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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

10pieces on the wall, the latest hung on 06/10/2026

A single Meissen monkey orchestra figure on a museum shelf, lit from the left, its raised arm and glossy white glaze catching the light against a dark background.

Latest piecePolitical Caricature and the Art of Exaggeration

The main wall

Latest pieces on the wall

8 pieces hung between 12/09/2026 and 06/10/2026

A closer look

A television set from the 1980s in a dim living room, its screen showing a paused animated frame of a character frozen mid-stride, with a remote control on the arm of a worn sofa.
Detail cropped from the same print: A television set from the 1980s in a dim living room, its screen showing a paused animated frame of a character frozen mid-stride, with a remote control on the arm of a worn sofa.
Inv. HI-003 The whole print and a detail cropped from the same print: The Silent Beat: Timing a Punchline in Comic Strip Panels.

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.

3 pieces · last hung on 06/10/2026

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.

3 pieces · last hung on 06/10/2026

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

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