caricature
American Heritage Dictionary:
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car·i·ca·ture
(kăr'ĭ-kə-chʊr', -chər) 
n.
To represent or imitate in an exaggerated, distorted manner.
n.
- A representation, especially pictorial or literary, in which the subject's distinctive features or peculiarities are deliberately exaggerated to produce a comic or grotesque effect.
- The art of creating such representations.
- A grotesque imitation or misrepresentation: The trial was a caricature of justice.
To represent or imitate in an exaggerated, distorted manner.
[French, from Italian caricatura, from caricare, to load, exaggerate, from Late Latin carricāre, from Latin carrus, a Gallic type of wagon.]
caricaturist car'i·ca·tur'ist n.SYNONYMS caricature, burlesque, parody, travesty, satire, lampoon. These nouns denote artistic forms in which someone or something is imitated in an amusing and generally critical manner. A caricature grossly exaggerates a distinctive or striking feature with intent to ridicule: drew a caricature of the politician. Burlesque, which usually denotes a dramatic work, suggests outlandish mimicry and broad comedy to provoke laughter: a burlesque playing at the theater. Parody, travesty, and satire generally apply to written works. Parody employs the manner and style of a well-known work or writer for a ludicrous effect: wrote a parody of the famous novel. A travesty is a harshly distorted imitation: a travesty of morality. Satire usually involves ridiculing follies and vices: employs satire in her poetry. A lampoon is a malicious but broadly humorous satire: a lampoon authored by a standup comic.
WORD HISTORY The history of the word caricature takes us back through the centuries to a time when the Romans occupied Gaul, offering the blessings of civilization to the Gauls but also borrowing from them as well. One such borrowing, the Gaulish word *karros, meaning "a wagon or cart," became Latin carrus, "a Gallic type of wagon." This Latin word has continued to roll through the English language, giving us car, career, cargo, carry, and charge, among others. Caricature, another offspring of carrus, came to us via French from Italian, in which caricatura, the source of the French word, was derived from Italian caricare, "to load, burden, or exaggerate." Caricare in turn came from Late Latin carricāre, "to load," derived from the Romans' Gaulish borrowing carrus.
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caricature
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
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caricature
Comically distorted drawing or likeness intended to satirize or ridicule its subject. The word, derived from the Italian caricare (to load or charge), was probably coined by the Carracci family, who defended the practice as a counterpart to idealization. In the 18th century the caricature became connected with journalism and was put to virulent use by political commentators. In the 1880s photo-process engraving made it possible to produce and illustrate daily newpapers cheaply, bringing caricatures to the general public. In the 20th century caricature increasingly moved into the editorial, sports, and theatrical sections of newspapers. Important caricaturists include Jacques Callot, George Cruikshank, Honor Daumier, Gustave Dor, and Al Hirschfeld.
For more information on caricature, visit Britannica.com.
Oxford Companion to the Body:
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caricature
The caricature is amongst the most prevalent and popular of all ‘art’ forms. Certainly, comic representations of the rich and famous, the wicked, and the powerful appear prominently in newspapers and magazines the world over. While these images may contain many different aims and agendas, the most striking feature of all caricature is the distortion of the body: the thin are made skeletal, the plump swell to prodigious proportions, noses inevitably lengthen, while eyes either sink or bulge. Distortions of scale are accompanied by exaggerated representations of manner, dress, and temperament. Whether the target is the President of the US, a successful lawyer, or the Queen of England, the caricaturist's intention is to reveal a personality or characteristic through the comic exaggeration of their most visible feature, habit, or trait.
Given its widespread use, the term ‘caricature’ is often employed rather loosely to describe any form of burlesque, grotesque, or merely ludicrous representation. However, there is more to a caricature than the mere representation of ugliness. A better definition would hold that caricature is an artistic mode, usually in the form of a portraiture, in which the characteristic features of the subject are presented in a way that deforms or exaggerates their shape for comic effect. More precisely, the term ‘caricature’ (which is taken from the Italian caricare) means to overload or to overcharge: as such, caricatures pack meaning and detail onto otherwise simple body shapes. Works of caricature can therefore be defined as excessive or deformed portraits of known individuals; the purpose of such images is generally satiric.
