Sunday, December 11, 2005

|* caricature.



Is caricature a form of art? According to Wikipedia.Org: "A caricature is a humorous illustration that exaggerates or distorts the basic essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness."

Caricature is a special art form that helps to point out the most important issues in a humorous way. There are many "funny" images that pretend on being called caricature, whereas in fact they are tasteless and stupid. The real art of caricature includes professional approach, talent to see the subtext and sharp eye for the unexpected points. Usually caricature becomes popular during the political and social changes or important events. It is the way to make people pay attention by using the strongest wearpon - humour. There are many characteristics for a good caricature: a metaphot, grotesque, extra-ordinary and sharp solutions and independent thinking about government and society. Of course, sometimes caricature, as any other form of art, can be used as propaganda, creating a particular stereotype.

Today caricaturists in Saudi hope for more freedom to express themselves with the means of their works. From the article published in Middle East Online: "Caricature is about drawings accompanied with small comments, but has large meanings either to mock or criticize." Many caricaturists in the Middle East admit that the World Wide Web has helped to make caricaturists' voices to be heard all over the world.

I would say that caricature is unique, because sometimes it is enough to look at one caricature and understand the main point and the whole situation instead of reading through numerous articles on the same topic.







I personally like the works of the cartoonist Jeff Danziger





see more of them here

As and old Chinese proverb goes: "a picture is worth ten thousand words"