While digging and dumping my way through the legacy years I came across this invitation for an exhibition that I curated in Summer 1984. An auspicious year for George Orwell and his readers. I cannot recall whether the year itself played into the timing of the exhibit on acerbic and satiric humor, but as an afterthought it has great resonance. I do not have the four page catalog nor the list of images in the show but the idea is clear from the subtitle. I wanted to present two generations of artists each with their specific comic responses to social, political, cultural and environmental issues. Absurd fantasy and Absurdist reality were joined at the hip. And the postcard’s illustration by Guy Billout (who recently told me it was among his favorite drawings) was the perfect evocation of our graphic jesters.
If I were to mount it again, I would call the exhibition “Graphic Tricksters”.
True Graphic Jest depends on the mastery of certain languages. The witty writer is a verbal acrobat who relies on precision timing and acute understanding. The great humorous writers are known for crafting figures of speech into vivid mental pictures.
As a classic example, let’s take the phrase dog bites man, which is neither funny nor news. Conversely, man bites dog is both news and somewhat funny because it twists the ordinary. But, more to the point, man bites man is not only a surprising concept but a vividly absurd picture revealing two simultaneous concepts. At the risk of committing humorcide through over analysis, I submit that in this phrase one man is not only physically assaulting the other in a rather unconventional manner, but that since the word bite also suggests ridicule or criticism, it gives the phrase an additional level of meaning, causing it to be more ironic than its literal content suggests.
The most skillful wit must appear effortless while being loaded with meaning. And graphic wit is no exception. The best design solutions must be effortless and free from the self-conscious and tired conceits of all belabored humor. Yet if this is true, then why is it that the pun is one of the most significant components of graphic wit and design humor? As the oldest form of humor, the pun is also considered in the world of letters—as in the world—to be the lowest form. There is no kind of false wit that has been ridiculed as much as the pun. Yet a pun, the dictionary tells us, is “the humorous use of a word or words which are formed or sound alike but have different meanings, in such a way as to play on two or more of the possible applications; a pun is a play on words.”
Edgar Allan Poe complained, “The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability.” An old English proverb goes, “Who makes a pun will pick a pocket.” And who can forget that old grade-school put-down, “PU is two-thirds of a pun.” Indeed, throughout the ages this venerable form has been so abused that The New York Times forbids puns in its headlines unless the word substitution is so inextricably linked to the meaning of the story that the pun is incidental.
Why are puns necessary in graphic wit and humor? The rules that govern verbal language do not translate precisely into visual language. Thus, The New York Times has no rules governing visual puns. Graphic designers’ canon of usage is different because our means of communication—our language, syntax and grammar—are different. A picture is worth a thousand words because so much more information can be evoked through one image than in a sentence or paragraph. In visual language, it often is necessary to substitute one image for another, or one symbol for another—not just for purposes of jest, but to enhance meaning. Therefore, the pun—at best a kind of shorthand, at worst a strained contortion—describes graphic symbols used to simplify complex concepts into accessible, often memorable images.