Given this lurid fascination with the ugly, the representation of comic monstrosity might fairly be said to determine the caricaturist's art. With their gross distortion and exaggerated postures the portraits of men and women provided by caricaturists seem distanced from a real encounter with the human body, its strength and frailties. However, this appearance is deceptive. The study of caricature can reveal a lot about changing attitudes to body shape, diet, and sexual activity. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, caricaturists were much influenced (as were artists in many different genres) by the work of G. B. Della Porter (De Humana Physiognomia, 1586) ; Charles Le Brun (Expression des Passions, 1698) ; and Johann Kaspar Lavater (Physiognomische Fragmente, 1775). Le Brun's work described, via a mixture of simple sketches and rather more complicated descriptions, the most striking of facial and bodily attitudes: rage, grief, reverence, and so forth. Le Brun's illustrations provided artists, including caricaturists, with a basic template which they could revise (or distort) for their own purposes.
In the nineteenth century, as research in physiognomy gathered pace, texts such as Charles Darwin's The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals can be seen to have had an influence on contemporary satiric portraits. Certainly anthropomorphic caricature was hugely popular from the middle years of the nineteenth century. As such, caricature provides a record, albeit an oblique one, of changing attitudes to the human body, its form, and its functions. The practice of caricature also has connotations of moral judgement, as well as bodily excess or mere physical form. Writing in 1991, Kenneth Rivers defined caricature as ‘the artistic use of deformation for satirical purposes’. Although the intention behind any given caricature can be defined broadly as ridicule or satire, the precise motivation behind a particular piece can be varied. While the work of some caricaturists aims no higher than the exhibition of crude national or sexual stereotypes, many caricatures reveal more subtle ploys, and greater artistic and political aspirations. Indeed, the history of caricature has often been entwined with the history of censorship. The status of the caricaturist's art might fairly be defined as a negotiation between a crude impulse to ridicule and a higher wish for change or reformation.
Although the point will admit of some debate, it is safe to date the emergence of caricature (at least in its pictorial form) to the early sixteenth century. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is often cited as an early caricaturist. Certainly illustrations in his sketch books depict faces and figures with their features grossly deformed for deliberate comic effect. An equally plausible candidate for the title of first caricaturist is Annibale Carracci (1560-1609). Carracci's paintings, of which The Bean Eater (1583-4) is a good example, blend the conventions of Italian low-life painting with a keen eye for characteristic detail. However, the claim that Carracci was the first caricaturist rests on the knowledge that his works generally represent recognizable individuals, and not anonymous or general types as is the case with da Vinci; witness, for instance his ‘portraits’ of old men and young girls in his sketch books.
Carracci's foremost achievement was to blend gross distortion with a general likeness, so that while the features of the face were turned and twisted the person portrayed remained easily recognizable. Along with that of his brother Agostino (1557-1602), Carracci's work defined the caricaturist's art as a mode of satiric portrayal which in rejecting the physical reality of the person represented sought to reveal a greater moral truth through the exhibition of their vices. Unquestionably, it is the work of the Carracci brothers that made caricature both artistically successful and hugely popular, both in the sixteenth century, and arguably beyond. Carracci is even credited with offering the following defence of the caricaturist's art:
Is not the caricaturist's task exactly the same as the classical artist's? Both see the lasting truth beneath the surface of mere outward appearance. Both try to help nature accomplish its plan. The one may strive to visualize the perfect form and to realize it in his work, the other to grasp perfect deformity, and thus reveal the very essence of a personality. A good caricature, like every work of art, is more true to life than reality itself.
Carracci's statement defends caricature on the grounds of its artistic worth, and its moral seriousness has been used by successive generations of practitioners and critics eager to defend caricature.
