Infinite Jest
Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine

A Special Exhibition Review by Gail S. Myhre

A particularly apt choice of subject for a museum special exhibition as we begin a presidential election year, Infinite Jest - Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 13, 2011 and will remain on view until March 4, 2012.

The exhibition's title derives from Shakespeare's Hamlet, which is quoted in one of the works on view, a print first produced during the 1864 presidential campaign which caricatures Democratic candidate General George McClellan as Hamlet, and his Republican opponent Abraham Lincoln as the exhumed skull of the late king's jester. And of course political issues are a fecund field in which the seeds of satire often took root.



Justin H. Howard (American, active 1856-1880)
Chicago Nominee: "I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest …
Where be your jibes now?" Hamlet, Act IV (sic). Scene 1, 1864
Wood engraving
Sheet: 12 x 16 5/8 in. (30.5 x 42.2 cm)
Gift of Georgiana W. Sargent, in memory of John Osborne Sargent, 1924
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York


This exhibition, however, does not limit itself to politics. Dissecting the overall genre of caricature, of which the museum has a vast and underutilized collection of excellent examples, into the individual subject themes of "Elements of Caricature," "Social Satire," "Politics" and "Celebrities," this presentation is the first to treat the art of caricature exclusively since a 1971 exhibition at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design in Providence.

"Elements of Caricature" first makes plain the ways in which the physique and physiognomy may be exaggerated or entirely altered for effect, without necessarily having satirical emphasis. Shown here are grotesque exaggerations of facial features drawn by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), and copies by others of da Vinci works no longer extant. Depictions of people as animals or even, in the case of P. T. Barnum (1810-1891), insects, is featured – Barnum proudly considered himself "the Prince of Humbugs," and is rendered here, taxonomically, as the Hum-Bug (1851) by Henry Louis Stephens (1824-1822). The juxtaposition of mismatched body types, fat and thin, tall and short, is shown here to be a staple of centuries of humor, and we find in the early development of caricature as a genre ample satire of the excesses of both Carnival gluttony and Lenten austerity from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the tension between these extremes was a common theme in art and literature.

Naturally in any aggregation of works of caricature the forms and follies of society and the world will tend to predominate. Although caricature is primarily an exercise in the distortion of the human image, as suggested by the word’s etymology, from the Italian carico and caricare, "to load" and "exaggerate," caricature's peculiar idiom has most effectively been used in combination with satire. In this vein, the drawings and prints which detail the exigencies of contemporary fashion and social attitudes in the "Social Satire" section are some of the most striking and most enduringly humorous. Images of overdone wigs and bustles, like the walking hairpiece depicted in the etching Top and Tail (1777), still elicit a smile today.



Anonymous, British
Top and Tail, 1777
Etching, hand colored
Plate: 12 3/4 x 7 7/8 in. (32.3 x 19.9 cm)
The Elisha Whittlesey Collection, The Elisha Whittlesey Fund, 1959
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York


In this section are excellent social caricatures by such notable artists as Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, 1746-1828) and Honoré-Victorin Daumier (1808-1879). Shown here are some of the liveliest images, as the brawls and cheats of gambling are examined by the exhibition's most prolific caricaturist, Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), and some of the bawdiest, as fashionable bustles, wispy luxury fabrics, and corsets are shown to dreadful advantage. Also present are delightful lampoons of the overstuffed seriousness of the art world, as with Boilly's (1761-1845) Les amateurs de tableaux (The Art Connoisseurs), in which he pokes fun at amateur admirers who gape and peer at the small painting one man holds.



Louis-Léopold Boilly (French, 1761-1845)
The Art Connoisseurs (Les amateurs de tableaux)
From the series Recueil de Grimaces (Collection of Grimaces), 1823-1828
Lithograph, hand colored
12 3/8 x 10 in. (31.4 x 25.5 cm) A. Hyatt Mayor Purchase Fund, Marjorie Phelps Starr Bequest, 1989
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York


Political caricature, the recognizable depiction of rulers and statesmen for purposes of satire, did not come into common usage until the second half of the eighteenth century. Prior to that, politics was addressed primarily by the use of allegory. However, the popular interest in politics in eighteenth century Britain, along with a series of notable political crises including the American and French Revolutions and the Napoleonic wars, brought a new crop of caricaturists like Rowlandson and James Gillray (1756-1815), who depicted such notables as King George III and William Pitt in their satires, and whose drawings turned Napoleon into the first internationally recognized public figure. Although the role played by these political caricatures has been largely assumed today by the lighter and looser cartoon, contemporary artists including the Mexican Muralist painter Alfredo Zalce (1908-2003) and Dutch Siegfried Woldhek (b. 1951) in working with traditional methods have helped to keep the art of caricature alive.

More even than political satire, the caricature of celebrities has survived into the modern era. In this section we find a quick pen and ink sketch by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) not far away from a pleasantly surprising pencil sketch of a long-necked lady with a hat by Enrico Caruso (1873-1921), who was a skilled amateur caricaturist and made such drawings as a relief from the stresses of his professional operatic career. Naturally two of Al Hirschfeld's (1903-2003) drawings are present; the earlier Americans in Paris (1951) showing a sidewalk café literally packed with recognizable faces, while the later Artur Rubenstein (1981) exhibiting the development in his work of a preference for reducing a figure to bare essentials – Rubenstein's (1887-1982) shoulder and chest are executed by a simple triangle, his ear merely a C with a small x in the middle, and only the detailed hands and face show the maestro's characteristic animation.

The final work in this charming exhibition brings the past and present of caricature together. This print by Enrique Chaguya (born 1953) depicting the beleaguered President Barack Obama suffering from a dreadful headache while six demons sing and blow trumpets in his ears, pound on his skull with hammers or drill with corkscrews was drawn deliberately in the style of the late eighteenth century caricaturist George Cruikshank (1792-1878), and provides a humorous take on the president's tribulations in passing national health care reform.



Enrique Chagoya (American, b. Mexico, 1953)
The Head Ache, A Print after George Cruikshank, 2010
Etching with digitally printed color on gampi paper chine collé
Sheet: 15 x 21 in. (38.1 x 53.3 cm)
Stewart S. MacDermott Fund, 2010
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
© 2011 Enrique Chagoya


The organization and layout of this exhibition makes it especially easy to navigate. Observant visitors to the museum will find the left hand gallery, number 691, marked with a discreet “enter” sign; while the rightmost, number 693, is similarly marked “exit”. The exhibition proceeds thematically through the three galleries as described above and in the accompanying exhibition catalogue. Images appear in the catalogue in the same order as they do in the exhibition, and are numbered in the exhibition not with museum inventory numbers but with catalogue numbers, which makes its purchase both an excellent guide to the presentation and a particularly comprehensive souvenir.

About the Catalogue

Constance C. McPhee and Nadine M. Orenstein
Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine (exh. cat.).
New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011.

"Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine" is on view from September 13, 2011 - March 4, 2012 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, New York, NY 10028-0198. (Telephone: 212-535-7710; Website). The museum is open Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday from 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM, Friday and Saturday from 9:30 AM to 9:00 PM. Suggested admission is $25.00 for adults, $17.00 for seniors and $12.00 for students. Paid parking is available in the Museum Garage.

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From your Guide: Gail S. Myhre, Correspondent for Museums and Special Exhibitions, is a specialist in Roman art and history who also appreciates a wide variety of Modernist movements. You may read all of her Special Exhibition Reviews here.