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Absurdism in the Face of Absurdity

The Weaponisation of Nonsense in Art

Fine art (Hons)

Word count: 7179

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) degree in Fine Art.

Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design

University of Dundee 2025

Abstract

This dissertation examines the use of absurdism in visual art as a response to situations perceived by the artist as absurd. Assessing the effectiveness of this approach as well as understanding the reasons why artists have chosen to utilise absurdity are core aims. In order to achieve this the word ‘absurd’ is defined in Chapter One. A literature review of Sheri Klein’s book Art and Laughter (2007) is also provided here to examine humour in art, as this often comes hand in hand with absurdism in art. Chapter Two outlines historical context, observing and analysing the use of absurdity across historical art movements. This begins with an overview of Dadaism and subsequent review of Hugo Ball’s Dada Manifesto. Hannah Höch’s Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany (1919/20) is used as an example of Dadaist artwork utilising absurdism. Surrealism and Fluxus are also outlined as further historical examples of absurdism as response. Joseph Beuys’s I Like America and America Likes Me (1974) is provided as an example of absurdism within the Fluxus movement. Chapter Three provides in depth visual analyses of three contemporary artworks within which the artists have used absurdity to respond to various situations. These are Alex Bag’s Untitled Fall ’95 (1995), David Sherry’s Red Sauce Brown Sauce Mania (2014), and Juno Calypso’s 12 Reasons You’re Tired All The Time (2013). Finally, a conclusion is reached about what absurdism is, why it has been used in visual art, and how effective it is as a response to perceived absurdity.

List of Illustrations

Fig 1. Page 5

Guerilla Girls, Image of the Guerrilla Girls (no date), Photograph Courtesy of Guerrilla Girls (2010). Guerrilla Girls: Reinventing the ‘F’ Word: Feminism [online] Guerrilla Girls. Available at: https://www.guerrillagirls.com/our-story.

Fig 2. Page 10

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany (1919/20)

Collage, 114 x 90cm

Courtesy of Berlin/Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany via Artsy. Available at: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/hannah-hoch-cut-with-the-dada-kitchen-knife-throughthe-last-weimar-beer-belly-cultural-epoch-in-germany

Fig 3. Page 13

Joseph Beuys, I Like America and America Likes Me (photo from performance) (1974) Performance

Courtesy of Artland Magazine (n.d.). Stories of Iconic Artworks: Joseph Beuys’ I Like America and America Likes Me. [Photograph] Artland Magazine. Available at: https://magazine.artland.com/stories-of-iconic-artworks-joseph-beuys-i-like-america-andamerica-likes-me/.

Fig 4. Page 15

Alex Bag, Untitled Fall ’95 (still) (1995)

Colour Video, Sound, 57 minutes

Courtesy of the artist and team and Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

Available at: https://www.clevelandart.org/exhibitions/alex-bag-untitled-fall-95

Fig 5. Page 17

David Sherry, Red Sauce Brown Sauce Mania (still from video) (2014)

Performance

Courtesy of the artist via his website. Available at: http://www.davesherry.com/Performance-Dave-Sherry-20-Red-sauce-Brown-Sauce-Mania-video-screengrab2014.html

Fig 6. Page 19

Juno Calypso, 12 Reasons You’re Tired All The Time (2013)

Archival Pigment Print, 101.6 x 152.4cm

Courtesy of the artist via her website. Available at: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/junocalypso-12-reasons-youre-tired-all-the-time-2

Introduction

This dissertation examines the use of absurdism in art as a response to perceived absurd situations. These could be large scale events such as war or environmental issues, or personal experiences with discrimination and struggle. It will look into the reasons why artists might have chosen to react nonsensically when faced with tragedy and trauma and evaluate the effectiveness of this approach. To achieve this, I will look at the work of both historical and contemporary artists who have taken this approach as well as discussing the use of humour in art more generally. I will particularly focus on Dadaism when exploring historical examples of absurdism in art, looking at how it came to be amid the First World War and why the artists within the movement decided not to make sense. This will also lead into my analyses of contemporary artists weaponising nonsense, as Dadaism’s continued influence can be seen in these works. Defining absurdity and looking more broadly at the use of humour in art are key issues that I will explore largely through a review of Sheri Klein’s book Art and Laughter (2007). The research within this dissertation links heavily into my art practice as I attack the difficulties I encounter in my own life with humour and exaggeration. Making what appears to be normal over the top and absurd can illustrate this absurdity to the viewer and to myself, whether this means being self-deprecating or laughing in the face of societal oppression and inner conflict. I focus particularly on feminist issues and my experiences with an anxiety disorder. The contemporary artists whose work I will analyse also look at these issues

This dissertation has three Chapters. The first, ‘Laughing at Art’, will focus on providing a definition for absurdity in both a philosophical sense and within the context of art. A definition of normality will also be provided here.

