Direct but nuanced, the print and its graphic power have endured for centuries.

Artists use etchings and engravings to mock fashionistas, caricature the talented and powerful, skewer the self-important and lampoon humanity's vices, especially lust, greed and gossip. Marriage, the upper classes and politicians also provided excellent fodder.

Amanda Zehnder, Carnegie Museum of Art's associate curator of fine arts, spent 18 months researching and curating this exhibition, which showcases the work of a dozen artists, including three important masters -- Frenchman Honore Daumier, Englishman William Hogarth and Spaniard Francisco de Goya.

The show, "Caricature, Satire and Comedy of Manners: Works on Paper From the 18th Through 20th Centuries," runs through Aug. 15 at the museum in Oakland.

Most of the 80 artworks date from the past 300 years. Packed with subtle details and variations on themes, this exhibition is a fine showcase of different styles of prints.

Etchings are made on a metal or copper plate covered with wax or resin. A needle is used to draw through the wax covering the plate, which is etched by an acid bath. After the wax is removed, grooves that remain in the metal are used to make the print. In engravings, artists create their images on the copper plate with a wedge-shaped tool called a burin.

Just inside the gallery entrance is a 20th-century lithograph that's likely to delight many visitors. Created for the 100th anniversary of New York's Carnegie Hall in 1991, the gathering of celebrities and entertainers was elegantly drawn by Albert Hirschfeld, who included everyone from Leonard Bernstein to the Beatles.

It's fun to linger here and pick out people you recognize in Hirschfeld's bold, comedic strokes. Look for the "Ninas"; Hirschfeld began inserting his daughter's name into his work after her birth in 1945. There's one in the hair of a conductor and another in a bow tie.

Also at the gallery's entrance are single examples of several artists' works.

Britisher Isaac Cruikshank, father of a family of artists, caricatures the attitudes of smokers, inserting raunchy innuendo into their puffs of smoke.

Mary Darly, an 18th-century British engraver, was one of the first professional caricaturists in England. She took simultaneous aim at fashion and history. In a 1776 print titled "Bunker's Hill," Darly mocks elaborate hairdos and the Battle of Bunker Hill, a significant event in the American Revolution. Prints by Darly and her husband, Matthew, usually poked fun at people overly concerned with appearances.

In a scene from 1803 called "The Bulstrode Siren," James Gillray, another English engraver, caricatures opera singer Elizabeth Billington and William Bentinck, the third Duke of Portland. Rumors abounded that the duke paid Billington for private appearances at his estate, called Bulstrode. Gillray portrays Billington as a homely woman and the older duke as a youth, highlighting the substantial age difference between the two.

The show features a broad range of emotion.

"Some of it's lighthearted. Sometimes, it really is quite dark, risque or upsetting. If you were the butt of the joke, it's not so funny at all," Ms. Zehnder said.

By age 12, Hogarth was an apprentice learning to engrave silver tankards. In "Marriage a la Mode," Hogarth makes fun of the nouveau riche, showing a middle-class woman who marries above her means.

But there's real pathos in Hogarth's series of nine engravings with the ironic title of "A Harlot's Progress." In successive images from 1732, the artist shows a young girl arriving in the big city, hoping to earn a living as a seamstress. Instead, she turns to prostitution, and the end of her life is truly wretched and depressing.

To stop the pirating of his work, Hogarth persuaded Britain's Parliament to enact the first copyright for engravers. The law's passage allowed Hogarth to work independently of a publisher or patron. England had abolished most types of censorship so he was free to express his opinions of any class or group.

Honore Daumier, who began making prints at age 11 in Paris, developed his style by studying Michelangelo's sculpture and the work of other Roman artists in the Louvre. Using clay, he modeled the heads of his characters before creating the lithographs. In 1834, at age 26, he produced his best-known work, "Rue Transnonain," which shows the massacre of a poor family shot by riot squads in Paris.

Daumier's hand-colored lithograph, "My dear stockholders," is as timely today as it was in 1838. In this scene, a man stands at a lectern, telling glum stockholders that the firm's founder has resigned and that all of the 800,000 francs they invested were spent on advertising, furnaces, matches, saucepans and top-quality carrots. Incredibly, the stockholders vote unanimously to invest another 800,000 francs. The image may remind viewers of Wall Street's battle cry that the insurance company AIG was "too big to fail."

Periodically, strict censorship by the French government forced Daumier to lay aside political satire and earn a living by creating prints of typical Parisian types. You'll see old ladies gossiping and caricatures of "close talkers" -- people who violate your personal space. This timeless scene evokes a "Seinfeld" episode in which Elaine is stuck in coach on an airline flight.

The last room in the gallery is devoted to etchings by Goya, who served as court painter to three Spanish kings. Later in life, the artist was haunted by the evils of the Spanish Inquisition and political scandals. His last series of prints, called "The Follies," are scary, Ms. Zehnder said.

Some of Goya's scenes contain references to carnival imagery, folklore and witchcraft. Done on flat gray or black backgrounds, these scenes show distorted faces and double-headed figures, suggesting multiple personalities and agendas.

"These are really enigmatic images," Ms. Zehnder said.

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