"Charlie Hebdo's new cover depicting the prophet Muhammad holding a Je suis Charlie placard with a tear coming from his eye is a life-affirming work of art. For a brief moment, it will turn Paris into the art capital of Europe, which of course would come as no surprise to Manet, Picasso or the cartoonist Daumier who went to prison in 1835 for portraying the king as a pear. Luz has drawn Muhammad in his customary abbreviated manner, simple and sketchy with thick rapid lines. It is this quick, almost dismissive style of drawing that communicates his universal disrespect. He'd draw you or me like this and he draws Muhammad like this too. Yet in the aftermath of the mass murder of his colleagues this lack of reverence declared in every line of the drawing becomes a truly sublime declaration of freedom.

This cover is not just a work of art because it's drawn well. It's a work of art in the way it is challenging world media to republish it and thus join Charlie Hebdo's gentle, sniggering army of freedom. I do mean sniggering. It is laughter that came under attack last week. Funny people were killed for being funny. This new cover is the only possible response – a response that makes you laugh. Denying the comic power of this cover would be another way to censor it, smothering the joke with anxieties. The comic humanist Rabelais, in the 16th century, put intelligent laughter at the heart of French culture. If you can laugh you can think. If you can see something as funny you can stand back from it and consider it in a more rounded, healthy, human way.

The slain staff and contributors to Charlie Hebdo were killed because of the exact images and words used by Charlie Hebdo, but well-meaning support for the magazine has until now foundered on the fear of republishing those supposedly offensive creations. If they were not republished, what did all the handwringing mean?

Now the magazine has taken matters into its own hands and saved its archive from some kind of pious oblivion. This cover cannot be ignored. Above all, take a close look at this drawing – whatever your faith or lack of faith. What, in the eyes of humanity as opposed to ideology or dogma, can really be offensive about it? There is nothing to see here except good humour and reason and the love of life" (Jonathan Jones)