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Artful JestersArtists, arguments and studio methods behind comic creativity in visual art
A studio wall in daylight with sketches, small painted panels and cartoon studies pinned in an irregular grid above a bench of brushes and a half-finished canvas
Opening view of this season's hanging

Now hanging

Artful Jesters

Artists, arguments and studio methods behind comic creativity in visual art

08pieces on the wall, the latest hung on 22/09/2026

A pale grey newsprint page spread flat on a copy desk under a steel-blue desk lamp, a red pencil resting in the margin beside a circled correction, shot from directly above.

Latest piecePress Criticism as Argued Humour

The main wall

Latest pieces on the wall

8 pieces hung between 08/09/2026 and 22/09/2026

A closer look

A single desk lamp on a metal office desk in a dark room, a folded newspaper and a glass of whiskey beside it, hard side light from a venetian blind cutting stripes across the wall, medium shot.
Detail cropped from the same print: A single desk lamp on a metal office desk in a dark room, a folded newspaper and a glass of whiskey beside it, hard side light from a venetian blind cutting stripes across the wall, medium shot.
Inv. HI-001 The whole print and a detail cropped from the same print: Deadpan Laughter in Classic Film Noir.

Room sheet

Every entry in Artful Jesters begins with one question about humour in visual art. How a caricaturist decides which feature to exaggerate. Why a funny photograph depends on the moment rather than the subject. Where a film noir keeps its jokes and why it plays them deadpan. How a maker fits a satire into a porcelain figure the size of a hand. The desk reads the catalogues, the museum records, the press archives and the published interviews, writes the answer first, and files the entry in one of four rooms: Artists, Humor in Art, Studio and Books. Each entry names the sources it read and carries the date it was last checked.

Room 01

Artists

Profiles of the visual jesters: how a painter, sculptor or cartoonist builds a joke, and what the work is arguing about.

2 pieces · last hung on 16/09/2026

Also on the main wall.

The whole room

Room 02

Humor in Art

The tradition behind the laugh: parody, irony, satire, absurdity and wit in painting, sculpture and print, from the jesters to the present.

2 pieces · last hung on 20/09/2026

Also on the main wall.

The whole room

Room 03

Studio

Comic creativity as a practice: exercises, methods and classroom work that train the eye to see the funny version of a thing.

2 pieces · last hung on 18/09/2026

Also on the main wall.

The whole room

Room 04

Books

The shelf of reading on humour in art: monographs, catalogues, histories and classroom resources, each with what it actually gives the reader.

2 pieces · last hung on 22/09/2026

Also on the main wall.

The whole room

Elsewhere

Other desks, other shelves

Desks kept by other editors, each read before it was listed here, and each named for what it holds.

  1. 01A French magazine on the picture in the domestic interior, from choosing an image to the height and spacing of the hook, reads a wall the way a hangman of exhibitions does. hanging a picture at the right height

  2. 02A French review of dance as technique and history, from the classical barre to the barefoot line, keeps a working glossary of the words a body answers to. the vocabulary of a movement

  3. 03A working guide to licensing archive footage and stills for an edit, from the difference between royalty free and rights managed to what a clearance file has to show. licensing an archive shot