Annual Wit and Humor Exhibition-- Mad World: Subversive Humor Magazines from the Schmulowitz Collection

Subversive humor magazines have pushed the boundaries of civility and politics since the nineteenth century. They’ve been loved, hated, banned and worse. Most of us are familiar with Punch, MAD magazine, The Onion, The New Yorker, and now Charlie Hebdo, but did you know that Charlie Hebdo derived its dual inspiration from MAD magazine and the satirical French magazine, L’Assiette au Beurre (The Butter Dish)?

                                                                  

You may be surprised to learn that the founders of Punch were inspired by the French humor magazine Le Charivari. Few of us may know that the Muslim world embraced one of the most acerbic humor magazines published in the early twentieth century, Molla Nasreddin, founded in Azerbaijan in 1906. This beloved magazine continued to be published through 1930 until it was shut down by Soviet authorities. Unfortunately, San Francisco Public Library does not hold any issues.

Mad World: Subversive Humor Magazines from the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit and Humor gathers together some of the most irreverent magazines from around the world, reviewing the antecedents that helped to radicalize modern cartoonists and humorists, while connecting the dots to twenty-first century humor magazines. Mad World is a visual display of in-your-face humor, outrage, and shocking reality in a war-torn time where humor will, if we let it, dominate the world. The exhibition opens April Fools' Day in the Skylight Gallery, Sixth Floor, Main Library; on view through May 31.

The Schmulowitz Collection of Wit and Humor (SCOWAH) is the happy result of the biblio-adventures of one man, Nat Schmulowitz—lawyer, library commissioner, and humanist—who collected printed humor from around the world. One aspect of his collecting habit was his ongoing search for humor magazines. SCOWAH is a rich source of both classics, and long forgotten titles, with strong examples of Cold War underground humor. The collection includes over 250 magazine titles, many of which were subscribed to or collected by Nat: a real slice of life from the old world. Here on display are just a few periodicals from the saucy, satiric, mad world of SCOWAH.

On April 1, 1947, as a measure of his interest in the Library, Nat Schmulowitz presented ninety-three jest books, including an edition of the Hundred Merry Tales, as the first step toward the establishment of a research collection of wit and humor.

The Schmulowitz Collection of Wit and Humor now contains more than 23,000 books, as well as periodicals, audiovisual materials and ephemera; it is a growing collection in thirty-eight languages and dialects. Located in the Book Arts & Special Collections Center, SCOWAH is one of the most important research collections of its kind, and characteristically reflects the eclectic humor of its founder, whose motto still resonates: 

“Without humor, we are doomed.”

Related Programs:

Thursdays at Noon Film Series: Comedy Films -

Featuring Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (April 2); Crumb (April 9); Network (April 16); Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics (April 23); and They Live (April 30). All films are shown with captions when possible to assist the deaf and hard of hearing. Main Library, Koret Auditorium.

The Politics of Humor: Jack Boulware (founder of the satirical magazine The Nose and co-founder, Litquake) and political cartoonist Mark Fiore in conversation. Tuesday, May 5, 6 p.m., Koret Auditorium, Main Library.

For more information about these and other Library programs and exhibitions, please call (415) 557-4277.

All programs at the Library are free.