A caricature of film comedian Charlie Chaplin.

A caricature is either a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness, or in literature, a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.^[1] Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... Cover of the 2002 paperback edition of Caricature Caricature is a book collection of nine comic short stories by Daniel Clowes. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1117x1419, 402 KB) A colored-pencil caricature of film comedian Charlie Chaplin, drawn by user:Greg Williams. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1117x1419, 402 KB) A colored-pencil caricature of film comedian Charlie Chaplin, drawn by user:Greg Williams. ... Yaweh redirects here. ... For other uses, see Portrait (disambiguation). ...

Caricatures can be insulting or complimentary and can serve a political purpose or be drawn solely for entertainment. Caricatures of politicians are commonly used in editorial cartoons, while caricatures of movie stars are often found in entertainment magazines. This early political cartoon by Ben Franklin was originally written for the French and Indian War, but was later recycled during the Revolutionary War An editorial cartoon, also known as a political cartoon, is an illustration or comic strip containing a political or social message. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

The term is derived from the Italian caricare- to charge or load. An early definition occurs in the English doctor Sir Thomas Browne's Christian Morals (first pub.1716). Sir Thomas Browne (October 19, 1605 - October 19, 1682) was an English author of varied works that disclose his wide learning in diverse fields including medicine, religion, science and the esoteric. ... Christian Morals is a work in prose by the physician and religious apologist Sir Thomas Browne, published posthumously in 1716. ...

Expose not thy self by four-footed manners unto monstrous draughts, and Caricatura representations.

with the footnote —

When Men's faces are drawn with resemblance to some other Animals, the Italians call it, to be drawn in Caricatura

Thus, the word "caricature" essentially means a "loaded portrait". According to caricature teacher Sam Viviano, the term refers only to depictions of real-life people, and not to cartoon fabrications of fictional characters, which do not possess objective sets of physiognomic features to draw upon for reference, or to anthropomorphic depictions of inanimate objects such as automobiles or coffee mugs. Walt Disney on the other hand, equated his animation to caricature, saying the hardest thing to do was find the caricature of an animal that worked best as a human-like character. Cover to MAD #223 (June 1980), Viviano’s first cover work. ... Physiognomy (Gk. ... 7th millennium BC anthropomorphized rocks, with slits for eyes, found in modern-day Israel. ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ... Car redirects here. ... For the company founded by Disney, see The Walt Disney Company. ...

History

Ancient Pompeiian graffiti caricature of a politician.

Some of the earliest caricatures are found in the works of Leonardo da Vinci, who actively sought people with deformities to use as models.^{[citation needed]} From fr:Image:Graffiti politique de Pompei. ... From fr:Image:Graffiti politique de Pompei. ... For other uses, see Pompeii (disambiguation). ... “Da Vinci” redirects here. ...

The point was to offer an impression of the original which was more striking than a portrait. Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), one of the great early practitioners, was favored by the members of the papal court for his ability to depict the essence of a person in 'three or four strokes.'^{[citation needed]} In fact, the word "caricature" comes from the Italian caricare, "to load", thus the caricaturist's aim is to invest his image with as much meaning as possible. A self portrait: Bernini is said to have used his own features in the David (below, left) Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini) (December 7, 1598 - November 28, 1680), who worked chiefly in Rome, was the pre-eminent baroque artist. ...

Caricature, therefore, experienced its first successes in the closed aristocratic circles of France and Italy, where the such portraits could be passed about for mutual enjoyment.

The first book on caricature drawing to be published in England was Mary Darly's A Book of Caricaturas (c. 1762). The two greatest practitioners of the art of caricature in 18th-century Britain were Thomas Rowlandson(1756-1827) and James Gillray(1757-1815). Rowlandson was more of an artist and his work took its inspiration mostly from the public at large. Gillray was more concerned with the vicious visual satirisation of political life. They were, however, great friends and caroused together in the pubs of London. See the Tate Gallery's exhibit James Gillray: The Art of Caricature Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Thomas Rowlandson (July 1756 - April 22, 1827) was an English caricaturist. ... James Gillray James Gillray, sometimes spelled Gilray (born August 13, 1757 in Chelsea; died June 1, 1815), was a British caricaturist and printmaker famous for his etched political and social satires, mainly published between 1792 and 1810. ...

Notable caricaturists

See list of caricaturists.

George Cruikshank (1792-1878, British) created political prints that attacked the royal family and leading politicians (in 1820 he received a royal bribe of £100 for a pledge "not to caricature His Majesty (George III of the United Kingdom) in any immoral situation."^{[citation needed]} He went on to create social caricatures of British life for popular publications such as The Comic Almanack (1835-1853) and Omnibus (1842). He also earned fame as a book illustrator for Charles Dickens and many other authors. A caricaturist is an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures. ... Portrait of George Cruikshank Wood engraving published in Harpers Weekly newspaper March 16, 1878 A Young George Cruikshank George Cruikshank (September 27, 1792—February 1, 1878) was an English caricaturist and book illustrator. ... George III redirects here. ... Dickens redirects here. ...

