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Gladys Atlas haunts me still
Mar. 20th, 2022 03:02 pm"The Man Has Left the Moon Tonight. He Trains Some Beams upon the Face of Gladys Atlas in these Woods; Heads of Cabbage - Heads of State" - Donald Roller Wilson, 1974; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of Senator and Mrs. Dale Bumpers, 1976
When I was of a certain age in childhood -- twelve? fourteen? wait, I can check this....
Ah. I was sixteen, because it probably happened on the weekend of July 15-17, 1977. How do I know? Because we had left NYC for DC on the afternoon of Wednesday the 13th of July, a few hours before what turned out to be the New York City Blackout of 1977, and our DC relatives and my parents discussed that bit of news over the next few days, as we went on the round of cultural experiences that our DC relatives had assembled for us.
One of those experiences was a visit to the Hirshhorn Museum, which was a fascinating hoop of a building, a doughnut, a tire crafted in concrete and metal and glass rather than in rubber. I saw several pieces of art there which changed my life, and one of them was a truly weird yet realistic painting called "The Man Has Left the Moon Tonight. He Trains Some Beams upon the Face of Gladys Atlas in these Woods; Heads of Cabbage - Heads of State" by artist Donald Roller Wilson. To my inexpressible delight, the link informs me that he is of the school of American Eccentrics.
My parents had to come back to the painting to get me so we could move on through the museum.
Twice.
Anyhow, that painting is somehow connected to how I love speculative fiction, and what I was starting to understand about what art could be for, and so on. I probably haven't made all that much sense in talking about it here, but that's maybe appropriate, because it was an incomprehensible illumination for me at the time. And Gladys Atlas still haunts me. So here is the link at the Smithsonian website: https://collections.si.edu/search/record/hmsg_76.91
Is an artwork still haunting you?
When I was of a certain age in childhood -- twelve? fourteen? wait, I can check this....
Ah. I was sixteen, because it probably happened on the weekend of July 15-17, 1977. How do I know? Because we had left NYC for DC on the afternoon of Wednesday the 13th of July, a few hours before what turned out to be the New York City Blackout of 1977, and our DC relatives and my parents discussed that bit of news over the next few days, as we went on the round of cultural experiences that our DC relatives had assembled for us.
One of those experiences was a visit to the Hirshhorn Museum, which was a fascinating hoop of a building, a doughnut, a tire crafted in concrete and metal and glass rather than in rubber. I saw several pieces of art there which changed my life, and one of them was a truly weird yet realistic painting called "The Man Has Left the Moon Tonight. He Trains Some Beams upon the Face of Gladys Atlas in these Woods; Heads of Cabbage - Heads of State" by artist Donald Roller Wilson. To my inexpressible delight, the link informs me that he is of the school of American Eccentrics.
My parents had to come back to the painting to get me so we could move on through the museum.
Twice.
Anyhow, that painting is somehow connected to how I love speculative fiction, and what I was starting to understand about what art could be for, and so on. I probably haven't made all that much sense in talking about it here, but that's maybe appropriate, because it was an incomprehensible illumination for me at the time. And Gladys Atlas still haunts me. So here is the link at the Smithsonian website: https://collections.si.edu/search/record/hmsg_76.91
Is an artwork still haunting you?
