1st Edition

The Outsider, Art and Humour

By Paul Clements Copyright 2020
226 Pages 25 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

226 Pages 25 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This cross-disciplinary book, situated on the periphery of culture, employs humour to better comprehend the arts, the outsider and exclusion, illuminating the ever-changing social landscape, the vagaries of taste and limits of political correctness. Each chapter deals with specific themes and approaches – from the construct of outsider and complexity of humour, to Outsider Art and... Read more
  1. Introduction
  2. Approaches to humour and laughter
  3. The construct of outsider: media labelling, 'othering' and excluded minds
  4. The construct of outsider: identity, the body and representation
  5. Humorous representations of the outsider: hybridity, utility and carnivalesque
  6. Representations of humour by marginal artists
  7. Creative outsider spaces and dark heterotopias
  8. Transgression, spectacle and political correctness
  9. Afterthoughts

Biography

Paul Clements is Lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of The Creative Underground: Art, Politics and Everyday Life (Routledge, 2017) and Charles Bukowski, Outsider Literature, and the Beat Movement (Routledge, 2013).

"Clements shows us why humor and joking in art, and in particular 'outsider art,' should matter to us. His book is funny, and he explains the jokes, yet it is serious because humor can heal or abuse and we ought to care whether it makes people’s lives better or worse. ... Clements’ book is a great primer for scholars, jokers, and artists who seek justice in a crazy world."

--Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge