Most of my paintings right now are 20” x 16” and believe it or not are the same size as Warhol’s soup cans. I stumbled over this ridiculous factoid while reading “Made in the USA” by Sidra Stich this weekend. “Made in the USA” is the catalog of the show by the same name that I saw at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1987.
It was the first time that I saw a few artists in enough depth to start to really understand what they were doing, I really got interested in Ray Johnson after this show (by the way see the movie “How to Draw a Bunny” – it’s even on Netfilx) and while Johnson is a riddle it was still great to be able to start seeing what he did.
I remember the show as being great – and it was. As I looked at the catalog, almost twenty years later, its interesting to see that “America” as we know it from popular images is no longer “America”. I had written a nice little line that tied this all up in a bow but have decided not to. It was a little too “Pollyanna” even for me.
Especially for me.