Rude Britannia: British Comic Art
Tate Britain, until 5 September
If each age gets the art it deserves, it might also be said that each age gets the exhibitions it deserves. The robust tradition of British Comic Art has never looked so unfunny and anaemic as it does in this current overworked examination at Tate Millbank. My visit coincided with some voluble OAPs up from the country, a know-it-all guide manqué and a couple of solemn Americans who were evidently seeking enlightenment as to the strange habits of this island race. There were sighs aplenty but I’d reached Room 3 before I heard a single laugh, and this response was directed (not surprisingly) at a video screen and headphones replaying old episodes of Spitting Image. The problem is that if humour has to be explained, it very often ceases to be funny. And nowadays, curators nearly always get wrong what should be explained and what shouldn’t.
The first room is supposed to function as an introduction to the subject, and in this role it mixes the historical with the contemporary — Hogarth with Klega, H.M.
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