Une discussion littéraire à la deuxième Galerie
by Honoré Daumier
Lithograph published in Le Charivari newspaper, February 27, 1864

Honoré Daumier (1808-1879, French) is considered by some to be the father of caricature.^{[citation needed]} During his life, he created over 4,000 lithographs, most of them caricatures on political, social and everyday themes. They were published in the daily French newspapers (Le Charivari, La Caricature etc.) Image File history File links 1864_0227_discussion_280. ... Image File history File links 1864_0227_discussion_280. ... Honoré Daumier (portrait by Nadar). ... Le Charivari was an illustrated newspaper published in Paris, France from 1832 to 1937. ...

A Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to "Blow Over"--"Let Us Prey."
by Thomas Nast
Wood engraving published in Harper's Weekly newspaper, September 23, 1871

Thomas Nast (1840-1902, American) was a famous caricaturist and editorial cartoonist in the 19th century and is considered by some to be the father of American political cartooning.^{[citation needed]} He is often credited with creating the definitive caricatures of the Democratic Donkey, the Republican Elephant and Santa Claus.^{[citation needed]} Image File history File links 1871_0923_vultures_200. ... Image File history File links 1871_0923_vultures_200. ... Thomas Nast (September 27, 1840 – December 7, 1902) was a famous German-American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist in the 19th century and is considered to be the father of American political cartooning. ...

Al Hirschfeld (1903 – 2003, American) was best known for his simple black and white renditions of celebrities and Broadway stars which utilized flowing contour lines over heavy rendering. He was also known for depicting a variety of other famous people, from politicians musicians, singers and even television stars like the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He has was even commissioned by the United States Postal Service to provide art for U.S. stamps. Permanent collections of Hirschfeld's work appear at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and he boasts a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Al Hirschfeld photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1955 Albert Hirschfeld (June 21, 1903 – January 20, 2003) was an American caricaturist, best known for his simple black and white satirical portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars. ... For other uses of Broadway, see Broadway. ... The title as it appeared in most episodes opening credits. ... USPS and Usps redirect here. ... Metropolitan Museum of Art New York Elevation The Metropolitan Museum of Art, often referred to simply as the Met, is one of the worlds largest and most important art museums. ... This article is about the museum in New York City. ... The St. ...

Mort Drucker (1929 - , American) Drucker joined Mad magazine in 1957 and has become well known (and revered by some) for his parodies of movies and television shows. He manages to combine a comic strip style with consistent photographic likenesses of film and TV stars panel after panel. He has also contributed covers to Time magazine. He has been recognized for his work with the National Cartoonist Society Special Features Award for 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988, and their Reuben Award for 1987. Mort Drucker is a cartoonist and caricaturist from Brooklyn, New York. ... Harvey Kurtzmans cover for the first issue of the comic book Mad Mad is an American humor magazine founded by publisher William Gaines and editor Harvey Kurtzman in 1952. ... This article is about motion pictures. ... A television program is the content of television broadcasting. ... This article is about the comic strip, the sequential art form as published in newspapers and on the Internet. ... (Clockwise from upper left) Time magazine covers from May 7, 1945; July 25, 1969; December 31, 1999; September 14, 2001; and April 21, 2003. ... The National Cartoonists Society is an organization of professional cartoonists created in 1946. ... The Reuben Awards, named for Rube Goldberg, are presented each year by the National Cartoonists Society. ...

Robert Risko (1946 – , American) is known for his retro airbrush style. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Playboy, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and Interview. Robert Risko (November 11, 1946 in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania) is an American caricature artist known for his retro airbrush style. ... Retro is a term used to describe the culture of the past. ... Paasche F#1 Single Action External Mix Airbrush An airbrush is a small, air-operated tool that sprays various media including ink and dye, but most often paint by a process of atomization. ... This article is about the magazine. ... For other uses, see Playboy (disambiguation). ... American actress Demi Moore, on a typical Vanity Fair cover (August, 1991) Vanity Fair is a glossy American glamour magazine monthly that offers a mixture of articles based on sensational exaggerations, jet-set and entertainment-business personalities, politics, and lies. ... August 2005 issue of Esquire Esquire is a mens magazine by the Hearst Corporation. ... Interview is a magazine founded by artist Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga in 1969. ...

