A day at the art museum with Uncle Eddie! We don't stand on formalities here, let's plunge right in!
Here's (above) Gainsborough's "Blue Boy." Cartoonists love it because it's the ultimate depiction of a sissyfied Lord Fauntleroy-type. The painting wasn't based on the Fauntleroy novel, and the boy in the novel wasn't a sissy, but the public remembers him that way and who am I to dispute it? Anyway, this painting and I have history.
One halloween I went out and bought a Fauntleroy/Blue Boy suit. I raced home with it, chuckling all the way, thinking of all the gags I could play with it. Breathlessly I put it on in the bathroom, carefull not to look in the mirror till the ensemble was complete. At long last I finished adjusting the lace collar, put the hat on, and proudly stared into the mirror, expecting to erupt with laughter.
Well... it was a looooong look and I felt like doing anything but laughing. I struggled to identify the emotion I was feeling. To my surprise it was...no use trying to hide it...violence. I wanted to hit the figure in the mirror. I couldn't figure out why. I wasn't a gay-basher in real life, why the sudden impulse to destroy? Puzzled, I walked into the living room to see what my family thought. I thought I'd get a laugh from at least one of them. Instead they all turned white with horror. My wife finally said in a tembling voice: "Eddie, that suit...it makes me want to...to hit you." That did it. I packed up the suit and retired it.
I'm convinced that what I felt had nothing to do with resentment against gays. Even gays would have wanted to hit the person in the mirror. The suit is simply the most potent lure to violence ever created. It would have turned Ghandi into a bully. It just has bad juju.
Moving along, here's (above) the "Mona Lisa." I have to say that it looks funny to me and I sometimes wonder if that was Leonardo's intention. I thought that seeing it in person might give me an insight but when I stumbled across it in the Louvre it was roped off, covered with glass, heavily guarded and surrounded by the backs of tall tourists. I couldn't see a thing. Ah, well.
Here's (above) the Venus di Milo, beloved by cartoonists everywhere because they're always trying to think of dirty things her arms might be doing. Of course Venus isn't the most revered scupture. That honor belongs to the plaster hood ornament-type figure that you always see on pedestals in the homes of the cartoon rich. I wonder if that scupture ever really existed. It looks a little like a famous black Donatello (or is it Cellini) figure but that's not quite the same.
On this wall (above) we find "Whistler's Mother," another cartoonist favorite. Boy, she keeps a clean home! It always strikes me as funny when people sit with their shoulder against a wall even if it's in a reataurant. I mean the natural thing is to sit with the wall at your back. How odd it is to press yourself against a man-made cliff with all the pictures on one side diminishing in railroad perspective infront of you.
Last but not least, Grant Wood's "American Gothic." You can laugh at this picture but it'll be around when all of us have turned to dust. There's something so primal and funny about it. It's how every adolescent regards his parents, how every writer regards his editors, how every employee regards his boss. If you're a painter, and all you want is to be remembered, then pick a primal emotion and depict the ultimate distillation of it.