If Carracci established the worth and value of caricature in the Baroque period in Italy, then the golden age of British caricature was without question the eighteenth century. It was during this period that British art produced arguably some of the more playful, most incisive, and most savage caricatures ever attempted. William Hogarth (1697-1764), Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), and James Gilray (1756-1815) all flourished at this time. While Hogarth's graphic satires employ caricature sparingly as part of a more general lambasting of Georgian society, Gilray's cartoons viciously expose the foibles and deformities of his most prestigious contemporaries. Frequent victims of Gilray's pen were politicians such as the Prime Minister Pitt, who is depicted as thin and emaciated as if on the verge of collapse, while his opponent, the more ebullient Charles James Fox, appears fat and swarthy. Like Hogarth, Rowlandson's comedy is broader, but he still uses startling images of personal deformity in order to get his — sometimes cruel — jokes across. With the addition of George Cruikshank (1792-1878), and possibly Sir David Low (1891-1963), Hogarth, Gilray, and Rowlandson represent the finest achievements of British caricature. Today historians regularly cite the social and political satires of Gilray and Rowlandson as valuable evidence of prevailing attitudes and prejudices within eighteenth-century culture.
Undoubtedly influenced by work going on across the channel, French caricature flourished throughout the nineteenth century. In the uncertain political climate that followed the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815, pictorial satire enjoyed an uneasy existence. Its principal practitioners were Charles Philipon (1800-62) and Honoré Daumier (1808-79). Importantly, Philipon founded the weekly La Caricature in 1830, shortly to be followed by the daily La Charivari. Both journals provided an outlet for some of the finest caricatures the period produced. Certainly Philipon's representation of the hated Louis-Philippe as an overripe pear on the verge of rotting is a triumph of artistry and political expression. The detested king's flabby features coalesce to form the bulging sides of the fruit, an image which combines, brilliantly, physical ugliness with a distaste for the system of government that Louis-Philippe led. Although quickly repressed, Philipon's and Daumier's work in the 1830s was to have an influence on caricature in France, Europe, and the US for the remainder of the century.
More recently, the twin crises of the early twentieth century — the Great Depression and the rise of Fascism on the continent — have provided caricaturists with fertile if also painful subjects for their comedy. In Germany, George Grosz (1893-1959) used his art to expose the moral bankruptcy of the German state during the Weimar and Nazi periods. Almost entirely self-taught, Grosz drew spare caricatures representing opulent Germans as wholly debauched, their bodies glutted on sexual excess and political corruption. Happily, the twentieth century also saw more pleasurable and prosperous times. In reflecting upon the opulence of the twenties or the wealth of the 1980s, American journals such as The New Yorker, and the British comic magazine Punch, image an affluent society which they wish to chasten yet also to celebrate. The harsh images of Gilray and Grosz are not present, perhaps, but a canny social commentary remains.
— Robert Jones
Bibliography
- Gombrich, E. H. and Ernst, K. (1940). Caricature. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth.
- Rivers, K. T. (1991). Transmutations: understanding literary and pictorial caricature. University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland.
- Victoria and Albert Museum (1984). English caricature 1620 to the present: caricaturists and satirists, their art, their purpose and influence. Victoria and Albert Museum, London
See also art and the body.
Roget's Thesaurus:
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caricature
noun
- A false, derisive, or impudent imitation of something: burlesque, farce, mock, mockery, parody, sham, travesty. See respect/contempt/standing, same/different/compare.
verb
- To copy (the manner or expression of another), especially in an exaggerated or mocking way: ape, burlesque, imitate, mimic, mock, parody, travesty. Idioms: do a takeoff on. See same/different/compare.
