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Acaricature is a rendered image showing the features of its subject in a simplified or exaggerated way through sketching, pencil strokes, or other artistic drawings (compare to:cartoon). Caricatures can be either insulting or complimentary, and can serve a political purpose, be drawn solely for entertainment, or for a combination of both. Caricatures of politicians are commonly used innewspapers andnews magazines aspolitical cartoons, while caricatures of movie stars are often found in entertainmentmagazines. In literature, acaricature is a distorted representation of a person in a way thatexaggerates some characteristics and oversimplifies others.[1]
Etymology
The term is derived for the Italiancaricare—to charge or load. An early definition occurs in the English doctorThomas Browne'sChristian 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".[2]
In 18th-century usage, 'caricature' was used for any image that made use of exaggerated or distorted features; thus both for comic portraits of specific people and for general social and political comic illustrations such as the satires ofJames Gillray,Thomas Rowlandson and many others. The title of the BritishCaricature Magazine (1807-1819) exemplifies this usage. In modern usage, 'caricature' is used predominantly for a portrait of a recognizable individual (much as originally used to describe the works ofPier Leone Ghezzi), while the more recent term 'cartoon', popularised in the 19th century from its use inPunch magazine, is used for any other form of comic image, including political satire.
History
AncientPompeiian graffiti caricature of a politician
Some of the earliest caricatures are found in the works ofLeonardo 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.[3][citation needed]
Caricature became popular in Europeanaristocratic circles, notably through the works of the Italian Rococo artistPier Leone Ghezzi. Caricature portraits were passed around for mutual enjoyment.[citation needed] and the fashion spread to Britain from visitors returning from theGrand Tour; the much greater freedom of the press in England allowed its use in biting political satire and furthered its development as an art form in its own right.[citation needed]
In the 18th century, because of England's liberal political traditions, relative freedom of speech, and burgeoning publishing industry, London was a hot bed for the development of modern forms of caricature.William Hogarth (1697–1764) elevated satirical art into an accepted art form and a succeeding generation of talented artists including names such asJames Gillray (1757–1815),Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) andIsaac Cruikshank (1757–1815) advanced it further. Caricature became a valuable tool for political campaigning and both Gillray and Rowlandson established their reputations as caricaturists working as 'hired guns' in the1784 Westminster election.[6] Their skills continued to be in high demand; in the turbulent period of theFrench Revolution andNapoleonic Wars caricature became an increasingly important communication medium. Gillray became the leading political caricaturist of his time,[7] famous across Europe, while Rowlandson's vast output used caricature for both political and social caricature and for comic book illustration.[8]
Published from 1868 to 1914, the London weekly magazineVanity Fair became famous for its caricatures of famous people in society.[9] In a lecture titledThe History and Art of Caricature, the British caricaturist Ted Harrison said that the caricaturist can choose to either mock or wound the subject with an effective caricature.[10] Drawing caricatures can simply be a form of entertainment and amusement – in which case gentlemockery 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).[citation needed]
Sir Max Beerbohm (1872–1956, British), created and published caricatures of 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 includeCaricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen (1896),The Poets' Corner (1904), andRossetti 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) andLeicester Galleries (1911–57).
George Cruikshank (1792–1878, British) created political prints that attacked the royal family and leading politicians. He went on to create social caricatures of British life for popular publications such asThe Comic Almanac (1835–1853) andOmnibus (1842). Cruikshanks'New Union Club of 1819 is notable in the context of slavery.[11] He also earned fame as a book illustrator forCharles Dickens and many other authors.
Honoré Daumier (1808–1879, French) 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.)
Mort Drucker (1929-2020, American) joinedMad in 1957 and became well known for his parodies ofmovie satires. He combined acomic strip style with caricature likenesses of film actors forMad, and he also contributed covers toTime. He has been recognized for his work with theNational Cartoonists Society Special Features Award for 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988, and theirReuben Award for 1987.
Alex Gard (1900–1948, Russian) created more than 700 caricatures of show business celebrities and other notables for the walls ofSardi'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 Theater Collection ofThe New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.[12]
Pier Leone Ghezzi (1674–1755, Italian) A Rococo artist and theater designer, Ghezzi is widely considered to be the father of modern caricature. He popularizedcaricatura as an art form in 18th century Italy, inspiring its adoption in Britain and elsewhere in Europe.