It will then delve into reviewing Sheri Klein’s Art and Laughter (2007), using this as a key text to explain why humour is used in art and relating this specifically to absurdity and absurd humour. In reviewing Klein’s book, I will present my conclusions relating to the text, providing my own assessment of the use of humour in art.

In Chapter Two, ‘Historical Absurdity’, I will cover examples of historical artists who have used absurdity. The main focus will be Dadaism, looking at key artists and artworks within this movement to understand the underlying ideas. Framing Dadaism within the context of the First World War, absurdism as a reaction can be analysed and understood. Hugo Ball’s Dada manifesto will be analysed, as this text helps us to understand the beliefs of the Dadaists, who they were, and why they were doing what they were doing. Hannah Höch’s Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany (1919/20) will be looked at as an example of absurdity as reaction within the Dada movement. This will link forward into a quick look at the Surrealism and Fluxus movements.

Chapter Three, ‘Contemporary Absurdity’, will look at the works of three contemporary artists who weaponise absurd humour – Juno Calypso, Alex Bag, and David Sherry. The pieces I will be looking at are Alex Bag’s Untitled Fall ’95 (1995), David Sherry’s Red Sauce Brown Sauce Mania (2014), and Juno Calypso’s 12 Reasons You’re Tired All The Time (2013). Examining their work I will look at how absurdity takes form across various disciplines and discuss what each artist is trying to communicate with their work. Drawing on the theoretical and historical backing of the previous two Chapters, I will analyse the effectiveness of these pieces. I will also make comparisons between these artists and explain how previous art movements may have influenced their practice.

Finally, my Conclusion will evaluate why artists have used absurdism in response to perceived absurdity and how effective this has proved to be.

Chapter One – Laughing at Art

The absurd is defined in the Dictionary of Untranslatables as “what is dissonant or is not heard and is defined as a discord or disagreement with understanding or reason, or with meaning, including the meaning of life”. (Cassin, 2014) From the philosophical standpoint provided here, we can say that absurdity exists beyond comprehension and goes against what we accept as normality thus forcing us to question the reality of it. To be dissonant or discordant is to clash, to be out of place. That which is absurd fights with that which is reasonable. The absurd does not fall into place and does not make clear sense.

The Oxford Dictionary definition of absurd is “wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate”. (Stevenson, 2010) This definition is obviously broader but reinforces the ideas presented by the former; to be absurd is to lack sense and reason. Understanding that the absurd is an absence of reason means recognising why some artists may use it as response – you cannot reason with a situation that lacks reason To approach a ridiculous situation with an equal or even disproportionate level of nonsense in return arguably makes more sense than agonising over the pursuit of sense

In order to agree upon what is absurd, there must also be an understanding of what is ‘normal’. The Oxford English Dictionary (2003) defines the word normal as “Constituting or conforming to a type or standard; regular, usual, typical; ordinary, conventional”. Therefore, what is normal will align with our understanding of the everyday and of reality. This will vary based on personal circumstances, cultural backgrounds, and various other factors. Pitting this definition against the definitions of absurd, we can see that these are two states that cannot coexist. If absurdity disagrees with meaning and reason and normality conforms to a standard; then absurdity is anything but normal.

Using these definitions, we can also begin to pin down what absurdity actually looks like in visual art. Said work will likely not be strictly representational as it must be at odds with our perception of reality and what is normal. It will likely confuse us in some way and may not even look like art in a typical sense (e.g. sculpture, painting, drawing). Absurd art should challenge our expectations and in doing so it could make us laugh, as the secondary Oxford definition of absurd states “arousing amusement or derision”. (Stevenson, 2010) Looking

into the potential for humour that absurdity brings is essential in continuing to define what it looks like in visual art and why artists may use it.

Philosopher Blaise Pascal’s theory of incongruity states that “Nothing produces laughter more than a disproportion between that which one expects, and that which one sees.” (Pascal, no date, quoted in Klein, 2007, p. 10) If absurdity is a disconnect from reason, and we apply Pascal’s theory, then we could assume that absurd art will make us laugh. Sheri Klein presents this quote in the first Chapter of her book Art and Laughter (2007) entitled ‘Before The Laugh’. In this first Chapter Klein looks at humour theory, outlines the kinds of humour frequently featured in visual art, and features some key art movements. Within the subsection ‘Theories of Humour’, she mentions humour scholar Avner Ziv’s idea of the four key purposes of humour which are, in short, achieving group solidarity, reducing conflict, perpetuating or challenging standards, and pleasure (p.11). All these purposes point towards the potential for humour to promote change and be used as an unconventional method of fighting back in the face of adversity. Challenging what is accepted as normal is also key to absurdity - Ziv’s third purpose as presented by Klein looks at normality in a cultural context (societal norms, stereotypes). This normality will vary from culture to culture and thus, as Klein notes, whether an artwork is found to be humorous or absurd will also vary. This is important as it highlights a limitation - what is absurd to one person may not be absurd to another. However, by looking at humour as a glue that can bind individuals into communities through mutual experience (Ziv’s first purpose), this limitation also holds power. In the case of humour as a weapon to combat struggle, finding community that uniquely understands your experiences and laughs with you can be extremely cathartic.

