6533b874fe1ef96bd12d67f5

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Parody in art from the sixties to our times

subject

description

The word parody has been coined during classical antiquity and has since been considered mostly as a literary genre or figure. Nevertheless, numerous plastic artists are making use of its forms, processes and connotations. During the 1960s decade, the advent of consumerism and its effects on the work of art duplicability gave a new rise to parody. Reproducibility allowed the transformation of history of arts into a vast repertoire in which one may draw to create from and thus, offered a fertile ground for parodic creation. This study focuses on understanding why and how such a wide range of artists are taking advantage of parody for personal or contextual ends from the 1960s to nowadays. The first part of this study is articulated around the precise definition of the term and a chronological view of the parodic art since the middle of the 19th century, from the Salons caricaturaux to postmodernism including historical avant- gardes. The notions of playfulness, comic and satiric will be discussed in the second part, in order to grasp the multiple shades of parody. The third and last part is devoted to the specular aspect of parody that leads to a questioning of the artistic institutions and aims to unveil the artistic practices themselves. Across these pages, parody appears as an ambivalent process, oscillating between mauvais genre and sophistication, childishness and elitism, barrenness and creative rebirth, destitution and admiration, outrage and tribute.