I felt terrible. Absolutely terrible. Yet I did laugh. And regrettably, I just don't have a photo of the painting that led to these two very different reactions.
My grandfather had quite an interesting art collection. He loved color--bright color. And he had quite a few large colorful paintings. On a visit to Mother's house not too long ago, I discovered a particularly unattractive painting of his in her living room. She was studying it, trying to figure out where to hang it. She was very fond of it.
But you see, the subject of the painting was two parrots. It was one of those paintings with a blank background. The birds had parts of them well-defined and the rest still looked more like sketches. My issue was that the body of the largest most obvious bird looked like a giant sweet potato. Once I saw it, that's all I could see.
So I mentioned it to Mom. And began to laugh. Dad agreed that it looked like a freaking sweet potato. And before long, Mother was more than agitated. "Thanks," she said. "You ruined it for me." (This is in a deep Southern accent.)
That was back in April.
The sweet potato bird came up in conversation again this week. "Where'dya put that painting?" I asked her.
"On the street. I put it on the street. You ruined it for me. I couldn't get over the putayta. Thanks a lot."
Okay, okay. I'm a horrible jackass. But it made the whole thing even funnier. But I feel bad. It's still funny. That painting was probably worth millions. But it ended up on the curb. Wonder where it's hanging now...and how long it will take them to see the sweet potato.
11 comments:
Due to your habitual ornithology I thought the 'Putayta bird' was a unique Sarasota species. Art is just so subjective.
Meanwhile, in season six of The Sopranos, Tony Soprano is shown a travel brochure for Australia. He looks at it dismissively: "It looks like Sarasota!" ... and adds rhetorically, "after twenty hours on a plane?" ...
My sister hates it when I say "that looks like a [insert mundane object here]." She says her art (sculpture) is supposed to be nonrepresentational. "It's not supposed to look like anything!" she yells. So sue me. The brain will naturally try to shoehorn what it sees into some classification that it knows. That's what brains do.
The captcha is "priks". Ha.
As an artist, I mirror your mixed feelings...on one hand, poor grandpa...he probably labored over that for months. And on the other hand--what a funny story! (I love description of your mother's accent!)
I really love brightly colored work. There was an exhibit here several years ago of a regional artist named Geneva Beavers--she did all kinds of vivid animals--really cheery work :)
I wish you had snapped a picture of that painting. How can a parrot look like a patayta? LoL. Funny story. :)
I feel bad now too haha
I want to meet your mother! She sounds priceless...great story.
P.S. All thsoe flying roaches stories get me worried here!! lol And I've been to Florida, and even saw a huuuuuuuge roach in my bathroom in my hotel room (how very nasty, I know) and it never flew anywhere... I'm really thankful now it didn't or that I didn't know it probably could haha I dunno, are you even sure those are roaches too? Maybe those are some other bugs? We have bugs in Russia that look some liek roaches and they certainly do fly, but they're not roaches! And regarding IKEA - yep, we do have them :) It seems that IKEA's taken over the world - they can be found practically anywhere lol
I know about this painting. It was picked up off of the curb by a friend of the artist who knew he had been searching for it for years. It auctioned at Christie's this past weekend for $1.5mil.
interesting blog
HAHAHahahaha.... this is awesome. You're not a horrible jackass. Maybe moderately horrible... no, not even that. ;o) You crack me up!
Sweet putayta parrott...bless your mother's heart. Funny she couldn't see it before you mentioned it! Too bad you didn't get a picture of it to share with us. Next time you tease her, take a picture of said item before she throws it to the curb!
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