(RUBE) GOLDBERG VARIATIONS
Rube Goldberg was an early 20th century cartoonist famous for his absurd solutions to common everyday problems--how to know when your slip is showing, how to "automatically" shut a screen door, how to self-propel a canoe (the secret is a hungry duck), how to instantly and effortlessly and instantly commit suicide when the stock market ticker tape falls below a certain level, and countless others. Typically Goldberg (1883-1970) would work in long horizontal panels showing a left-to-right sequence of outlandish events carried forward by an elaborate system of jerrybuilt mechanical devices that were, often as not, assisted by very accommodating animals and less often by humans who looked somewhat enslaved by the ridiculous contraptions they helped operate. He would enlist cannon balls, toy soldiers, bowling monkeys, tires, water buckets and every kind of pulley, rope, ramp, screw and gismo he could find or invent.
"Rube Goldberg" is an adjective in the dictionary. It means anything that is "fantastically complicated" and "impractical." What it meant to me was a handy representation of human absurdity. My variations on his cartoons (the pun in the title refers to Bach's "Goldberg Variations") are treated as painterly subjects, that is, images that could generate, with the right inflection, strong emotions, perhaps even tragic feelings. When in one cartoon a little tin soldier marches forward and falls into a waiting noose and is hanged simply to shut a screen door, I want my black setting and rough brushwork to make it seem comic and tragic at once, an expression of how humans hang at the abyss but nevertheless keep telling stories, make puns and, whenever it's even marginally possible, laugh. I liked the paradox of it: that I might possibly build a genuine expressive image from the most absurd and hilarious concoctions to ever come out of a comic imagination.
I did a few paintings on canvas and large sheets of paper (Blue Scarecrow With Canon Ball, acrylic on canvas, 2001 (above) is among the largest), but the majority were executed on a relatively small scale, either as pigment print or acrylic on paper or a combination of both.
"Rube Goldberg" is an adjective in the dictionary. It means anything that is "fantastically complicated" and "impractical." What it meant to me was a handy representation of human absurdity. My variations on his cartoons (the pun in the title refers to Bach's "Goldberg Variations") are treated as painterly subjects, that is, images that could generate, with the right inflection, strong emotions, perhaps even tragic feelings. When in one cartoon a little tin soldier marches forward and falls into a waiting noose and is hanged simply to shut a screen door, I want my black setting and rough brushwork to make it seem comic and tragic at once, an expression of how humans hang at the abyss but nevertheless keep telling stories, make puns and, whenever it's even marginally possible, laugh. I liked the paradox of it: that I might possibly build a genuine expressive image from the most absurd and hilarious concoctions to ever come out of a comic imagination.
I did a few paintings on canvas and large sheets of paper (Blue Scarecrow With Canon Ball, acrylic on canvas, 2001 (above) is among the largest), but the majority were executed on a relatively small scale, either as pigment print or acrylic on paper or a combination of both.
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Above, left to right: Automatic Dish Washing Machine, acrylic, 2000.
Machine to Tell If Your Slip Is Showing, archival pigment print, 1999. Mothball Machine, acrylic on paper, 2000. Gathering Earth Worms, acrylic on paper, 2000. Canoe Propulsion, acrylic on paper, 2000. Cigar Ash Disposal, archival pigment print, 1998. When Goldberg did these cartoons, it was a different time. There were no automatic dishwashers or motorized boats. Women worried about their slips showing and men had to account for the mess their cigars created. When The Crash came in 1929, the homeless and hungry were left to beg in the streets. Some were, in the parlance of the day, hobos, a group of unfortunates that Goldberg didn't always treat gently. The song, Hey Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime? (made famous by a young Bing Crosby) poignantly expressed the plight of many. Getting a dime-- one thin dime, as they said back then--was a big deal. In some of the hobo and scarecrow figures I developed from Goldberg, I lettered the title of the song directly on the image. Goldberg never used the song in his cartoons but he certainly heard it. To me, in spite of the humor of the figures, his bodiless scarecrows -- nothing but a coat and hat hanging on a stick-- and his ragged, stubble-faced bums epitomized the melancholy, forlorn little tune. |
Left: Hey Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime? (Pink), acrylic over pigment print, 2000.
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Hey, Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime? (Pink), acrylic over archival print, 2000
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Hey, Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime? (gold), acrylic over archival print, 2000
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