Answer of the Day:
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Al Hirschfeld
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From our Archives: Today's Highlights, June 21, 2006
Columbia Encyclopedia:
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Al Hirschfeld
caricature, a satirical drawing, plastic representation, or description which, through exaggeration of natural features, makes its subject appear ridiculous. Although 16th-century Northern painters, such as Holbein, Bruegel, and Bosch, employed certain elements of caricature, no comic tradition was established until the 17th cent. with the work of the Carracci. In the 18th cent. caricature flourished in England in the works of Hogarth, Rowlandson, and Gillray. In Spain, Francisco Goya's Los caprichos and Disasters of War illustrate the less attractive sides of human nature. The genre expanded to include political and social as well as personal satire, developing into the art of the cartoon. Periodicals of caricature, such as the French Charivari (1832), followed by Punch in England, Simplicissimus in Germany, and Puck, Life, and Judge in the United States, were quite popular in the 19th cent. They featured work by Daumier, George Cruikshank, John Tenniel, Art Young, E. W. Kemble, and Daniel Fitzpatrick. Modern caricaturists of note include David Low, Ronald Searle, Max Beerbohm, Al Hirschfeld, David Levine, and H. L. Block. Sculpture generally lends itself less well to caricature, but an exception exists in the series of heads by Franz Xavier Messerschmidt (1736-83) which represent exaggerated states of emotion and character. In literature, caricature has been a popular form since the ancient Greeks. Through verbal exaggeration and distortion the writer achieves an immediate, comic, often satiric effect. No one has made wider use of the literary caricature than Dickens.
Bibliography
See L. Lambourne, Caricature (1984); R. G. Goldstein, Censorship of Caricature in Nineteenth-Century France (1989); C. C. McPhee and N. M. Orenstein, Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine (2011).
Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: Fine Arts:
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caricature
In art or literature, portrayal of an individual or thing that exaggerates and distorts prominent characteristics so as to make them appear ridiculous. Caricature is commonly a medium for satire.
Word Tutor:
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caricature
IN BRIEF: A drawing of a person or thing that exaggerates certain features for comical effect.
The street artist drew a caricature of the famous actor.
LearnThatWord.com is a free vocabulary and spelling program where you only pay for results!
Random House Word Menu:
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categories related to 'caricature'
- Devices, Techniques, and Elements - caricature: description employing extreme and comic exaggeration
- Graphic Design - caricature: exaggerated drawing, esp. of human subject, portraying humorous or grotesque qualities
- Blame, Censure, Ridicule, and Contempt - caricature: distortion or exaggeration to make someone or something appear ludicrous
Bradford's Crossword Solver's Dictionary:
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caricature
See crossword solutions for the clue Caricature.
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
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Caricature
For other uses, see Caricature (disambiguation).
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person, animal or object to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.[1]
According to the Indian Cartoonist S. Jithesh, a caricature is the satirical illustration of a person or a thing, but a cartoon is the satirical illustration of an idea.[2]
Caricatures can be insulting or complimentary and can serve a political purpose or be drawn solely for entertainment. Caricatures of politicians are commonly used in editorial cartoons, while caricatures of movie stars are often found in entertainment magazines.
The term is derived from the Italian caricare—to charge or load. An early definition occurs in the English doctor Thomas Browne's Christian Morals, published posthumously in 1716.
- Expose not thy self by four-footed manners unto monstrous draughts, and Caricatura representations.
with the footnote:
- When Men's faces are drawn with resemblance to some other Animals, the Italians call it, to be drawn in Caricatura
Thus, the word "caricature" essentially means a "loaded portrait". According to School of Visual Arts caricature instructor Sam Viviano, the term refers only to depictions of real-life people, and not to cartoon fabrications of fictional characters, which do not possess objective sets of physiognomic features to draw upon for reference, or to anthropomorphic depictions of inanimate objects such as automobiles or coffee mugs. Walt Disney, on the other hand, equated his animation to caricature, saying the hardest thing to do was find the caricature of an animal that worked best as a human-like character.
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History
Some of the earliest caricatures are found in the works of Leonardo da Vinci, who actively sought people with deformities to use as models. The point was to offer an impression of the original which was more striking than a portrait. Diodemmar Casem, one of the great early practitioners, was favored by the members of the papal court for his ability to depict the essence of a person in 'three or four strokes.'[citation needed]
Caricature experienced its first successes in the closed aristocratic circles of France and Italy, where such portraits could be passed about for mutual enjoyment.