David Levine (1926 – , American) is noted for his caricatures in the The New York Review of Books and Playboy magazine.. His first cartoons appeared in 1963. Since then he has drawn hundreds of pen-and-ink caricatures of famous writers and politicians for the newspaper. self portrait David Levine (born December 20, 1926) is an American caricaturist noted for his caricatures in the The New York Review of Books. ... For other uses, see Playboy (disambiguation). ...

Cover to MAD #223 (June 1980), Viviano’s first cover work.

Sam Viviano (1953 – , American) has done much work for corporations and in advertising, having contributed to Rolling Stone, Family Weekly, Reader's Digest, Consumer Reports, and Mad, of which he is currently the art director. Viviano’s caricatures are known for their wide jaws, which Viviano has explained is a result of his incorporation of side views as well as front views into his distortions of the human face. He has also developed a reputation for his ability to do crowd scenes. Explaining his twice-yearly covers for Institutional Investor magazine, Viviano has said that his upper limit is sixty caricatures in nine days. Image File history File linksMetadata MAD223. ... Image File history File linksMetadata MAD223. ... Cover to MAD #223 (June 1980), Viviano’s first cover work. ... This article is about the magazine. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Harvey Kurtzmans cover for the first issue of the comic book Mad Mad is an American humor magazine founded by publisher William Gaines and editor Harvey Kurtzman in 1952. ... The term art director, is an overall title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games. ...

Sebastian Krüger (1963 – , German) is known for his grotesque, yet hyper-realistic distortions of the facial features of celebrities, which he renders primarily in acrylic paint, and for which he has won praise from The Times. He is well known for his lifelike depictions of The Rolling Stones, in particular, Keith Richards. Krüger has published three collections of his works, and has a yearly art calendar from Morpheus International. Krüger's art can be seen frequently in Playboy magazine and has also been featured in the likes of Stern, L’Espresso, Penthouse, and Der Spiegel and USA Today. He has recently been working on select motion picture projects. Sebastian Krüger (born June 30, 1963 in Hamelin, Germany) is a German caricaturist. ... A stereotypical German The Germans (German: die Deutschen), or the German people, are a nation in the meaning an ethnos (in German: Volk), defined more by a sense of sharing a common German culture and having a German mother tongue, than by citizenship or by being subjects to any particular... In semiotics and postmodern philosophy, the term hyperreality characterizes the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, especially in technologically advanced postmodern cultures. ... A Bigger Splash, 1967. ... The Times is a national newspaper published daily in the United Kingdom (and the Kingdom of Great Britain before the United Kingdom existed) since 1788 when it was known as The Daily Universal Register. ... Rolling Stones redirects here. ... Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943) is an English guitarist, songwriter, singer and a founding member of The Rolling Stones in 1962. ... For other uses, see Playboy (disambiguation). ... {{dablink|For other meanings, see Stern (disambiguation). ... Penthouse, a mens magazine founded by Bob Guccione, combines urban lifestyle articles and soft-core pornographic pictorials that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. ...

Hermann Mejia (Venezuelan) is known for his frequent work for MAD Magazine. Mejia uses multiple techniques for his work, sometimes rendering his illustrations in black & white ink and copious amounts of cross-hatching, sometimes using watercolor, and sometimes combinations of both. Hermann Mejia is a Venezuelan illustrator, living in New York City, whose caricature-driven work frequently appears in MAD Magazine. ... Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. ... Albrecht Dürer, Veronica, 1513. ... Watercolor is a painting technique making use of water-soluble pigments that are either transparent or opaque and are formulated with gum to bond the pigment to the paper. ...

Jan Op De Beeck has published several books on caricature and was named "World's Best Caricaturist" in 2003 by a group of professional cartoonists in Iran.

Computerized caricature and formal definition of caricature

There have been efforts to produce caricatures automatically or semi-automatically using computer graphics techniques. For example^[2] provides warping tools specifically designed toward rapidly producing caricatures. There are very few software programs designed specifically for automatically creating caricatures.

An interesting aspect of some computer graphic systems is that by necessity they require quite different skillsets to caricatures created on paper. Thus using a computer in the digital production of caricatures requires advanced knowledge of the program's functionality. Rather than being a simpler method of caricature creation, it can be a more complex method of creating images that feature finer coloring textures than can be created using more traditional methods.

A milestone in formally defining caricature was Susan Brennan's master's thesis^[3] in 1982. In her system, caricature was formalized as the process of exaggerating differences from a mean face. For example, if Prince Charles has more prominent ears than the average person, in his caricature the ears will be much larger than normal. Brennan's system implemented this idea in a partially automated fashion as follows: the operator was required to input a frontal drawing of the desired person having a standardized topology (the number and ordering of lines for every face). She obtained a corresponding drawing of an average male face. Then, the particular face was caricatured simply by subtracting from the particular face the corresponding point on the mean face (the origin being placed in the middle of the face), scaling this difference by a factor larger than one, and adding the scaled difference back on to the mean face. Prince Charles may refer to: Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, current heir-apparent to the British throne Any of the previous British royals named Charles, Prince of Wales The former Belgian regent, Prince Charles of Belgium This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might...

