The grotesque (from fr. grotesque - fancy, comical) in a general sense designates something, executed in ugly and comic, fancy and fantastic style. It can be the literary work, a picture, a typographical font.
Grotesque, according to the Big Soviet Encyclopedia, call also an ornament in which peculiar human forms, masks, plants, animal intertwine. It is the ancient modelled ornament found at excavation in Rome. In decorative paintings of Renaissance also used grotesque. One of the best-known works are the frescos in Loggias executed according to Raphael's sketches (1519) and paintings in Borgia's apartments in Vatican of the artist Pinturikkyo (1493).
In literature and art grotesque – the type of art figurativeness based on a hyperbole, laughter, contrast and a combination of a caricature and credibility, real and fantastic, tragic and comic.
The grotesque is directed to expression of the main problems of human life and contradictions of life. However the world created in this style cannot be taken literally and to decipher unambiguously. Receptions of grotesque were used in the comedies by Aristophanes. Later medieval art resorted to it (characters of the animal epos, a figure of chimeras on cathedrals). The peak of the highest popularity of grotesque fell on Renaissance. In this style many artists, writers and poets created the works. The best-known of them – "Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel" by Francois Rabelais, "A praise of nonsense" of Erasmus Rotterdamsky, Callot's schedule, Bosch and Bruegel's painting. The Renaissance grotesque expressed liberty of the people and was imbued with demonstrative anti-asceticism. Eventually the genre became sharply satirical (Francisco de Goya, Johnathan Swift). There was also romantic grotesque (Victor Hugo, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffman). In the 19th century the grotesque gained popularity from realists. It was characteristic of Honoré Daumier, Charles Dickens, Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin's works. Modernist moods of the 20th century made grotesque a characteristic form of art. It was widely used in the creativity by modernists, expressionists and surrealists (Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Salvador Dalí). The modernist grotesque is penetrated by consciousness of absurdity of life and fear of life. Its motives and also the ideas inherent in realism are present at works of many artists and writers of that time - Kafka, Bulgakov, Chagall, Picasso. Receptions of grotesque were used in the creativity by Yaroslav Hašek, Charlie Chaplin, Bertolt Brecht. In the same style some works of the Soviet art - plays fairy tales by Schwartz, satirical comedies by Mayakovsky, the opera fairy tale "Love for Three Oranges" by Prokofiev are written. The grotesque is characteristic also of some comic genres – the farce, a clownery, the pamphlet, a caricature.