While the first book on caricature drawing to be published in England was Mary Darly's A Book of Caricaturas (c. 1762), the first known North American caricatures were drawn in 1759 during the battle for Quebec.[4] These caricatures were the work of Brig.-Gen. George Townshend whose caricatures of British General James Wolfe, depicted as "Deformed and crass and hideous" (Snell),[4] were drawn to amuse fellow officers.[4] Elsewhere, two great practitioners of the art of caricature in 18th-century Britain were Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) and James Gillray (1757–1815). Rowlandson was more of an artist and his work took its inspiration mostly from the public at large. Gillray was more concerned with the vicious visual satirisation of political life. They were, however, great friends and caroused together in the pubs of London. See the Tate Gallery's exhibit James Gillray: The Art of Caricature
In a lecture titled The History and Art of Caricature (September 2007, Queen Mary 2 Lecture theatre), the British caricaturist Ted Harrison said that the caricaturist can choose to either mock or wound the subject with an effective caricature. Drawing caricatures can simply be a form of entertainment and amusement – in which case gentle mockery is in order – or the art can be employed to make a serious social or political point. A caricaturist draws on (1) the natural characteristics of the subject (the big ears, long nose, etc.); (2) the acquired characteristics (stoop, scars, facial lines etc.); and (3) the vanities (choice of hair style, spectacles, clothes, expressions and mannerisms).
Notable caricaturists
Lithograph published in Le Charivari newspaper, February 27, 1864
Wood engraving published in Harper's Weekly newspaper, September 23, 1871
George Cruikshank (1792–1878, British) created political prints that attacked the royal family and leading politicians (in 1820 he received a royal bribe of £100 for a pledge "not to caricature His Majesty (George III of the United Kingdom) in any immoral situation."[citation needed] He went on to create social caricatures of British life for popular publications such as The Comic Almanack (1835–1853) and Omnibus (1842). He also earned fame as a book illustrator for Charles Dickens and many other authors.
Honoré Daumier (1808–1879, French) is considered by some[who?] to be the father of caricature.[citation needed] During his life, he created over 4,000 lithographs, most of them caricatures on political, social and everyday themes. They were published in the daily French newspapers (Le Charivari, La Caricature etc.)
Thomas Nast (1840–1902, American) was a famous caricaturist and editorial cartoonist in the 19th century and is considered by some as written in 1908 by the New York Times to be the father of American political cartooning. He is often credited with creating the definitive caricatures of the Democratic Donkey, the Republican Elephant and Santa Claus.[5]
Sir Max Beerbohm (1872–1956, British), created and published caricatures of the famous men of his own time and earlier. His style of single-figure caricatures in formalized groupings was established by 1896 and flourished until about 1930. His published works include Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen (1896), The Poets' Corner (1904) and Rossetti and His Circle (1922). He published widely in fashionable magazines of the time, and his works were exhibited regularly in London at the Carfax Gallery (1901–18) and Leicester Galleries (1911–57).
Alex Gard (1900–1948, Russian) created more than 700 caricatures of show business celebrities and other notables for the walls of Sardi's Restaurant in the theater district of New York City: the first artist to do so. Today the images are part of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.[6]
Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003, American) was best known for his simple black and white renditions of celebrities and Broadway stars which used flowing contour lines over heavy rendering. He was also known for depicting a variety of other famous people, from politicians, musicians, singers and even television stars like the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He was even commissioned by the United States Postal Service to provide art for U.S. stamps. Permanent collections of Hirschfeld's work appear at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and he boasts a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
Mort Drucker (1929, American) joined Mad in 1957 and became well known for his parodies of movie satires. He combined a comic strip style with caricature likenesses of film actors for Md, and he also contributed covers to Time. He has been recognized for his work with the National Cartoonists Society Special Features Award for 1985, 1986, 1987 and 1988, and their Reuben Award for 1987.
