I watched the Art 21 show on Humor. Starting off with a goofy skit playing off of stereotypes and misinformation. Moving into segment on an eccentric artist Elanor Antin, who makes very elaborate photographs of staged recreations of ancient Greek art. Then Antin explains some of her earlier work........Maybe I'm not getting it. There are some elements of Humor in her work, but very subtle and dry. I don't particularly care for it. Raymond Pettibond was the next highlighted artist who works in a kind of mixed media writing typography. I really like his process in making art, being immersed in a mess of paint and drawings and writings as the only means of operation. I enjoy the film noir element of his drawings and how he explains he see's more failure in his work than success. Elizabeth Murray is a painter covered in the next segment of the pbs special. Her intense use of color and playful shapes have a dr seuss quality about them that suggests a more innocent type of humor that what I am used to. Again, I am thoroughly perplexed by this enigma that is Art with a capital A. To use so many words and say nothing. I get lost in how biased and subjective labeling and categorizing art becomes. The last highlighted artist, Marvin Ford makes allot of narrative paintings of animals and birds. A sinister, dreamlike, quality to his work lends itself to a dark, almost British humor.
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