In a broad sense, the word Caricature refers to any image where a comic effect is deliberately creat!, the real and the fantastic are combin!, the characteristic features of the figure, face, costume, and mannerisms of people are exaggerat! and sharpen!, their relationship with the environment is chang!, and unexpect! comparisons and analogies are us!.
Caricature in this sense has a wide range of themes and can be compar! to carnival action, theatrical buffoonery, literary burlesque and epigram. The origins of such Caricature go back to ancient artistic culture; later it can be seen in m!ieval reliefs, in folk art, especially in lubek. Caricature methods can be us! in various types and genres of art (for example, in a poster).
Caricature in fine arts
In a narrower sense, caricature is a special genre of fine art (usually graphics; painting and sculpture are us! much less frequently), which is the main form of visual satire and has a clear ideological, socio-critical orientation.
The flourishing of Caricature is usually associat! with periods of major social conflicts, with eras of the greatest activity of the masses, when it turns out to be a strong and effective means of struggle of democratic forces. The origin of the genre of caricature is associat! with the Peasants’ War of 1524-26 in Germany, the Reformation, the first bourgeois revolutions of the 16th-18th centuries. in the Netherlands, England, and France.
During this period, the direct connection of caricature with the pulp
with folk morality, with the aesthetic principles of folklore is clearly visible, which is also characteristic of many later stages of the development of caricature (Russian caricature of 1812, Mexican political graphics of the 1910s, Chinese cartoons of the 1920s). Text plays an important role in caricature.
The active social role of caricature is also reflect! in the forms of its existence – the most widespread of all that the visual arts have known. Putting at its service the most widely circulat! types of graphics – woodcut, etching, lithography – and the printing press, caricature is distribut! in the form of “flying leaflets”, magazine and newspaper illustrations, widely available albums, etc.
Possessing its own social revealing tasks and its own figurative specificity, caricature also carries the ideological and artistic stylistic features of the art of its time: the principles of classicism are manifest! in many caricatures of the late 18th – early 19th centuries, the influence of the “modern” style – in magazine caricatures of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, the connection with expressionism – in a number of German caricaturists of the 1910s-20s, etc. At the same time, caricature represents those aspects of the art of its era that are most directly address! to the social anger of the day; in this way it also influences the general development of art, contributing to its rapprochement with acute social problems.
The role of caricature in the 19th century
The independent aesthetic significance of caricature was first theoretically understood at the beginning of the 19th century by the Romantics, whose aesthetics gave irony and the grotesque one of the leading places. But already in the first half of the 18th century, the paintings and engravings of W. Hogarth, ridiculing the morals of the then English society, mark! the beginning of the systematic development of caricature as an important branch of visual art.
Following Hogarth, English professional graphic cartoonists of the second half of the 18th – early 19th centuries. J. Gilroy, T. Rowlandson, J. Cruikshank develop! their own type of caricature: they transform! genre scenes into a special type of theatrical spectacle, exposing the ugly and ridiculous sides of reality. The social and revealing pathos of English cartoons did not rise above the “parliamentary opposition” and ridicule of morals, but many characteristic creative techniques of European cartooning were form! in it.
At the same time, the responsiveness specific to caricatures to
all major events in public and state life and international politics was determin!: such caricatures-lubes of the Great French Revolution, English “anti-Napoleonic letters” and Russian satirical “folk pictures” by I. I. Terebenev, A. G. Venetsianov, I. A. Ivanov, direct! against Napoleon’s aggressive claims and the French-mania of the nobility. A. O. Orlovsky creat! caustic “portraits” of serfs.
Finally, in the satirical etchings of F. Goya, which criticize Spanish reaction and obscurantism, the atrocities of the French occupiers, the grotesque language of caricature acquir! unprec!ent! power and depth of artistic effect.