Gogu Neagoe (1976, Romanian) holds a Guinness World Record for the doing 131 caricatures through the phone, without ever seeing the subject.[7]
Vitaliy Peskov (1944–2002, Russian Виталий Песков) was a famous Russian caricaturist.
Robert Risko (1946, American) is known for his retro airbrush style. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Playboy, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and Interview.
David Levine (1926–2009, American) is noted for his caricatures in The New York Review of Books and Playboy magazine. His first cartoons appeared in 1963. Since then he has drawn hundreds of pen-and-ink caricatures of famous writers and politicians for the newspaper.
Sam Viviano (1953, American) has done much work for corporations and in advertising, having contributed to Rolling Stone, Family Weekly, Reader's Digest, Consumer Reports, and Mad, of which he is currently the art director. Viviano’s caricatures are known for their wide jaws, which Viviano has explained is a result of his incorporation of side views as well as front views into his distortions of the human face. He has also developed a reputation for his ability to do crowd scenes. Explaining his twice-yearly covers for Institutional Investor magazine, Viviano has said that his upper limit is sixty caricatures in nine days.
Sebastian Krüger (1963, German) is known for his grotesque, yet hyper-realistic distortions of the facial features of celebrities, which he renders primarily in acrylic paint, and for which he has won praise from The Times. He is well known for his lifelike depictions of The Rolling Stones, in particular, Keith Richards. Krüger has published three collections of his works, and has a yearly art calendar from Morpheus International. Krüger's art can be seen frequently in Playboy magazine and has also been featured in the likes of Stern, L’Espresso, Penthouse, and Der Spiegel and USA Today. He has recently been working on select motion picture projects.
Hermann Mejia (Venezuelan) is known for his frequent work for MAD Magazine. Mejia uses multiple techniques for his work, sometimes rendering his illustrations in black and white ink and copious amounts of cross-hatching, sometimes using watercolor, and sometimes combinations of both.
S. Jithesh (Indian) is best known for his Super-speedy style of Celebrity Caricaturing Stage Shows.[8] He belongs to the genre of the odd and rare species of Performing Caricaturists. He is the first one who courageously and successfully experimented with and explored the performance dimensions of the 'Art of Caricaturing' as a perfect 'Stage Art' with consistency.[9] He evolved and gave fine finish to the Infotainment 'Caricature Stage Show' or 'Caricature Concert' through more than two thousand stages. His 'Caricature Stage Show' is a blend of poetry, anecdotes and socio-political satire with super speedy drawing which explores the performing level possibilities of the 'Art of Caricaturing'.[10] Sketching of more than thousand celebrity caricatures relentlessly with a lightning pace and satirical commentary is the major attraction of his 'Caricature Stage Shows'. He is widely acclaimed as the 'World's Fastest Cartoonist' since his amazing ability to sketch 50 celebrity caricatures within 5 minutes.[11]
Computerized caricature
There have been efforts to produce caricatures automatically or semi-automatically using computer graphics techniques. For example, a system proposed by Akleman et al.[12] provides warping tools specifically designed toward rapidly producing caricatures. There are very few software programs designed specifically for automatically creating caricatures.
Computer graphic systems by necessity require quite different skillsets to caricatures created on paper. Thus using a computer in the digital production of caricatures requires advanced knowledge of the program's functionality. Rather than being a simpler method of caricature creation, it can be a more complex method of creating images that feature finer coloring textures than can be created using more traditional methods.
A milestone in formally defining caricature was Susan Brennan's master's thesis[13] in 1982. In her system, caricature was formalized as the process of exaggerating differences from an average face. For example, if Prince Charles has more prominent ears than the average person, in his caricature the ears will be much larger than normal. Brennan's system implemented this idea in a partially automated fashion as follows: the operator was required to input a frontal drawing of the desired person having a standardized topology (the number and ordering of lines for every face). She obtained a corresponding drawing of an average male face. Then, the particular face was caricatured simply by subtracting from the particular face the corresponding point on the mean face (the origin being placed in the middle of the face), scaling this difference by a factor larger than one, and adding the scaled difference back on to the mean face.
