The Comic Art
by Manohar N. Kaul, M.A.
Art & Culture Journal(Doomimal Gallery Publication and this article was written prior to the author adopting “Manohar Kaul” as his artistic and literary name.)
The spirit is the eternal principle of life, whose characteristic feature is joy. Joy is the sustaining and rejuvenating fact of life – the conservative cosmic force inherent in the very nature of our being. Every human being – nay, every being – is a double personality: an artisan and an Artist. In the one aspect he is a bread winner, an economic man, ever engaged in expending his energies to seek economic satisfaction of the flesh which eats into the vitals of his head and heart, body and mind and leads him through cares and anxieties to decay and death. But the artist in him often sends out the healing balm of joy in movements of mental calm and quiet if he can command it consciously or in dreamless sleep after a day's hard work. Though all men are artists from the very nature of their constitution, yet artistic talents are few and far between. Man's mind gets clouded through too much of worldliness and it loses that subtle transparency which is the necessary condition or the state when the joy of the spirit radiates in the waking state. Joy is our inherent and inborn nature, but we have shut it out of ourselves through too much of external preoccupation. But nature always acts by adjustment. What man has lost through his folly, nature supplies through art. Art is nature's skill to diffuse joy and it manifests through artistic talents. **POWER OF COMIC** The artistic temperament is the gayest product of nature. It transforms the commonplace and the ugly into what may be called the "joy of life." Art is the expression of the joy of life and the artist creates for his vision, forms of beauty which are a joy for ever. Even the so-called sordid aspects of life or nature have an element of comic in them, which the artist alone is capable of discerning and reproducing in line and form, in light and shade or colour, in rhythmic motion or tone, in poetic fancy or humorous fiction, and in caricature – to the delight of man. The artistic mind is the philosopher's stone, who makes us enjoy the "beauty of ugliness", the "comedy of holiness" and the "magic of triviality". The comic enlivens our dull existence, elevates us from depressed moods, relieves us from ignoble passions, makes us forget for the time being the hard knocks of time and transports us to the sphere of exultation and ecstasy. It also enables us to realize the hollowness of the so-called serious side of life and brings home the lesson that all is vanity. The gorgeous pageant of a potentate, meant to impress the ignorant masses with awe and reverence, or the rhapsody of a power politician or a dictator, meant to frighten his rival, becomes glorified drollery and vanity fair by the transmuting touch of a Lin-u-Tang or a Shanker. The pulpit and the platform, far from frightening us with hell fire or international complications or economic death or atomic war, supply us with endless themes for aching laughter through the magic lantern of the artist. The cruel man-made ravages through centuries, famine, pestilence and other cosmic calamities – any or all of these – would have brought about an end of human life – nay, all life – on this earth, had not these been presented to us with charming sugar-coat or variegated colours that remove all their underlying sting and make them rather enjoyable fireside themes or matter for open-air laughter. "The comic" they say "has its place besides the beautiful and the sublime". But I, would prefer P. G. Wodehouse and Aldous Huxley and their like to Longinus. The latter was only a philosopher and utmost can teach us excellent sense and sound judgement, which require our serious thoughts, and thus over-burden our already laden minds. I want something that will lighten my mind and this a hearty laugh alone can give. An artist can supply me with this laughing trick. That is why I prefer Wodehouse and his like to Longinus in spite of his The Sublime, for they are the artists in the true sense of the term. Laughter lightens our hearts overlaid with too much of worldliness, and one who makes us laugh is our best friend and saviour. Laughter releases the tension of our heart and switches on the current of joy from the inner power house of the spirit and diffuses it out. **MATERIAL FOR COMIC** The comic artist selects his material from the absurdities, the abnormalities and the trivialities of human life and nature, and brings these in relief with the mock seriousness of a connoisseur and exposes their inherent hollowness and worth with a humorous laughter which transports the reader from the cares of life into the realm of pure joy for the time being. Wodehouse and his brood do it and theirs is the artistic mind par excellence, diffusing joy through their art. What Wodehouse does with his pen, Shanker does with his brush. The genial laugh which they provoke brings gaiety in our otherwise dull existence. In the hands of Lin-u-Tang even serious topics of the day or of history lose all their grimness or importance when their absurdities are exposed, their contradictions emphasised and they are turned into a comic farce with sympathetic humour or laughing banter. His *Between Tears and Laughter* is a masterpiece of the artistic trick of "anti-climax", though his other works are also full of brilliant flashes of humour and pathos. Shanker the Cartoonist is his equal in the art of caricature, whose genial humour touches almost all phases of life. **COMIC ARTIST** Shakespeare's fools and jesters, though extremely entertaining for a scholar, have given place to stage jesters and Charles Chaplins, and the modern comic art is well diffused through the screen or broadcast, through Radio, though it has lost a good deal of personal touch. But all the same the mimicry and other comic arts have now far reaching effects in evoking and spreading more joy than did the motley crew of the Elizabethan stage or the Victorian supercilious humour of Thackeray. But for the droll characters of Dickens, his novels would evoke a nauseating effect as does fiction of Upton Sinclair who simply emphasises the human miseries brought about by the capitalistic system without relieving the tension by any comic sauce. Even H.G. Wells, with all his encyclopaedic ingenuity at social analysis, simply brings home to us the hollow vanity and worthlessness of all the social patterns, high-brow ideologies and human pretensions, but seldom lightens our pent up spirits with any genial laughter. Man has made a hell of man, on this earth and to recount or carp at the diabolical doing of man, may, no doubt, help the revolt or may help to bring about a change, but cannot provoke a joyous laughter which alone soothes and sustains life. Bertrand Russell presents a dispassionate analysis of human miseries, often man-made and suggests artificial remedies to increase human happiness. But he forgets the basic fact of human nature which has remained unchanged throughout ages. Laughter alone can relieve the tension. The light art of humour in fiction or in caricature and other forms of the comic art provokes laughter and showers the ambrosia of joy to lighten our dreary life and makes it bearable. Art in general and comic art in particular is God's wine with which he lightens and enlightens man's sojourn on this earth. The Comic Artist is the best benefactor of mankind.