William Hogarth
I've just discovered this artist from the 1700's who did a number of paintings as well as satirical engravings. His satirical art is quite funny, but even in his serious engravings, he seems to have an odd sense of style and humor.
I found him because I was looking through this random book I found in our family library called "The Image of the Turk in Europe," published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (no particular reason for it). Many of the engravings in the book are by Hogarth. One of my favorites is one that's supposed to be of the interior of a Turkish Bath, with a woman being cleaned by her slave, and you'd imagine something very exotic. The caption puts it accurately: " Hogarth forfeited the opportunity for artistic license with his dull interpretation of the woman's bath. The thick class inserts in the dome [the roof of the bath] which admitted light but retained steam, command almost more interest than the stony amazon at her bath." The engraving is like, 90% gray empty boring space, which is in stark contrast to the most of the other highly detailed and overfilled engravings of the time.
To explain my amusement, from a practical standpoint- what I know about engravings is anywhere you see a gray area, or a dark line, the artist has scratched or dug into a metal surface. All of Hogarth's boring gray walls would have been extraordinarily time consuming and expensive.
Anyway, I was trying to find some of the funny images out of this book, but I didn't find any of them online. In the process though, I found some other amusing images I thought I'd share. There's something bizarre or funny going on in all of the ones I found.
See what I mean?
I think this is called 'Jin Row'
I happened to find a detail from 'Jin Row'
The cow knocking over the pans which are on the verge of toppling.
What the hell is going on here?
She's kicked the table over.
Angry musician and little boy peeing on the building.
What are the two men in the background doing? In any case, the maid looks very vexed about it.
It's like when someone snaps a picture before the group is ready.
...I have no idea.
The face on the chandelier!
How very rude!
I found him because I was looking through this random book I found in our family library called "The Image of the Turk in Europe," published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (no particular reason for it). Many of the engravings in the book are by Hogarth. One of my favorites is one that's supposed to be of the interior of a Turkish Bath, with a woman being cleaned by her slave, and you'd imagine something very exotic. The caption puts it accurately: " Hogarth forfeited the opportunity for artistic license with his dull interpretation of the woman's bath. The thick class inserts in the dome [the roof of the bath] which admitted light but retained steam, command almost more interest than the stony amazon at her bath." The engraving is like, 90% gray empty boring space, which is in stark contrast to the most of the other highly detailed and overfilled engravings of the time.
To explain my amusement, from a practical standpoint- what I know about engravings is anywhere you see a gray area, or a dark line, the artist has scratched or dug into a metal surface. All of Hogarth's boring gray walls would have been extraordinarily time consuming and expensive.
Anyway, I was trying to find some of the funny images out of this book, but I didn't find any of them online. In the process though, I found some other amusing images I thought I'd share. There's something bizarre or funny going on in all of the ones I found.
See what I mean?
I think this is called 'Jin Row'
I happened to find a detail from 'Jin Row'
The cow knocking over the pans which are on the verge of toppling.
What the hell is going on here?
She's kicked the table over.
Angry musician and little boy peeing on the building.
What are the two men in the background doing? In any case, the maid looks very vexed about it.
It's like when someone snaps a picture before the group is ready.
...I have no idea.
The face on the chandelier!
How very rude!