Though Brennan's formalization was introduced in the 1980s, it remains relevant in recent work. Mo et al.[14] refined the idea by noting that the population variance of the feature should be taken into account. For example, the distance between the eyes varies less than other features such as the size of the nose. Thus even a small variation in the eye spacing is unusual and should be exaggerated, whereas a correspondingly small change in the nose size relative to the mean would not be unusual enough to be worthy of exaggeration.
On the other hand, Liang et al.[15] argue that caricature varies depending on the artist and cannot be captured in a single definition. Their system uses machine learning techniques to automatically learn and mimic the style of a particular caricature artist, given training data in the form of a number of face photographs and the corresponding caricatures by that artist. The results produced by computer graphic systems are arguably not yet of the same quality as those produced by human artists. For example, most systems are restricted to exactly frontal poses, whereas many or even most manually produced caricatures (and face portraits in general) choose an off-center "three-quarters" view. Brennan's caricature drawings were frontal-pose line drawings. More recent systems can produce caricatures in a variety of styles, including direct geometric distortion of photographs.
The science of caricature
Leopold et al.[16] found that individual face-recognizing neurons in the inferotemporal cortex respond more strongly to caricatured faces than to the veridical representations of the same face, and suggest that the visual brain may code faces relative to a prototypical face, consistent with Brennan's formalization.
Ramachandran and Hirstein[17] suggested that caricature is related to peak shift. In the peak shift effect, animals sometimes respond more strongly to exaggerated versions of the training stimuli. For example, if a rat is trained to respond to a rectangle of a particular aspect ratio, and to avoid a square, when later presented with several rectangles it will prefer the one with the most elongated aspect ratio (this being the one that is most different from the square) rather than the original rectangle used in training. Ramachandran and Hirstein speculated that cells in a monkey brain that respond to particular faces would respond more strongly to caricatured versions of the face. This effect has been confirmed in FMRI experiments by Tsao.[17]
Modern use of caricature
Beside the political and public-figure satire, most contemporary caricatures are used as gifts or souvenirs, often drawn by street vendors. For a small fee, a caricature can be drawn specifically (and quickly) for a patron. These are popular at street fairs, carnivals, and even weddings, often with humorous results.[18]
Caricature artists are also popular attractions at many places frequented by tourists, especially oceanfront boardwalks, where vacationers can have a humorous caricature sketched in a few minutes for a small fee. Caricature artists can be a great interactive form of entertainment for parties, where they will draw caricatures of the guests for their entertainment.
See also
- Cartoon
- Controversial newspaper caricatures
- Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
- Persona
- Physiognomy
- Satire
- Zoomorphism
References
- ^ Caricature in literature
- ^ [1]
- ^ Preston O (2006). "Cartoons... at last a big draw". Br J Rev 17 (1): 59–64. doi:10.1177/0956474806064768.
- ^ a b c Mosher, Terry. "Drawn and Quartered." Leader and Dreamers Commemorative Issue. Maclean's. 2004: 171. Print.
- ^ "The Historic Elephant and Donkey; It Was Thomas Nast "Father of the American Cartoon," Who Brought Them Into Politics." (PDF). New York Times. 08/02/1908. p. SM9. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9D07EFDB113EE033A25751C0A96E9C946997D6CF&oref=slogin. Retrieved 2008-07-12.
- ^ NYPL.org, the New York Public Library Inventory of the Sardi's caricatures, 1925–1952.
- ^ "Face caricatură prin telefon!". Click! cotidian naţional. http://www.click.ro/actualitate/face-caricatura-prin-telefon. Retrieved 2008-01-25.
- ^ [2]
- ^ "Cartoons take shape in no time". The Hindu (Chennai, India). February 28, 2010. http://www.hindu.com/2010/02/28/stories/2010022851350300.htm.
