art on display

so lately the boss has been into painting.
he's always collected art, in the magpie way common to used book dealers. You find all kinds of weird things when you're out in the world buying books, fellow travelers in the retail underworld. The store is stocked with chairs, tables, lamps, shelves, broadsides, photographs and art picked up cheap at estate sales, garage sales, flea markets and assorted other outlets of the underground economy.

(digression: a while back he got into online trading with an eye toward retirement, but his venture into online gambling sites never quite panned out. What will probably end up financing his golden years will be the portfolio of Mark Beck paintings he bought years back because he loved them (also, because the artist needed to eat and pay rent). There's a lesson in there somewhere....)

But he's been displaying his own art lately, enjoying the commentary and interaction with the buying public.

I'm less enthusiastic about engaging the proletariat about the meaning of works like If You Go To LA You Will Become Rich, or laughing politely when someone makes a crack about the fake Rothkos he painted as an exercise.

But there's a new piece in the window that's generating a better class of comment- "better" in this case meaning 'entertaining for the stooge behind the counter'.

it's a giant abstract canvas with a bunch of Barbie dolls glued to it (a trove gleaned from thrift stores). The title is something like sun damaged thrift store Barbies redeemed by art...I think I'm missing a bit, but that's the gist of it.

Anyway, a sampling of the entertaining comments it has sparked thus far:

three young girls come in, one really shy one approaches the counter tentatively and asks "why are there babies in the windows?"

Middle aged man comes in asking about the Barbies in the windows. He interprets them as a slam at the local female college student population (a position he agrees with), but says he doesn't like it because it's an example of "the bougeouis art that's ruining this country".

Several drunk co-eds pass the front of the store, of the sort the previous respondent seemed to link with the painting. They pause and contemplate the work for a short while, and one of them opines "poor Barbie....you can't do that to Barbie!"

I'll try and remember to bring in the camera next week so you can share in the Barbie. And watch this space for further entertaining comments as they trickle in.