(Roughly) Daily

Familiar to many will be that exasperating feeling that arises when accused of being that very thing you pride yourself on not being. It’s a feeling the English artist William Hogarth evidently felt acutely when critics derided him for being a mere “caricature” artist. So moved was he by this ongoing slight, that he produced this 1743 print explaining the difference between characters and caricatures — which Hogarth saw as radically different — and demonstrating his style as being firmly aligned with the former. For Hogarth the comic character face, with its subtle exploration of an individual’s human nature, was vastly superior to the gross formal exaggerations of the grotesque caricature…

More on Hogarth’s defense of his self-perception at “Characters and Caricaturas.”

* Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

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As we lament labels, we might recall that it was on this date in 1972 that Vesna Vulović entered the Guinness Book of Records.  A stewardess for JAT Airlines, she survived a fall of 33,330 ft. when (what is believed to have been) a briefcase bomb exploded on her flight, and she was sucked through the resulting hole i the fuselage.  She was the sole survivor of the incident.

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