Though Brennan's formalization was introduced in the 1980s, it remains relevant in recent work. Mo et al.^[4] refined the idea by noting that the population variance of the feature should be taken into account. For example, the distance between the eyes varies less than other features such as the size of the nose. Thus even a small variation in the eye spacing is unusual and should be exaggerated, whereas a correspondingly small change in the nose size relative to the mean would not be unusual enough to be worthy of exaggeration. Leopold et al.^[5] found that individual face-recognizing neurons in the inferotemporal cortex respond more strongly to caricatured faces than to the veridical representations of the same face, and suggest that the visual brain may code faces relative to a prototypical face, consistent with Brennan's formalization.

Some, on the other hand, argue that caricature varies depending on the artist and cannot be captured in a single definition.^[6] Their system uses machine learning techniques to automatically learn and mimic the style of a particular caricature artist, given training data in the form of a number of face photographs and the corresponding caricatures by that artist. The results produced by computer graphic systems are arguably not yet of the same quality as those produced by human artists. For example, most systems are restricted to exactly frontal poses, whereas many or even most manually produced caricatures (and face portraits in general) choose an off-center "three-quarters" view. Brennan's caricature drawings were frontal-pose line drawings. More recent systems can produce caricatures in a variety of styles, including direct geometric distortion of photographs.

In a lecture 'The History and Art of Caricature' (Sept 2007 Queen Mary 2 Lecture theatre) the British caricaturist Ted Harrison said that the caricaturist can choose to either mock or wound the subject with an effective caricature. Drawing caricatures can simply be a form of entertainment and amusement - in which case gentle mockery is in order, or the art can be employed to make a serious social or political point. A caricaturist draws on (1) the natural characteristics of the subject (the big ears, long nose or whatever); (2) the acquired characteristics (stoop, scars, facial lines etc); and (3) the vanities (choice of hair style, spectacles, clothes, expressions and mannerisms).

The science of caricature

Caricatures have been studied in experimental psychology, with interesting results. Rhodes and collaborators^[7] compared recognition of caricatures to anticaricatures. The latter are created using the Brennan formalization but instead of exaggerating the individual differences from the mean, the individual differences are deemphasized (moved toward the mean face) by an equivalent amount. The anticaricatures were much more difficult to recognize, taking four times longer than the caricatures on average. More surprisingly, her study found that caricatures are recognized twice has fast as the default veridical (uncaricatured) drawing.

Ramachandran and Hirstein^[8] suggested that caricature is related to peak shift. In the peak shift effect, animals sometimes respond more strongly to exaggerated versions of the training stimuli. For example, if a rat is trained to respond to a rectangle of a particular aspect ratio, and to avoid a square, when later presented with several rectangles it will prefer the one with the most elongated aspect ratio (this being the one that is most different from the square) rather than the original rectangle used in training. Ramachandran and Hirstein speculated that cells in a monkey brain that respond to particular faces would respond more strongly to caricatured versions of the face. This effect has been confirmed in FMRI experiments by Tsao.^[8] Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (or fMRI) describes the use of MRI to measure hemodynamic signals related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals. ...

Caricatures in new formats

Recently, there are more and more different formats caricatures have been created. Not only drawn on papers, but also the caricatures are digital even with sounds and animations. They are used as computer display pictures and avatars. Here are some ensamples: Caricatures in digital formats

See also

• Cartoon
• Satire
• Physiognomy
• Zoomorphism
• Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy

Image File history File links Commons-logo. ... Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 151 languages. ... For other uses, see Cartoon (disambiguation). ... 1867 edition of Punch, a ground-breaking British magazine of popular humour, including a good deal of satire of the contemporary social and political scene. ... Physiognomy (Gk. ... Zoomorphic decoration from the Book of Kells Zoomorphism, from Greek ζωον zōon, meaning animal, and μορφη, morphē, meaning shape or form, refers to the representation of animal forms in ornaments, or to the representation of gods in the form, or with attributes, of non-human animals, and also to the transformation... The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy began after twelve editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad, were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005. ...

References

A digital object identifier (or DOI) is a standard for persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related data, the metadata, in a structured extensible way. ...

External links

• Celebrity Caricature: Selections from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries
• National Caricaturist Network Official site of the National Caricaturist Network- a non-profit association devoted to the art of caricature
• Caricatures in new digital formats