Modern Art
Explanation
The Joke
Two people are leaving a modern art museum, with one complaining that they always go and never understand the art. The other fears that if people follow their lead and stop funding the arts, artists will die. In a panic, they shout "Hit the gas, Frank!" But their car drives terribly because the wheels are square-shaped. When the first person asks why, the driver explains: "Because I am re-imagining cubism."
The Humor
The comic builds a classic anti-modern-art complaint ("I don't get it") into an ironic reversal. The characters who dismiss modern art as pointless are themselves trapped in its logic -- their car has been modified with square wheels as a piece of applied cubism. The joke works on multiple levels: the impractical square wheels are both a literal impediment (the car barely functions) and a parody of how modern art is often criticized for prioritizing concept over practicality. The absurdity of applying an art movement to automobile engineering mirrors the common complaint that modern art is detached from real-world usefulness. The driver Frank, apparently an artist himself, has taken cubism so seriously he has redesigned reality around it.
References
- Cubism: An early 20th-century art movement pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, characterized by fragmented geometric forms and multiple perspectives. The comic makes a visual pun by making the wheels literally cubic (square).
- Modern art museums: Frequently the target of jokes about pretentious or incomprehensible art.