I don’t believe that art has meaning and I don’t believe that it should. What I do believe is that the purpose of art is to create an experience and to tell a story (or convey an idea), but, again, I don’t like to believe in the story (or idea) as told by the artist (with the exception being biblical paintings) because I like to stretch my mind a bit. It’s cheating to just take the description on a placard at face value. Won’t you join me as I participate in one of my greatest pastimes? Let’s devise book summaries in the Contemporary Art department of The Detroit Institute of Art!
Behind her Jackie Kennedy haircut and Lord and Taylor dresses, Barbra Goodman was a complete and utter mess. Forced to see a shrink after her husband couldn’t get it up (“You’re oversexed!” he’d say), she’d begun abusing her prescriptions and found, at the suggestion of her doctor, that adding horse tranquilizers (“Just a little drop’ll do ya.”) to her bourbon really did make her calmer. But when her son starts rebelling against his braces by killing squirrels in the backyard and smearing their blood all over her husband’s paintings (“My god! The Morris!”), she devolves into madness and learns what it really means to be a woman in a post-Sgt. Pepper’s world. But will her husband even notice? And when little Billy moves on from squirrels, will he even survive?
—
Now it’s your turn, and, if you feel stuck (though how could you be), here’s an alternative family to create story lines for.
Family Portrait (1968) Courtesy Detroit Institute of Art
Mickey Ruskin Family Portrait (1968): Private Collection: Image Courtesy All Art