Klein also talks about the use of humour in the midst of crisis when she discusses ‘dark humour’, which specifically tackles difficult and uncomfortable subject matters (p. 19). This is later exemplified in Chapter Four ‘The Art of Disguise’ when she discusses Canadian artist Ron Noganosh’s work (p. 76 -77). She claims that his use of humour takes power away from his subject matter (issues faced by indigenous peoples in Canada) and allows escape from “the pain and absurdity of reality”. The attitude of ‘if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry’ comes to mind here, as the use of dark humour can be seen as an attempt to replace a negative emotion with a positive one. Ziv’s fourth purpose – pleasure – is also a method of resistance

in this context as joy becomes an act of defiance when the expected reaction of sadness or defeat is not received.

Pleasure as defiance can also be seen within humorous feminist artwork. Klein examines the power of humour in feminist art at several points, first within Chapter One in an overview of the feminist art movement. Here she states that humour has been used as “a catalyst to expose the absurdities and incongruities present in the spaces between art and life, in the injustices within political and institutional cultures, and within personal and familial dramas”. (p.24) Something that is important to note here (and that Klein also brings up later) is the broad range of humour present in feminist art, as the umbrella term of feminism encompasses large scale sociopolitical issues as well as individual hardships and traumas.

In Chapter Six she discusses how Sarah Lucas’s work addresses the consistent attempts of a male-dominated society to force women into quiet submission (p. 100 – 102). Interestingly, as seen in the last quote used, Klein also uses the term ‘absurdity’ here to describe this treatment. She is stating that the continued mistreatment of women within a patriarchal society is completely unreasonable, to a level that it becomes hard to believe. It is important to note the use of this specific phrasing in the context of this dissertation, as it paints the response of humour by feminist artists as proportionate and appropriate.

Fig 1. Guerilla Girls, Image of the Guerilla Girls (no date), Photograph

The Guerilla Girls are an artistic collective of masked activists who use humour to highlight disparities faced by women and other minorities in the art world. They are most well known for their billboard and informational poster style works which boldly call attention to systemic issues in a tongue-in-cheek, satirical style. Klein discusses them in Chapter Four ‘The Art of the Disguise’, commenting that a part of their comedic appeal as well as their power comes from their use of gorilla masks as disguise (p.70) However, she fails to comment on the absurdity of the fact that the Guerilla Girls felt the need to don these masks and strip away their identities to simply be listened to. The frequent necessity of spectacle in the fight for women’s rights is reflected in these ape masks. Much of the humour of the Guerilla Girls comes from the incongruous nature of needing a disguise to fight for what should be basic rights.

In the book’s conclusion, Klein repeatedly affirms the necessity for humour in art because of its capacity to promote social and political change through shared pleasure and understanding. She points out that the word entertainment comes from the Latin root word ‘intertenere’ meaning ‘keeping in the midst’, arguing that humorous art allows us to be at the centre of current issues (p.128) There is a case to be made for encouraging laughter as an engaging and pleasurable response as opposed to leaning into tragedy and pessimism.

In the Chapter “Conclusion: Humor Can’t Wait - In the Tragic with Tig Notaro and Hannah Gadsby” of 2019 book Uproarious this power is noted, as laughing at tragedy is what allowed comedian Tig Notaro to talk openly about her breast cancer diagnosis (Willett and Willett). The authors assert similarly to Klein that humour allowed Notaro to exist within her tragedy and confront it, also allowing for shared laughter and catharsis between individuals who understood her situation. Klein concludes that humour in art promotes optimism, togetherness, and social consciousness. Therefore, it is an extremely useful tool for artists, and the art world should take humorous art seriously. Klein does an excellent job of arguing this point throughout Art and Laughter as evidenced by her references to theories of humour, assessment of a wide variety of artists work tackling different subject matters, and her clear understanding of why these artists have turned to humour.

Absurdism and humour go hand in hand as they both play with our perception of reality and elicit a reaction of surprise. Artists might utilise absurdism for the same reasons Sheri Klein suggested they might use humour. Laughing at our pains and struggles can connect us to others, allow us to question accepted standards, and provide a positive outlet for difficult emotions. Visual artists can place emphasis on how unreasonable their subject matter is and force the audience to see what they see by using absurdism. One method of fighting back against absurd situations – the method the artists I will go on to discuss have employed - is fighting fire with fire. When the world seems to have gone mad, why try to reason with it?