- ^ "‘Varayarangu' reaches a milestone". The Hindu (Chennai, India). October 4, 2010. http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/article812347.ece.
- ^ "Strokes in a jiffy". The Hindu (Chennai, India). June 25, 2008. http://www.hindu.com/2008/06/25/stories/2008062550940200.htm.
- ^ E. Akleman, J, Palmer, R. Logan, "Making Extreme Caricatures with a New Interactive 2D Deformation Technique with Simplicial Complexes", Proceedings of Visual 2000, pp. Mexico City, Mexico, pp. 165–170, September 2000. See the author's examples on VIZ-tamu.edu
- ^ Susan Brennan, The Caricature Generator, MIT Media Lab master's thesis, 1982. Also see Susan Brennan, Caricature Generator: The Dynamic Exaggeration of Faces by Computer, Leonardo, Vol. 18, No. 3 (1985), pp. 170–178, doi:10.2307/1578048
- ^ Mo, Z.; Lewis, J., Neumann, U. (2004). "Improved Automatic Caricature by Feature Normalization and Exaggeration". ACM Siggraph. doi:10.1145/1186223.1186294. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1186294&jmp=references&coll=&dl=GUIDE&CFID=15151515&CFTOKEN=6184618.
- ^ L. Liang, H. Chen, Y. Xu, and H. Shum, Example-Based Caricature Generation with Exaggeration, Pacific Graphics 2002.
- ^ Leopold, D.; Bondar, I., Giese, M. (August 2006). "Norm-based face encoding by single neurons in the monkey inferotemporal cortex". Nature 442 (7102): 572. doi:10.1038/nature04951. PMID 16862123.
- ^ a b Vilayanur Ramachandran and Diane Rogers-Ramachandran, The Neurology of Aesthetics, Scientific American Mind, October/November 2006.
- ^ McGlynn, Katla (June 16, 2010). "Street Portraits Gone Wrong: The Funniest Caricature Drawings Ever (PICTURES)". Huffingtonpost.com. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/16/street-portraits-gone-wro_n_614120.html#s101149. Retrieved 2010-12-31.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Caricatures |
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Look up caricature in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- International Society of Caricature Artists (ISCA) Official site of the International Society of Caricature Artists – a non-profit association devoted to the art of caricature (Formerly the National Caricaturist Network (NCN))
- Wittygraphy a social network dedicated to the art of caricature
- Bogotá's Caricaturists Caricaturists' street in Bogota, Colombia
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Translations:
Top
Caricature
Dansk (Danish)
n. - karikatur
v. tr. - karikere
Nederlands (Dutch)
karikaturiseren, karikatuur
Français (French)
n. - caricature
v. tr. - caricaturer
Deutsch (German)
n. - Karikatur, Parodie
v. - karikieren, parodieren
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - γελοιογραφία, καρικατούρα
v. - γελοιογραφώ, (μτφ.) διακωμωδώ
Italiano (Italian)
caricaturare, caricatura
Português (Portuguese)
n. - caricatura (f)
v. - caricaturar
Русский (Russian)
изображать в карикатурном виде, карикатура
Español (Spanish)
n. - caricatura
v. tr. - caricaturizar, hacer una caricatura
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - karikatyr
v. - karikera
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
讽刺画, 讽刺描述法, 漫画, 画成漫画讽刺
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 諷刺畫, 諷刺描述法, 漫畫
v. tr. - 畫成漫畫諷刺
한국어 (Korean)
n. - 만화, 풍자, 서투른 모방
v. tr. - 풍자적으로 그리다
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 風刺画, 風刺文, 風刺画法, 物まね, 漫画化
v. - 戯画化する
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) كاريكاتير, رسم ساخر (فعل) يسخر من
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - קריקטורה
v. tr. - עשה קריקטורה מ-
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Mentioned in
Rabelaisian
(Rabelais or his works)
An Illustrated Guide to Caricature
(1985 Visual Arts Film)
» More