Steve DeFrank is a painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He unapologetically embraces all the formal skills of object making that engages old-fashioned, soul-baring individuality with absurdity, acknowledging the pleasure, pain, and awkwardness of being human.

Big Hairy Mess, 2015, silicon, hair, aqua resin, hair, casein on panel, 28” x 27” x 5”

Question:

Is Humor Valid in Artwork?

Answer:

Making funny paintings gives me agita. This is my dilemma: The opposite of funny is serious, and serious gets all the respect. I realized long ago that I’m never going to be that deep, intense, conceptual guy, but I am a funny guy and I make funny paintings. And for me that makes for a more complex, a more layered painting. Creating a funny artwork is daring because it may fall flat; humor is subjective. But am I making a mockery of my own paintings, debasing them?

Why is it hard for some people to take humor seriously? Scholars and critics are reluctant to write about art that is comical. Are we lacking the language to describe funniness as a stylistic and substantive stratagem? Humor has never been considered an ideal in visual art, to my knowledge. Other ideals come and go: beauty, naturalism. When is it humor’s turn?

I Wish My Mom Married Santa Claus, 2016, casein, aqua resin, black chrome on wood panels, 40” x 40” x 7”

It seems that exploring an idea as basic as making someone laugh is considered shallow. Contemporary art is saturated in theoretical analysis exclusively interested in a conceptual bent. To the casual-but-curious viewer unarmed with an encyclopedic knowledge of art theory and a good dictionary, the New York art world may as well be a hospital. I point this out in an effort to isolate why painting has been lacking in all things humorous.

My big question is, who doesn’t love to laugh? Some of my best friends are artists with wicked senses of humor. Look at what we do for a living: it makes no sense and yet we persist. Ridiculous! Works that are funny have an immediate intuitive impact—laughter is one of the most primal reactions we have as humans. My best paintings reveal a more complicated meaning and levels of humor the longer viewers participate with them. Humor gives back to those who linger and manages to draw us closer and sustain our attention.

Smarty-pants works often serve to distance us from our own gut reactions. It’s not enough to note that something makes us laugh. It’s about making room for the gut reaction—in this case, laughter—and unifying it with the theoretical.

Thwap Wang Wang, 2016, casein on wood panel, 24” x 24” x 2”

I’m trying to connect the dots. I recall the Surrealists and how cleverly they worked puns, jokes, and punch lines into their work. As a kid in the mind numbing suburbs of Connecticut this gave me a way out. Humor and satire saved my life. Humor is a palpable connection to the real world, something visceral and — at its most basic —unlearned. Humor is a direct pipeline from the body to the object. It allows us to access artwork directly.

At their best, my paintings function on many planes; there is a guttural reaction that acts as a hook, leading to a sustained viewing and attention and ultimately resulting in a deeper connection between my art and the audience.

Humor gives back to those who linger; it draw us closer and sustains our attention. In my work, the funny bone is connected to the brain bone. Try the brisket, I’m here all week.