Chapter Two – Historical Absurdity

“How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying Dada” claimed Hugo Ball in his 1916 Dada manifesto (quoted in Danchev, 2011, p.128). Two years into the First World War, Ball was forced to flee from Germany to Switzerland where he would open the Cabaret Voltaire with a group of likeminded creatives. It was in this space that the Dada movement would find its beginnings. Dadaism is arguably the most prominent and obvious example of absurdism as a response to absurdity within the context of art. Zürich was the ideal habitat for Dada to flourish in, as it was neutral in the war and thus a safe space to express anti-war opinions. (Gaga For Dada: The Original Art Rebels, 2016) The movement quickly found its way to New York and later planted roots in Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, and Paris.

Defining Dada as a protest movement feels more than accurate, as the artists involved critiqued the War in their work and actively refused to accept things as they were. Poets like Tristan Tzara, Hugo Ball, and Richard Huelsenbeck performed sound poetry as a rejection of words, artists like Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann utilised the revolutionary technique of photomontage to assemble new realities, and Duchamp introduced the idea of the ‘readymade’ with his infamous urinal. (Farthing, 2010, p.410-411) Rearranging reality, questioning what art even was, and rejecting sense were core tenets of Dadaism. A great summary of the attitudes held by Dadaists can be found in the aforementioned 1916 Dada Manifesto.

Ball begins his manifesto by explaining that Dada is a word of many meanings across many languages – “An international word. Just a word, and the word a movement.” The choice of this particular word to encompass the movement was instrumental in spreading their ideas as it could be universally understood in a time of massive divide; whether this was only as a noise or as a word with meaning did not matter.

The next part of the manifesto is rhythmic, using ‘Dada’ as a constant beat between words, “Dada world war without end, dada revolution without beginning, dada your friends and also poets…” (Ball, 1916, quoted in Danchev, 2011, p.128). Absurdity was becoming the norm as war became everyday existence, which Ball highlights here by punctuating his speech with nonsense. In Naomi Klein’s book Doppelganger (2023) she presents the concept of “Pipikism”, a term coined by author Phillip Roth. Pipikism makes a mockery of reality and

renders everything meaningless (p. 145), so we could apply this term to Ball’s use of the word ‘Dada’ in his manifesto. It is used so excessively that any meaning it once had is exterminated, however this is very much intentional. Dada was without sense as it mirrored a war-torn world that the Dadaists could not make sense of, which is why Ball strips the word of meaning. There is also a sense of frustration and hopelessness over succumbing to an absurd existence of accepting mass death and violence as normality

Returning to the quote used to introduce this Chapter, we see Ball asserting that all of life’s problems can be solved by embracing absurdity. Obviously, this is an exaggeration, and Ball is being deliberately overdramatic in his delivery, presenting Dada as a definite solution when such a thing did not exist. This could be understood as a mockery of various world leaders of the time, each trying to prove that their way and their ideas would win the war and bring glory and happiness to their nations. Ball becomes the Dada propagandist, enticing creatives to join him through clearly empty promises.

Interrogating the power of language and words makes up the latter half of the manifesto. “I don’t want words that other people have invented” (Ball, 1916, quoted in Danchev, 2011, p.128) takes us back to Pipikism - words were used to instigate a world war, to justify it, to rouse people into supporting the war efforts. With language twisted and manipulated, the only way to be free was to reject existing language entirely and start anew. Ball’s manifesto was a call to reject everything accepted as status quo, question power structures, and refuse to respond with reason.

Talking about Dada provides the perfect opportunity to point out that an artwork can be absurd without becoming meaningless and without concept. Circling back to the definitions highlighted in Chapter One, to be absurd is to be illogical and unreasonable. This is where we really have to take subjectivity into account on both ends of the life cycle of an artwork –conception and presentation to audience. A useful example here is Hannah Höch’s 1919/20 photomontage Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany. At a first glance its hard to really make out anything, the piece rejects standard compositional rules with no obvious focal point, which forces us to examine the work more closely. Höch would have sourced her images from various kinds of printed media which

would contain highly topical and current images, and in this piece we can see many images of women dotted throughout including athletes and dancers (Museum of Modern Art, 2024). Some women have men’s heads, one has a man’s hat collaged on her head and various wheels, cogs, and vehicles surround them. In the bottom right-hand corner is a small map with certain areas blacked out to illustrate the countries in which women still didn’t

have any right to vote at the time (Gaga For Dada: The Original Art Rebels, 2016). What at first appeared to be a disconnected assortment of images chosen at random turns out to be an interrogation into the changing role of women in a post World War One Germany. The

Fig 2. Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany (1919/20), Collage, 114 x 90cm

cogs and wheels illustrate forward motion towards a new reality for women, and their depiction amongst men questions accepted gender roles. The positioning of the map in the bottom right where the artists signature would typically go shows how heavily Höch’s identity would have affected her life as an artist, putting her at a disadvantage simply on the basis of gender.

