Caricature

an absurd or laughable exaggeration. To be successful, caricature must be founded on fact. A person with a short chin may be represented with an absurdly short chin; one with a long chin with an absurdly long chin. The Japs may be represented as midgets because they are not large, but it would not be caricature to represent them as giants in stature. Successful caricature must lean in the same direction as the facts. Caricature may be drawn with a pen or a pencil. In Hudibras, Butler caricatures the Puritan. Cervantes' Don Quixote is a caricature of the knight and his squire. The writings of Steele and Addison in the Spectator are full of caricature. Hogarth caricatured London vices of the eighteenth century in several series of pictures. The London Punch caricatured President Lincoln. Thomas Nast and Harper's Weekly literally goaded Boss Tweed to his death. The picture of Tweed in prison stripes with a ball and chain on his leg is fixed in the history of New York. Comic pictures are usually caricatures. They are becoming more and more a feature of the newspaper. An editorial may be unread for want of time, but a picture of a notoriously corrupt city council with masks, dark lanterns, and burglar's jimmies, engaged in prying open the public treasury, is taken in at a glance and fastens itself upon the retina of the mind as well. The coarse work of cheap St. Valentine prints has no place in art. Effective caricature requires talent and study. See Nast; Punch; Thackeray; Tweed; Hogarth