Kaufman

[Kevin Solway]

Not exactly a genius, but interesting in a weird way.

Hygiene

Wrestling

I trusted you

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Not exactly a genius

Congratulations Kevin, you just won the prize for understatement of the year.

[Kevin Solway]

While he's not a genius, I'd say there's just as much genius in his work as there is in any artist.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

I never thought of you as an art connoisseur anyway. Actually, wouldn't art be akin to a sin in buddhism?

[oneiopen]

Interesting finding this since I've been thinking about Kaufman recently. At first I didn't appreciate his "humour" but I think I've come to understand it, surprisingly enough, through the work of Sacha Baron-Cohen (aka Borat). The artistry of this type of comedy is in the experiential aspect and in the intellectual analysis of how the comedians "play" their "audience". Each of them purport to be a simpleton to relax and entertain their audience, then use their supposed silly, underling status to expose the foibles of their culture and society. However, the joke isn't at the expense of the supposed "played audience" but at the character's because they are after all "silly" while the "played audience" is serious yet the satire is aimed at the "played audience." Genius, isn't it?

[Tharan]

Andy would have been proud of his oxymoronic stature as a Comic Genius.

[ExpectantlyIronic]

"A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes." -Ludwig Wittgenstein

Intelligent humor tends to require an incredible lot of intelligence. I tend to think that Kaufman's humor was quite intelligent. Perhaps despite appearances.

[Kelly Jones]

Here's a description of Comic Genius that i particularly enjoyed. It is Constantine Constantius' description of two farce actors he saw in Berlin:

They are not so much reflective artists who have made a study of laughter as they are lyrical geniuses who plunge into the abyss of laughter and then let its volcanic force cast them up upon the stage. They have therefore hardly calculated what they will do but let the instant and the natural force of laughter be responsible for everything. They have courage to do what the ordinary man dares to do only when he is alone, what the crazy man does in the presence of all, what the genius knows how to do with the authority of genius. They know that their exuberant mirth has no bounds, that the capital they possess of the comic is inexhaustible and almost every instant a surprise even to them; they know that they are capable of keeping the laughter going the whole evening, without more effort than it costs me to scribble this on paper.

Beckmann is the perfection of a comic genius, who lyrically runs wild in the comic and distinguishes himself not by characterisation but by effervescence of spirit. He is not great in the artistically commensurable, but admirable in the individual incommensurable. He has no need of the support of team-play, of scenery and arrangement; precisely because he is in form he brings everything with him, at the same time that he is in an ecstasy of wantonness he paints the scenery for himself as well as any painter could.

He has sung his couplet, now the dance begins. What Beckmann dares to do is perilous; for presumably he does not think himself competent in the strictest sense to produce an effect by his dancing attitudes. He is now beside himself. The madness of laughter within him can no longer be contained either in mimicry or in replique; only to take himself like Munchhausen by the nape of the neck and abandon himself to crazy caprioles is consonant with his mood. The ordinary man, as I have said, may very well recognise what assaugement is to be found in this, but it requires an indisputable genius to do it on the stage, it requires the authority of genius, otherwise it is pitiable.

Selections from "Repetition", Walter Lowrie's translation. It's in A Kierkegaard Anthology, edited by Robert Bretall.

One book i'd recommend getting a copy of.

[Kevin Solway]

While he's not a genius, I'd say there's just as much genius in his work as there is in any artist.

I never thought of you as an art connoisseur anyway.

That's right. I don't think there's much genius in art. But there can be some. Writing is a special kind of art in which there can be much genius, such as in the writings of Kierkegaard.

I agree with Wittgenstein that philosophy can be all jokes.

In some regards, Zen Buddhism is all about jokes - if you can see the joke.