The piece was created from the artist’s own experiences of inequality as a woman and in particular a woman in the art world, experiences she likely would have found absurd. We, as the audience, then perceive the work as absurd as it is not representational or easily readable, however this does not stop us from analysing it further and understanding its meaning. Absurd experiences translate into absurd artworks, but this still returns to the tricky territory of unique individual perception. I will discuss this problem more in Chapter Three and my concluding thoughts.

After 1922 the Dada movement began to wind down, giving way for a new flavour of absurdity which took the form of Surrealism. Several Dadaists found a home creating surrealist work as they saw similar methods and ideas at play, however the movement saw artists returning to more traditional methods of art making, most notably painting. Poet

Andre Breton’s manifesto kicked off the movement, referencing Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, questioning a life governed by logic, and defining Surrealism as “psychic automatism” (Breton, 1924, quoted in Danchev, 2011, p. 247). The Surrealists looked to work from the unconscious mind and from this produce imagery that reflected a different reality. Trying various methods of accessing the unconscious such as altering the mind with drugs and alcohol, analysing dreams, and being hypnotised, artists created indistinct images and landscapes (Farthing, 2010, p.427). These methods produced absurdity, as the surrealists intentionally drew on irrational and nonsensical thoughts. It was this unfiltered, automatic approach that yielded Yves Tanguy’s blobby lifeforms, Salvador Dali’s melty clocks, and Giorgio de Chirico’s many archways.

A distinct difference between the absurdism of Surrealism and the absurdism of Dadaism is the rationale behind its use. As explained, Dada was reactionary, using absurdism as a critique of a war they deemed nonsensical. Surrealism on the other hand was born out of a

fascination with the unconscious mind and translating this into art, thus creating visual absurdity. To an extent it also critiqued the rigid structures of western society and encouraged people to think outside of these parameters. However, I would argue that the absurdity of Surrealist art was largely a natural occurrence of the artists production methods and ways of thinking as opposed to an act of protest

Fluxus, an artistic movement of the 60’s and early 70’s, shared more commonalities with Dadaism in terms of its critical attitude towards the art world. Artists wished to move away from making work about the self, feeling this placed too much importance on the artist when there were more important social and political issues that needed discussed. Fluxus sought to erase the line drawn between artmaking and life, creating an art practice that was very loose, experimental, and disconnected from academic and institutional ideas of what art should be (Tate, 2024). Artist George Maciunas, who is considered a founder of the movement, claimed in his manifesto that it was intended to “promote a revolutionary flood and tide in art, promote living art, anti-art” (quoted in Tate, 2024). Though there was no single style due to its experimental nature, performance proved very popular amongst wellknown Fluxus artists such as Joseph Beuys, John Cage, and Yoko Ono.

The movements non-conformity coupled with artists’ engagement with prominent sociopolitical issues of the time resulted in artworks like Joseph Beuys’ 1974 piece I Like America and America Likes Me. For this piece the German artist travelled to New York City where he was wrapped in a sheet of felt as soon as he landed and taken by ambulance to the René Block Gallery. Inside of the gallery was a wild coyote which he would spend the next three days with, attempting to communicate with and understand the animal. The performance was eternalised in iconic photos of Beuys swathed in his felt sheet, cane sticking out, and coyote circling his unusual form. Regarded as a predator by settlers and mythologised by natives, Beuys saw the coyote as a representation of the country. (Wolfe, no date) Having refused to visit the US until they ceased engagement in the Vietnam war, he made a point in this performance of never touching American ground. (Rothfuss, 2018) The

whole performance was a spectacle from start to finish, with Beuys returning to the airport the same way he came.

Nothing in the performance conformed to reality, the coyote was out of place in the white walled gallery, the room was strangely empty aside from bundles of straw and torn felt, and Beuys took the form of an otherworldly shaman. The artists of the Fluxus movement defied art world conventions by becoming, as Maciunas said, living art. Absurdity existed in their refusal to keep their art practice and everyday lives separate; as lines blurred and everyday actions became indistinguishable from artmaking.

Understanding Dada and the movements that it subsequently influenced is key when observing the historical origins of the trend of absurdity as response. The Dadaists inability to comprehend the climate of extreme divide and violence they had to live in, inspired a revolutionary approach. The refusal to conform, to make sense, to be understood was not pure nonsense but a measured reaction to their circumstances. Absurdity became the artists protest in an art world governed by rigid rules. The influence of these movements, particularly Dada and Fluxus, can be seen in the artwork of many contemporary absurd

Fig 3. Joseph Beuys, I Like America and America Likes Me (photo from performance) (1974), Performance

artists. The toolkit of methods, mediums, and ideologies put together by the artists mentioned in this Chapter has proved itself to be powerful.

