A CRITIQUE OF HANS HUFMANN’S ‘MIRAGE’ (1946)

I think it’s a recliner that’s gazing through the bay window, out unto the sea, although it seems that the recliner is also a crescent moon and an iron. Not a fancy iron, but one of those Ma Kettle irons that you had to put on the stove to warm up before it burnt your shirts. The only problem here, as far as I can see, is that the reclining moon iron is swirling in a pastiche of blood and also that the bay window is actually not a bay window but an abstract expresssionist painting, mostly blue, with a little bit of red in it.

I’ve been thinking about abstract expressionist painting lately, thinking that the older you get, the less you really want to look at abstract expressionist painting. You want to be able to hold onto something that is real, really real, like a real iron, or a real recliner. Or you want something that you can sink your teeth into, like a crescent moon–not a crescent moon iron recliner with a pastiche of blood. More like Norman Rockwell, for instance. His windows were really windows! Love comes easy with real windows and a big white, juicy moon. Not so with the make believe moons and the maybe windows and maybe not windows of Hans Hufmann. Looking at a ‘Rockwell’ window or moon isn’t like musing or critiquing–it’s like falling in love!

And I am not ashamed to say that I fell in love with everything that Norman Rockwell ever painted. Isn’t that what love is for? And not just the bric-a-brac, but the people, too. Why, I especially fell in love with every woman that Norman Rockwell ever painted. Even if they were in uniform. Or peeling spuds on the front porch. Or setting the dinner table for family with a balsa wood airplane flying around inside. Every single one Norman Rockwell woman.

Well, except for the grandmothers. Although they did seem to be very nice grandmothers. I did like them, though, just fine. And I will probably fall in love with them, too, once I am a little older.

Norman Rockwell certainly makes me look forward to the future. For the present, though, I will continue to devote myself to my bicycles, my topiaries, and my work as an abstract expressionist.

Thank you.

all artwork, including monsters but not old timey photographs,
® mr. crispy flotilla, 2007