(pizzicato strings playing)
Hi.
I'm Tom Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum,
and I'm in our galleries of drawings and prints,
where we've just opened an exhibition,
"Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine,"
which is on until March in 2012.
I'm with the curators of the exhibition,
Nadine Orenstein and Constance McPhee.
Looking around, I see you've divided the show
into different themes.
Could you tell me a little bit about...
MCPHEE: Yes, well, we start out
by establishing really the language of humor,
how artists conveyed humorous ideas in different ways--
through exaggerating bodies, gathering faces,
and showing profiles,
comparing people to animals or objects.
We then have a section that has to do with social satire,
where we see human weakness on display--
people eating too much, people gambling,
extreme fashion.
CAMPBELL: I'm amazed, for example,
looking at some of the caricatures of fashion.
I mean, we look at contemporary fashion and the extreme shapes.
You know, we've just had our McQueen exhibition
with some very exaggerated costumes.
But looking at some of these with the padding or the bustles,
it makes you realize
there is a long antecedence to the kind of exaggeration
of McQueen costumes.
ORENSTEIN: I should say that a lot of these caricatures
were sold in shops, print shops.
People would stand outside the shops,
these caricatures would be lined up in the windows,
and people from all different classes
would stand out there talking about them,
and it really was a common point of discussion
about political subjects, I mean, much the way...
CAMPBELL: I mean, some of them are vicious.
ORENSTEIN: Yes, and it's much the way "The Daily Show"
or "Saturday Night Live" works today.
It's a common experience
that everybody would be talking about.
CAMPBELL: And then you go through to political satire.
MCPHEE: Very few people come off as perfectly pure and wonderful.
(laugh)
We have a little section that focuses on Napoleon,
because he is so well-known.
And in fact, caricaturists and satirists like Gillray
helped to establish our contemporary view of Napoleon.
ORENSTEIN: So there's that wonderful print
of Napoleon and George III,
and George III's sort of looking at him
as this tiny little figure.
I mean, that really sets in our mind this image
of this tiny general.
MCPHEE: Whereas actually, he was of average height.
But today, most people would think of him as short.
CAMPBELL: Yes. (laugh)
The show comes all the way through to the modern day.
MCPHEE: Yes.
CAMPBELL: Do you see commonalities, common threads
that run all the way through here?
ORENSTEIN: Yeah, well, people like David Levine
really come out of the tradition
of 19th-century caricature artists
who made these images of well-known celebrities
with big heads and very small bodies.
We have, you know, a caricature of Delacroix
or a caricature of Victor Hugo by Daumier
that's very much the tradition that David Levine was following.
So you really see
the continuity of approaches over time,
but each one building on what came before it.
CAMPBELL: I love the Levine of Claes Oldenburg
as one of, as one of his own works of art.
MCPHEE: Yes.
Shown as the soft toilet.
And if you look at him closely,
you think he's simply wearing a cap,
but then you realize that's the toilet lid.
CAMPBELL: I see museums come in
for quite a good ribbing, as well.
MCPHEE: Yes, they do.
Crowds at exhibitions are nothing new.
There are many prints,
especially from the 19th century,
when public exhibitions really were established
as something people enjoyed going to
for entertainment,
and from the very beginning, they were crowded and popular.
And some of our funniest prints
show people trying to get up to the top floor
of the Royal Academy Exhibition in London,
tumbling down the stairs, people...
CAMPBELL: Oh, that would never happen today,
with modern health and safety regulations.
MCPHEE: Absolutely not. (laughing)
CAMPBELL: Now, we tend to think of museums
as being serious places.
How do you feel a show like this
fits into the Metropolitan Museum?
MCPHEE: There's a lot of serious things going on.
Humor is a very important way
of dealing with some of those things,
not only to give you immediate pleasure,
but also to help you consider them.
And sometimes it's a way
of getting past being too serious and too analytical
and actually get to the heart of the matter
without even realizing it.
CAMPBELL: Well, congratulations to you both.
It's a wonderful exhibition.
It's on exhibition at the Metropolitan
until March 2012.
I strongly advise you to visit.
It's a cornucopia of humor, satire,
and there's a beautiful book that accompanies the exhibition.
So come and see it-- thank you.
(music resumes)
(music ends)