Chapter Three – Contemporary Absurdity

The historical art movements covered within the last Chapter are often defined by common ideas and values shared amongst artists. In the contemporary art landscape, artists are responding to a massive range of personal, political, social, and environmental issues. “…the absurd parodies existing reality, rather than constructing alternative realities” asserts Anne Elizabeth Douglas in her paper on contemporary art’s place in the environmental crisis (2021). The artists in this Chapter fit this quote very well, examining real world issues and casting them in a new light of absurdity.

Untitled Fall ’95 is an almost hour-long video piece by American artist Alex Bag (1995) that follows a young art student at the New York School of Visual Arts from her first to last semester. We start out with our young heavily fringed art student - played by Bag, as all characters in the piece are - as she enters her first semester at SVA, full of excitement at the idea of being away from her parents and surrounded by like-minded people. This is done in the style of a video diary confessional, a format popularised by the MTV reality television of the 90’s. The vapid tone of the characters also reflects this influence, creating what feels like

Fig 3. Alex Bag, Untitled Fall ’95 (still) (1995), Colour Video, Sound, 57 minutes

a disjointed and unhinged episode of reality television beamed in from an alternate universe.

Between each of the eight video diaries are short sketches based on pop culture, consumerism, and art school life - a call girl asks us to call her if we’re sick of our wives, a pack of toy bunnies profess their murderous plans, Björk shows us the inside of her television, two English retail workers bemoan how boring their job is to each other. We watch the art student return each semester, slowly becoming more and more jaded with her art school experience. Her lecturers don’t get it, her peers don’t get it, humanities classes are stupid, and by semester eight she’s desperate to be free. Bag’s piece simultaneously mocks and lovingly caresses the young and pretentious art student archetype. We’re supposed to laugh at the mini-fringed choker wearing twenty-something-year-old complaining that nobody gets her, but we’ve also all been her (and she makes some valid points). Untitled Fall ’95 feels like a succinct snapshot of the art school experience, and thus acts as a critique. The philosophies of the Fluxus movement shine through as Bag walks the thin line between art and life, jumping us from artmaking to a part time job to art making to consuming pop culture to art making to a lecture and on and on. She creates absurdity by refusing to provide context and giving the viewer whiplash by cutting between clips that often feel unrelated to each other.

Untitled Fall 95’ is mentioned by Klein in Art and Laughter (2007, p.68-69), she highlights the creation of distance between the self and the character through costuming. Bag wears wigs and makeup to differentiate characters but it is obvious that they are all still her, narrating personal experiences in a disguise. “Bag airs her personal views and demonstrates the survival skills she used to slog through four gruelling years of influential boyfriends, patronizing male teachers, bad student video works, stultifying artist lectures, and paralyzingly mundane jobs” commented curator John Spiak (2006, quoted in Klein, 2007). The disguise along with the namelessness of the characters allows the viewer to project themselves onto the characters and see themselves in them.

Bag uses absurdity to confront her own demons and let us see ours within the eyes of her characters, illustrating the frustrating art school experiences of many young women through

playful and melancholic humour. The presence of the absurd in the everyday is what Bag notices, and this is seen on an even more personal and specific scale in David Sherry’s piece Red Sauce Brown Sauce Mania (2014).

“So d’you wanna go – d’you wanna go for a coffee, you wanna meet up for a coffee…” stammers Sherry, lying on his side on the floor squirting a bottle of ‘red sauce’ onto the left side of his face. He goes on to suggest beers, or dinner, or chips at Mono, or the science centre because then the whole family could go, or everyone could just come round to his place. It’s uncomfortable for both us as the audience and him as performer, mostly because of the desperate dialogue that feels like an overenthusiastic attempt to pick the perfect hangout that will suit everyone involved. Halfway through he turns over and equips a bottle of brown sauce to squirt on the right side of his face and begins making excuses. The kids are sick, it’s too wet, there's just too much going on.

“My work is conversational. I like the art of conversation” said Sherry in an interview conducted for this dissertation (2024). The conversation highlighted in this performance is one we are all familiar with to the extent that it is almost mundane, just part of our existence as social creatures. The key here is the observation of absurdity by the artist,

Fig 4. David Sherry, Red Sauce Brown Sauce Mania (still from video) (2014), Performance

which again brings us back to the discussion of our individual perceptions of absurdity. What this piece does so well is translate that individually perceived experience into something that we can largely all agree to call absurd. The experience of arranging a meeting with a friend, or group of friends, is not an absurd experience for many, so simply regurgitating this interaction would not create a collective understanding of Sherry’s point of view. “This influence of society is controlling my life. And if I try to break out and free myself, - it’s absurd - I look like a total idiot.” (Sherry, 2024) This feeling is created through the babbling uninterrupted monologue in combination with the ridiculous action of covering himself with condiments. He feels like an idiot, and he shows us that by making himself look like one too. Absurdity becomes catharsis in Sherry’s vinegar scented meltdown, as pent-up frustration escapes out into an audience.

