Good Housekeeping

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on July 7, 2011 at 5:09pm

Curator’s Comment:

This is a pretty interesting piece.  I’ve seen many collage artists enamored and inspired by 1950’s style advertising celebrating the idealized homemaker.  But this appropriation is a good deal more nuanced, and with a vaguely industrial edge.  Instead of placing the homemaker in the actual picture plane, her serving hands present a molded dessert (jello? Cake?).  It is after all her service to family and society that, in this dystopia, take priority over personal identity.  The garage door and driveway of the suburban home also shows cracks of decay- breaking down the veneer of perfection and letting the weeds come up through the fissures.  This roughness extends through the edges of the piece, with weathered surfaces under veiled transparencies. The text is underplayed, but instantly recognizable.  It’s as if yesterday’s impossible premise doesn’t hold up to today’s vision.  But the viewer needs to spend time with this superbly restrained work.