Sebastian Krüger (1963,German) is known for his grotesque, yethyperrealistic distortions of the facial features of celebrities, which he renders primarily inacrylic paint, and for which he has won praise fromThe Times. He is well known for his lifelike depictions ofThe 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 inPlayboy magazine and has also been featured inStern,L'Espresso,Penthouse, andDer Spiegel andUSA Today.
David Levine (1926–2009, American) is noted for his caricatures inThe New York Review of Books andPlayboy 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.
Carlo Pellegrini Working under the pseudonym 'Ape', Pellegrini was one of the leading caricaturists forVanity Fair (1868-1914), a British magazine famous for its weekly full-page caricature portraits of leading celebrities of the day, including politicians, athletes, writers and other notables.
Sam Viviano (1953, American) has done a lot of work for corporations and in advertising, having contributed toRolling Stone,Family Weekly,Reader's Digest,Consumer Reports, andMad, of which he is currently theart director. Viviano's caricatures are known for their broad 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 make crowd scenes.
Caricature of a French military officer byDenis Dighton, 1812
A Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to "Blow Over"—"Let Us Prey." byThomas Nast,Harper's Weekly newspaper, September 23, 1871.
An example of a caricature created usingcomputerized techniques, superimposed over a photographic image
There have been some efforts to produce caricatures automatically or semi-automatically using computer graphics techniques. For example, a system proposed by Akleman et al.[13] provides warping tools specifically designed toward rapidly producing caricatures. There are very few software programs designed specifically for automatically creating caricatures.
Computer graphic system requires quite different skill sets to design a caricature as compared to the 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.[citation needed]
A milestone in formally defining caricature was Susan Brennan's master's thesis[14] in 1982. In her system, caricature was formalized as the process of exaggerating differences from an average face. For example, ifCharles III 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 onto the mean face.[citation needed]
Though Brennan's formalization was introduced in the 1980s, it remains relevant in recent work. Mo et al.[15] 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.[citation needed]
On the other hand, Liang et al.[16] 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.[citation needed]
Recognition advantage
Brennan's caricature generator was used to test recognition of caricatures. Rhodes, Brennan and Carey demonstrated that caricatures were recognised more accurately than the original images.[17] They used line drawn images but Benson and Perrett showed similar effects with photographic quality images.[18] Explanations for this advantage have been based on both norm-based theories of face recognition[17] and exemplar-based theories of face recognition.[19]
Modern use
A modern, street-style caricature of a man (c. 2010), with the subject on the right
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.[20]
Caricature artists are also popular attractions at many places frequented by tourists, especially oceanfrontboardwalks, where vacationers can have a humorous caricature sketched in a few minutes for a small fee. Caricature artists can sometimes be hired for parties, where they will draw caricatures of the guests for their entertainment.[citation needed][21]
^Humphrey, William. (1794).History of the Westminster election, containing every material occurrence ... to which is prefixed a summary account of the proceedings of the late Parliament ... / by Lovers of Truth and Justice. London: William Humphrey.
^Ted Harrison lecture,The History and Art of Caricature, September 2007, Queen Mary 2 Lecture Theatre
^The Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem, ed Elizabeth Mcgrath and Jean Michel Massing, London (The Warburg Institute) 2012
^NYPL.orgArchived 2009-02-10 at theWayback Machine, the New York Public Library Inventory of the Sardi's caricatures, 1925–1952.
^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 onVIZ-tamu.eduArchived July 1, 2007, at theWayback Machine
^Susan Brennan, The Caricature Generator, MIT Media Lab master's thesis, 1982. Also seeBrennan, Susan E. (1985). "Caricature Generator: The Dynamic Exaggeration of Faces by Computer".Leonardo.18 (3):170–8.doi:10.2307/1578048.ISSN1530-9282.JSTOR1578048.S2CID201767411.
^Benson, Philip J.; Perrett, David I. (January 1, 1991). "Perception and recognition of photographic quality facial caricatures: Implications for the recognition of natural images".European Journal of Cognitive Psychology.3 (1):105–135.doi:10.1080/09541449108406222.ISSN0954-1446.
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))
Daumier Drawings, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which focuses on this great caricaturist