In an article for Sculpture Magazine, Brian McAvera concluded that Sherry doesn’t “deal with major themes” (2017) in his work. This is an assessment he agreed with to an extent, asking if he could “just ‘imply’ the major themes while keeping it light?” (Sherry, 2024). As already discussed, Red Sauce Brown Sauce Mania observes a seemingly small scale, personal issue as opposed to something that would fall under the category of “major” such as environmental or political issues. This is a good time to return to Avner Ziv’s key purposes of humour, specifically the purpose of creating understanding and challenging standards (Klein, 2007, p.11). Social interaction is an unavoidable aspect of life as a human and as such we are expected to take it in our stride, however there are a lot of individuals who end up feeling alienated because of this. Neurodivergent people, people with anxiety disorders, and even people who just tend to be more introverted or awkward can find these interactions difficult to navigate and draining. Therefore, Sherry’s performance challenges the viewer to feel the discomfort he and many others experience day to day. Trying to do everything just right when you feel you’re doing it all wrong and everyone can tell is exhausting, and we, as the audience, can feel this as sauce streams down his face

The humour of the performance can be experienced differently person to person, whether we see ourselves in it or realise for the first time how strange all of our little conventions and routines are. Arguably, the focus on such a small, specific moment is what makes this piece so uniquely relatable to those of us who feel what Sherry feels. In drawing attention to this

one conversation, he opens many more about our individual experiences of socialising. Promoting change and understanding between people doesn’t always mean addressing ‘major themes’, and sometimes starting small is necessary.

Photographer Juno Calypso also observes the absurdity of routines, but instead of the social scenes observed by Sherry, she probes at the private beauty routines of women. In 12 Reasons You’re Tired All The Time (2013) we see Calypso’s alter ego ‘Joyce’ standing in an immaculately clean room wearing a vaguely terrifying soulless mask over her face. Joyce is a hollowed-out woman, in the pursuit of beauty she has become enslaved by products, rituals,

and procedures and lost any semblance of personhood. The mask in this image is a device that zaps the wearers face, controlled by the remote in her hand (Morrill, et.al, 2019). Likely pure gimmick with no observable results, it represents both the painful lengths women are willing to go to to attain beauty and how companies will take advantage of this to pawn useless items off on them. It also contributes heavily to the uncanny energy exuded by the photograph, everything is too clean, too smooth, too sterile.

Fig 5. Juno Calypso, 12 Reasons You’re Tired All The Time (2013), Archival Pigment Print, 101.6 x 152.4cm

To the left is a greyish pink couch upon which sits a bottle of Johnson’s baby oil and an empty plate that appears untouched by food. The baby oil reminds us of the youthful appearance that Joyce chases, perfectly unblemished. There is also an allusion to the purity and innocence that we associate with children, especially young girls. This purity later becomes a standard by which women are judged, to be a virgin is to be morally good and to be promiscuous lessens your value. Joyce is hyper aware of societies standards, and we see this in her white dress, her tidy room, and her solitary plate - which despite being out of place is still spotlessly clean.

Aside from Joyce there are a few other hallmarks present that appear throughout Calypso’s work. The room is of an indistinct time-period, both appearing modern and vintage in equal measures. “I want my pictures to have a feeling of walking into a seaside [bed and breakfast] that hasn’t changed since the 1970s, but they’ve updated little bits here and there, so you end up living inside a confused time warp.” (Rosenberg, 2014) This aesthetic of a place out of time adds to the confusion and strangeness, it is impossible for us to figure out when the image is set. It could have happened yesterday or 50 years ago or could even be set in the future, illustrating how the pressure to be beautiful and desirable as a woman is no recent issue, nor one that is likely to go away. Another Calypso-ism is the use of the colour pink.

The walls are pink, the sofa is pink, the cap and label of the baby oil are pink, the curtains and drapes are pink. There is a glaringly obvious connotation, that being the relation of the colour pink to societally defined femininity. Pink is for girls and Calypso’s work is all about the construction of the feminine image, which begins as early as pink baby clothes, pink congratulation cards and, now even before birth, with pink confetti and cake slices at ‘gender reveal’ parties. She comments that it is “a colour that can get on people’s nerves or make people feel embarrassed” (WePresent, 2021), which is largely due to its heavy associations with femininity. Men might avoid it for fear of being seen as effeminate, and women might distance themselves to appear more grown-up or to be taken more seriously. The choice of including so much pink also heightens the feeling of unreality, as pink is not a very typical colour choice for decorating outside of little girls’ bedrooms. “Apparently it is the most draining colour to look at, so if you are in a room that is all pink, you become very tired very quickly, which I like” (WePresent, 2021).

