ART
I Think You're Great: OVERUNDERSIDEWAYSDOWN
/ Kevin Killian
04.17.06
“I Think You’re Great"
For the exhibition “overundersidewaysdown” currently to be seen at the independent QNA (Queen's Nails Annex) gallery in San Francisco’s Mission District, the curator Margaret Tedesco asked me to meet up with each of the participating artists and provide some critical insight. That seemed like the kind of thing I could handle. She was intentionally vague about the concept and even vaguer about the title of the show.
“When I was young people spoke of immorality,” sang the Yardbirds on their original recording of “overundersidewaysdown” (1965). “All the things they said were wrong are what I want to be.” And when I was young I collected packs of Beech-Nut’s Fruit Stripe gum, the most peculiar gum of the postwar era, for when you opened the white wrapper you saw pastel stripes arrayed diagonally on a stick which, in a ghastly “reveal,” failed to disguise the sickly white underneath, the gum base. Your eyes didn’t know where to look, at the color or its lack. Your conscience tried to make a case for focusing on the color. It was a popular look, not only for kids, not only for circus clowns. Alma Thomas, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland were making color field paintings in which stripes crowded each other like cats chasing their tails, rainbows ran a ghastly riot. At the Silver Factory, Warhol and Malanga and David Whitney were churning out silk-screens of Holly Solomon’s face in lime, orange, lemon, sky blue, with gum white holding the whole thing together. Chewing gum furiously, on speed, their jaws crunching. In the Village the artisans who made tie-dyed T shirts were trying to imitate the psychedelic sprawl of Fruit Stripes. You saw it in the movies too, in everything from Petulia to It’s a Bikini World to Antonioni’s Red Desert, color unleashed, supersaturated, given a chance to exfoliate, to blaze like candy.
For the exhibition “overundersidewaysdown” currently to be seen at the independent QNA (Queen's Nails Annex) gallery in San Francisco’s Mission District, the curator Margaret Tedesco asked me to meet up with each of the participating artists and provide some critical insight. That seemed like the kind of thing I could handle. She was intentionally vague about the concept and even vaguer about the title of the show.
“When I was young people spoke of immorality,” sang the Yardbirds on their original recording of “overundersidewaysdown” (1965). “All the things they said were wrong are what I want to be.” And when I was young I collected packs of Beech-Nut’s Fruit Stripe gum, the most peculiar gum of the postwar era, for when you opened the white wrapper you saw pastel stripes arrayed diagonally on a stick which, in a ghastly “reveal,” failed to disguise the sickly white underneath, the gum base. Your eyes didn’t know where to look, at the color or its lack. Your conscience tried to make a case for focusing on the color. It was a popular look, not only for kids, not only for circus clowns. Alma Thomas, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland were making color field paintings in which stripes crowded each other like cats chasing their tails, rainbows ran a ghastly riot. At the Silver Factory, Warhol and Malanga and David Whitney were churning out silk-screens of Holly Solomon’s face in lime, orange, lemon, sky blue, with gum white holding the whole thing together. Chewing gum furiously, on speed, their jaws crunching. In the Village the artisans who made tie-dyed T shirts were trying to imitate the psychedelic sprawl of Fruit Stripes. You saw it in the movies too, in everything from Petulia to It’s a Bikini World to Antonioni’s Red Desert, color unleashed, supersaturated, given a chance to exfoliate, to blaze like candy.