Marcel Duchamp
It is true that humour has a big place in my life — you know that. In fact, humour is the only reason to live.
The man who considered good taste the main enemy of art. He transformed the very idea of art, exposing trash in museums and adding a moustache to Gioconda.
Undoubtedly, his most famous drollery was the toilet bowl erected in the gallery: the art object was called Fountain, and the pseudonym used for the signature was translated as "fool".
Salvador Dalí
It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.Who knows what was more in this genius, madness or wit. He himself said that normality lead him to a dead end, while insanity was a breeding ground for him, which grew out of buffoonery.
However, sometimes Dalí was very serious. For example, when he said: "If a person cannot imagine a horse galloping on a tomato, he is an idiot!"
Pablo Picasso
An artist is a person who paints what can be sold. And a good artist is a person who sells what he paints.Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Ruíz y Picásso — when you hear the artist’s full name, you can feel deep respect or burst in laugh (especially if you try to pronounce it yourself). The same is true for his works: you look at them and you can’t decide whether it’s a genius or a clown in front of you.
Andy Warhol
If a person isn’t generally considered beautiful, they can still be a success if they have a few jokes in their pockets. And a lot of pockets.He found humour to be the most important tool in life, arguing that a person can laugh or cry at his own discretion, and not according to circumstances: "Whenever you cry, you could laugh — the choice is yours."
In art he valued a good joke more than beauty as well.
Take Marilyn Monroe. Without her yellow hair and turquoise eyeshadows, as we remember, she is much prettier. But perhaps, Warhol himself would not have received his 15 minutes of fame without this ridiculous make-up.
Banksy
And even if you don’t come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they’re having a piss.He considers police officers to be the best collectors of his works: after all, he is a specialist in causing damage to municipal property. But even they don’t know anything about the author. We do not know what Banksy looks like (there is a version that it is a team led by Damien Hirst), but it’s not a mistake to claim that an excellent sense of humour is his special sign.
Dmitri Vrubel
What can contemporary art do? Handle money well.The author of the fresco, My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love, which depicted the kiss of Brezhnev and Honecker on the Berlin Wall, did not certainly need an extraordinary sense of humour to laugh at the General Secretary’s love for passionate kissing at the highest level. At that time, Brezhnev was the protagonist of most anecdotes.
The point is different. Vrubel made poking fun at the routine recorded in newspaper photos as his craft, and his creative method was emphasizing the photos to the size of works of art. His experiments with reportage photos of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev are no less hilarious.
Damien Hirst
If I thought that contemporary art is capable of losing its irony and becoming deadly serious again, I would not be doing art.
Whenever he presents his new masterpiece — paintings of coloured dots or another formalized animal — the first reaction of a person who does not try to pass himself off as a great connoisseur of modern art is "Are you kidding me, Mr. Hirst?" Perhaps, it only makes no sense to ask this question to his diamond skull: the affirmative answer is read on its face.