The title of this piece - 12 Reasons You’re Tired All The Time - was taken from a women’s magazine article, however its removal from this original context allows us to apply our own with the help of the photograph. Calypso’s findings that pink is a ‘draining’ colour points to the overwhelming pink that surrounds Joyce being one of the reasons, and if pink is femininity, then it is simply being a woman that is the most exhausting.

By using absurdity as a primary aesthetic within their work, these contemporary artists have been able to address personal difficulties as well as wider societal issues. From Bag’s defiant art student to Sherry’s sauce covered monologue to Calypso’s empty alter-ego, absurdity has been used to highlight their frustrations. Situations they have observed with anger, defeat, and befuddlement are turned around and presented to an audience as visual art that is appropriately nonsensical. Absurdity is used effectively to help us understand their individual perceptions, like a window into their minds.

Conclusion

The power of absurdity in visual art is undeniably its ability to mirror the absurdities faced or observed by the artist who has chosen to use it. To illustrate to an audience that, to them, the subject of their work seems so unbelievably unfair, unjust, or terrible, they have to create work that purveys an equal level of madness. This often also leads to artwork that is humorous which, as Sheri Klein outlined in Art and Laughter (2007), can be helpful when making an important point. It can bring people together, challenge our values, and boost morale in times of struggle. Humour and absurdity go hand in hand as we are so often inclined to laugh at that which is unexpected or flamboyant.

Understanding absurdity as an absence of sense and an opposing state to normality allows us to recognise it within visual art. Recognising that there are limitations here, namely that our perception of absurdity is individual and can vary massively, is important. However as outlined this can be a positive when considering the idea of group solidarity and how humour and absurdity modelled off of unique experiences can help individuals find community. There have also been instances in which many parts of the world have found themselves involved in a major event, such as in the case of the First World War. With war an everyday reality, absurdity became normalcy and so highlighting this became a radical act of protest.

The Dadaists were the protestors in question, and their movement was a clear example of absurdism as response in a historical context. Through noise poems, collage, ready-mades, and manifestos, they presented their opposition to the war by refusing to make sense. As outlined in Hugo Ball’s manifesto (1916, quoted in Danchev, 2011) words had been taken and twisted to start a war, so using them literally was no longer an option. Fighting back with noises and nonsensical sentences, Ball reclaimed language as a tool of the Dadaists. The very essence of the movement lives within its name, a word with many meanings and no meaning at the same time. Interrogating the art world and the values it upheld was also a huge part of the movement, as seen in Hannah Höch’s photomontage that critiqued the treatment of women artists. Absurdity in Dadaism freed the artists from having to accept the world as it was.

Many Dadaists moved into Surrealism after Dadaism subsided so there were similarities between the two movements, however for the Surrealists absurdity was about a new way of thinking and accessing the unconscious mind. Arguably the Fluxus movement shared more of the social and political attitudes that defined Dadaism, as it endeavoured to erase the lines between art and life. Their anti-art approach saw absurdity once again become a reaction to broken systems and exclusionary institutions.

The attitudes that arose in these historical movements can still be seen in the work of contemporary artists, as discussed in Chapter Three. Alex Bag used absurdity much like the Fluxus artists in Untitled Fall ’95 (1995), blurring her real-life experiences as a young female art student with the experiences of fictional wig clad characters. David Sherry helped the audience understand his frustrations with everyday social interactions by presenting them as an insane monologue spoken lying on the floor while covering himself in sauce in Red Sauce Brown Sauce Mania (2014). For the image 12 Reasons You’re Tired All The Time (2013) Juno Calypso photographed her alter-ego ‘Joyce’ in a retro-futuristic pink bedroom wearing an electronic beauty mask to discuss the ridiculous pressures women are under to appear perfect. Across all three pieces, absurdity was used effectively to illustrate the perceived absurdity of their subject matters in order to relay this feeling to their audience.

Weaponised absurdity is a tool the artists and art movements within this dissertation have used to successfully convey their experiences and tackle issues on both personal and wider scales. It is clear that absurdity within art is not mere nonsense, nor does it mean there is an absence of message. To face the unreasonable by refusing to reason is a powerful gesture of defiance and an intelligent method of communicating a unique message to an audience. Art critic Dave Hickey surmised that “an orchid in the dung heap would seem all the more super for our surprise at finding it there” (quoted in Higgie, 2007, p.16) and I believe the same can be said of absurdity in art. Its presence is particularly valuable for the unique reactions it elicits – shock, confusion, and laughter. These reactions make the art memorable and therefore the message within it too.

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