What Does This Painting Mean?

Oserei definire la civiltà: la perfetta arte di fingere.
È la virtù: il secreto di mascheraretutti i volti.
         —Ugo Foscolo, Sesto tomo dell’io

A burst of swirling, whirling energy,
foreboding a cataclysmic change
of disastrous proportions,
Or it could be a giant alligator
smoking a cigarette,
No, no, it’s a challenge to
the Utopian visions
of sniveling bourgeoisie
Or a classic case of sublimated
sexuality—
all artists are really horny,
Wow, what colors! So many bright
yellows and reds, standing out
amidst the dark black, green and blue,
I see a cosmic, orgasmic release of
tension, followed by a sudden
collapse into the
collective unconsciousness,
A drug-induced state, I might add—
no woman could have done it
to him,
Poor chap must have stayed
awake on many a night,
painting this,
Looks like a Rothkoesque, Kandinskian
transcendent, orgiastic experience,
A pure LSD trip or a mystic vision
of Huxley—
This is no Jackson Pollock, that’s
for sure,
A Marxist allegory of workers
in hard hats,
awaiting the arrival of spring,
A New Age consciousness testimony
to the presence of extraterrestrials,
A Hindu ladder of incarnation
and Buddhist manifestation
of unity of all life—
A Wheel of Karma,
for God’s sake,
You’ve all missed the point—
can’t you see all those naked women
on the backs of elephants?
A typical example of surrealist Dadaist
attack on rationality,
There are even street lights
over the ocean,
A crucifixion of a Frog,
a hippie with a bandanna
and a Coca-Cola bottle,
A lady with a missing tooth,
A professor who looks like
Charles Manson,
But beyond that there is nothing
much there—
Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark:
Ha! Ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha!
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha...


   August 24, 1987
--Alexander Shaumyan