In this course we will discuss and explore humor as an artistic tool in visual art and its unique effectiveness in dealing with difficult subject matter. This partial survey will focus on the meeting place of socio-political issues and the artist's life. Using basic psychoanalytical texts, art theory and common sense as our analytical tools, we will figure out why and how humor, in its various permutations, has been used to talk about anything from genocide to personal angst. Some of the artists we'll look at are Francisco Goya, Philip Guston, Maurizio Cattelan, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Nathalie Djunberg, David Shrigley, Nedko Solakov, Tami Ben Tor Danica Phelps, Guy Ben-Ner and Dan Perjovschi. Reading will include Andre Breton, Sigmund Freud, Dave Hickey, Andrea Fraser, Peter Schjeldahl and Slavoj Zizek.