How Often Does Art Make You Laugh?

Not much, honestly

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (1917). This is a 1964 ‘replica’ on display at Tate Modern

Here’s a question: how often does art make you laugh? The other day I was standing in front of Marcel Duchamp’s famous ‘readymade’ artwork Fountain (1917) at Tate Modern with a group of students. It’s a manufactured, mass-produced urinal placed on its side on top of a pedestal, and is considered to be one of the most significant artworks of the 20th century because it questioned the value of art and how it is made.

I asked them what they thought it meant. As we all stood there solemnly looking at the piece, one of the students started to laugh. He couldn’t explain why, although perhaps it was his response to the absurdity of being asked to contemplate the deeper meanings of a toilet. The other students started to laugh too, and looked almost sheepish as they did so.

It made me think about the culture of contemplating art, particularly in the hushed environment of art galleries, and how we approach it with a seriousness that often precludes laughter. I wonder whether we are so primed to search for deeper meanings and wholesome lessons from visual art that we police ourselves in our responses. Laughing never seems like the ‘correct’ thing to do.

I saw a really interesting lecture recently about the science of laughter. How laughter has evolved over time in mammals, the ways that…