 298). The interpretation, or understanding of a Caricature surprises the viewer by its recognition, simplicity, and its quickness...
eBook - ePub- Joe Bray(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...According to Malcolm, ‘the plain matter-of-fact man cannot comprehend the extensive powers of those employed almost exclusively in this pursuit’ (157). For this contemporary critic, Caricature raises portraiture to new, imaginative heights. Remarking on the ‘fire and freedom, and invention’ characteristic of British Caricature in particular, he draws an analogy with another art form: Like the composer in music, whose mind, turned to the art he professes, produces sounds and combinations he knew not, or thought not of, before, the Caricaturist takes his subject, and borne away by his fancy, he nearly creates a new order of beings and things, all of which are subservient to the fact he illustrates: he plays with the features and persons of well-known characters: and, while the object before us seems scarcely human, through exaggeration, we immediately appropriate the distorted portrait. (157) Malcolm's reference to ‘the distorted portrait’ recalls his observation that those who wish to progress from Caricature to the creation of great art must first conquer the form's ‘propensity to distortion’. The association of Caricature with distortion has indeed been a frequent theme since its first appearance in the late sixteenth century. Though Caricature obviously derives from the name Carracci, it may also owe something to the Italian ‘caricare’, meaning to load. According to Donald, for its earliest commentators ‘Caricature palpably departed from nature yet, despite its exaggerations, its “loading” of the features […] gave an impression of the original which was more striking than a normal portrait’ (1996 : 14), while Paulson notes that ‘what was consistently stressed, based on the derivation of the word itself from caricare (to load or charge), was the distortion of the actual: that is, less invention than elaboration’ (1983b: 181). Contemporary critics have elaborated on the effects of this distortion...
eBook - ePubSuperportraits
Caricatures and Recognition
- Gillian Rhodes(Author)
- 1997(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...CHAPTER SIX The psychology of Caricatures The Caricature may be faithful to those features of the man that distinguish him from all other men and thus may truly represent him in a higher sense of the term. It may correspond to him in the sense of being uniquely specific to him—more so than a projective drawing or photographic portrait would be… Gibson (1971) p.29 So far, I have considered the nature of Caricatures, their development in the history of art, the invention of computer Caricature generators, the use of extreme signals in nature, and some mechanisms that might account for the power of exaggeration. With this background in place, I turn now to cognitive psychologists’ attempts to assess the effectiveness of Caricatures and to discover whether Caricatures really succeed in their paradoxical attempt, “to be more like the face than the face itself” (Brennan, 1985, p.170). Superportrait effects, where Caricatures are recognised better than undistorted images, or are considered to be better likenesses, are the most dramatic evidence for the power of Caricatures. Even equivalence of Caricatures and more faithful representations would be remarkable, though, given the obvious distortion of Caricatures. INITIAL CLUES Although the power of Caricatures had been clear to artists and art theorists since the Renaissance, and although Caricature-like peak shift effects had been observed in numerous discrimination learning studies, it was not until relatively recently that psychologists began to think specifically about Caricatures and the effectiveness of exaggeration. One of the first to do so was James J.Gibson (1947), who noticed that drawings from memory sometimes resembled Caricatures. He made this observation during a study of methods for training airforce recruits to identify aircraft. The recruits were asked to draw, from memory, some of the aircraft they had learned to identify...
