Kunst & Komik Herausgegeben von Friedrich W. Block (review)

This edited volume is the sixth to emerge from the Kasseler Komik-Kolloquien, which have taken place since the year 2000, at first every three years, and since 2009 biennially. Previous volumes have featured topics encompassing the aesthetic representation of laughter from the late seventeenth century to the present, self-reflexive comedy in animated cartoons, gender and humor, the refinement (Verhöflichung) of laughter in the eighteenth century, and the transformation and institution of humor (das Komische). Although the German term Komik does not overlap fully with the English-language concept of “humor,” I use the terms interchangeably here to make my review user-friendly for English-speaking readers.

The eleven scholars in Kunst & Komik probe theoretical and actual intersections of art and humor in diverse media and genres. The book begins with a brief introduction by the editor, Friedrich W. Block, and is roughly divided into two halves based on the types of art that are discussed. The fine arts (including sculptures, paintings, collages, readymade artworks, television shows, and the artist’s museum) are treated in the first half, and literary texts (parodies, poetry, novels, and humor anthology paratexts) in the latter. Heading up these reflections on the intersections of art and Komik is Tom Kindt’s general theoretical contribution. In it, the author begins by describing three concepts of the relationship between art and humor. The first concept is the “Inkompatibilitätsidee,” which assumes that art and Komik are not compatible—not all forms of humor can be used in artworks, and objects cannot be categorized simultaneously as humorous and as art. Kindt points to the Enlightenment debates of the eighteenth century and the Romantic writers Friedrich Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck as sources for arguments supporting this view. The second approach, the “Affinitätsmodell,” has both a normative and a descriptive variant. The normative variant proposes that art truly becomes art by means of Komik, whereas the descriptive approach looks at the historical, structural similarities between the two phenomena. In support of this thesis, Kindt cites Milan Kundera, Karlheinz Stierle, and Arthur Koestler. The “Kompatibilitätsidee” constitutes the third viewpoint, a position between the extremes, which finds neither a conflict nor a necessary affinity between art and Komik.

After assessing these three overarching perspectives, Kindt endorses the “affinity model” by presenting three further arguments in support of it. The first argument derives from Koestler’s theory of the “bisociation” of two otherwise incompatible frames of reference, put forth in his 1964 book The Act of Creation: A Study of the Conscious and Unconscious Processes of Humour, Scientific Discovery, and Art. “Bisociation” might form the basis of what Kindt calls a “structural affinity” between art and humor; however, Kindt rejects this theory (yet another permutation of the “incongruity theory”) as it is applicable to the creation of humor, but not necessary for the creation of art more generally. John Morreal’s concept of humor as an aesthetic experience equal to any other may buttress the argument for a “functional affinity,” but Kindt finds this association too broad to be of much use to scholars, applicable as it is also to activities such as watching soccer or smoking a pipe. The strongest argument for the “affinity model” Kindt finds in the end to be the “evolutionary affinity” between humor and art. The “evolutionary affinity” theory is based on sociological and psychological theories put forth since the 1970s, which consider humor and art both to be forms of play that accompanied the evolutionary development of humankind. They have both been used to practice and thereby learn the cognitive, motor, and social abilities necessary for survival. Kindt concurs that humor and art both fulfill these purposes and thus belong together genealogically, even if this last model does not describe their structural similarities.

The five chapters focusing mainly on the fine arts that follow Kindt’s continue to delve into a wide assortment of humor theories, which the authors first lay out in some detail and then apply to specific artworks. In “Kunst...