The caricature as  as  specific place of  art, with its free, meager  (if looked at from visually and aesthetic side) and witty  drawing, has a basic function: to make its consu-mers laugh by  critisizing, ridiculing and eveng stigmatizing some human or social, moral and virtues short comings some  negative phenomena. This function of the caricature is accomplished by its immaculately made stylized draving; carefully chosen  and treated  theme; with  its clear, unambiguos and optimally dozed message; its clea  shape of engaged piece of art that  persuades the consument to thinking and particularly to imagining.

Of course,  in the process of production of the caricature, the appliance of some usual methods and exppresional means of art are necessary, such as: spraining of the values (deforming  of reality); exaggerating (to some exten) – in the first place in its artistic and then its conceptional and  logical  sense  etc. These methods accomplish the necessary le-vel of witticism, the humorous in the critisizing process the point that is critisized. This could be  considered as a  positive thesis for  production of  the caricature.

But the authors during their creation, apply  some other methods and artistic means of expression. Therefore, we can look  at the appliance  of irony, sarcasm and  cynicism,  which, (again in terms of  speaking) could be considered  as a negative thesis or  antithesis in the creation of the caricature.

Whu do  we mention a positive and negative  thesis (or thesis and   antithesis) in  the creation of a  caricature?

Lets us consider the meaning of irony, sarcasm and cynicism.

IRONY  is obcure ridicule  by using  words  that mean the opposite of what one really  intends;

SARCASM  is using words that  normally mean  one thing to  mean just  the opposite, usually  to hurt  someone`s  feelings  or show scorn, a kind of  extremely  malicious irony.

CINICISM expresses  comtempt for  human nature; impudence, obscenity, cruelty, rejection of all  human values, customs  etc.

As we can notice, these three  categories of human  behaviour are not at  all positive, but in a sense, they are  destructive categories in human  relationships.

By their appliance  in the creation of the  caricatures – additionally  complicated  by  using extremely  akward  themes and areas for caricatural  observation  such as: war, famine, poverty, disease, death, human vices etc.,  the disproportion  between the vittiness and  witlessness  becomes bigger and bigger. This  kind of a caricature  with its overstressed  irony, sarcasm or  cynicism,  constructed upon above mentioned „risky“ themes,  accompanied or illustrated by  anticaricatural  elements, that isd to say, bay artistic elements that  don‘t  correspond to the  caricature as witty spiritual product  (for eg. abundance  of  blood, torn parts of  human or  animal bodies, destroyed and set on fire human  dwellings etc.), depart  from basic spiritual values of the  caricature, although according to some  ecternal  marks, these products only look like a caricature  even if they provoke laughter. Such caricatures  are not really  caricatures  because of the bitterness  they provoke in  spirituale satisfaction of a human being. They are sad caricatures– if such  thing ever exists (it surely doesn’t  exist, as  it is sure that  there is no

laughter is provoked by sad  feelings, as it is sure that no white negro exists etc.).

Hower, it is a fact  that there are  a lot of such „caricatures“; Paying too much atten-tion to  ideological message  directed against  social or human anormalities, some caricaturists set aside the human  necessity for healthy and jouful laughter and  they use extremely unpleasant artistic  elements considering that if they  are  situated in some funy environment, they would provoke  people’s healthy laughter, no matter if  for example, some of  the characters have a head or other part of  their  bodies torn off, or  some of  the characters are dead, or their house burnt down  etc, as if the people themselves don’t  matter (although  people are used in the caricature).

I point out this fact mostly because the laughter is slowly disappearing and  people find less and  less reasons for laughter. The natural and other disasters provoked by people, as wall as the difficult living  conditions are not suitable for a  joyful. Life of a real man – the humanist.

There fore, the caricaturist should be particularly careful in choosing the artistic so-lutions and elements when dealing with one of these more subtle themes and areas of human  life.

The application, or better  to say, combination of irony, sarcasm or cynicism with some  of the above mentioned „risky“ themes (war, famine, alcohol etc.) if followed bay additional  tasteless artistic elements (abundance of  blood, etc) leads to an  opposite effect of  the one expected by  the caricature – a sense of  tastelessness and repulsiveness for the  caricature itself. Therefore, the appliance of these  destructive human behaviours as methodological process, sometimes even overstated in its artistic and ideological sense, while dealing with the themes we have spoken of,  represents antithesis of positive thesis of fundamental postulates for creation of a caricature, in other words  antithesis of the  fundamental characteristics of the caricature itself, i.e. of  the positive educationaln provocation of a healthy  consumer’s laughter.

In searching  for the most suitable methods for their  expression, the caricaturists will  go on widely using irony, sarcasm and cynicism but  they should not  use them dealing with some of the themes and areas of  people’s  lives i have mentioned  above. They should, however, envi stupidity, obstinacy, greediness etc.

Tode Risto Blaževski