Hahaha. The Humour of Art

“Nothing is serious enough to take seriously” Marcel Duchamp

A bottle of wine, a snow shovel, a sentence, a urinal… They don't seem that special. Who could have thought that they would be the start of an artistic revolution and completely change how we see art? And most importantly, that this change started in the middle of the First World War? Discover our new exhibition: Hahaha. The Humour of Art.

Artistic revolution

This artistic revolution started in 1917 with an overturned urinal. This ordinary urinal was called Fountain by Marcel Duchamp and was declared a work of art. Although this was intended as a joke, this ordinary piece of plumbery has had a lasting effect on art. Humour took on a definitive role in the the kingdom of the beauty with, as a result, a beneficial upheaval in the creation and it announced the transition from modern to contemporary art. A century later, this is still regarded as a major breakthrough in art history.

What would the art of the 20th century have been without this liberating joke, providing a sense of lightness in a world that took itself too seriously? The exhibition Hahaha. The humour of art, organised in collaboration with Centre Pompidou and ING Belgium, revolves around several themes: caricatures, puns, art as toys, hoaxes, parody, mockery and buffoons. In this exhibition, you will discover how artists embrace humour in their works and how they have broken away from the tradition to propose new forms.

From the Great Zwans Exhibition (1885) to Dadaism, from Lolo the donkey to Marcel Duchamp's Readymades, from Man Ray to Marcel Broodthaers, Hahaha takes humour seriously.