A Seat at the Table: Pinocchio Comes Alive

My next painting for my upcoming group exhibition, "A Seat at the Table: The Chair as Aesthetic and Social Construct," was based upon an actual scene at an Italian restaurant not far from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The name of the restaurant now escapes me (I don’t have my husband’s acumen for cognitive retention of personal culinary history - he remembers the time and location of just about every place he has eaten!), but the atmosphere was memorable. There was a wooden flag embellishing what looked like an enormous old fireplace. It took me a moment to recognize this as an American flag, as the stripes were blue and white instead of red and white. High above the flag, resting upon the mantel, or perhaps a very fancy wainscotting, was a wooden pinocchio. He cut a fine figure with his long nose and his painted eyes. He was dressed in red shoes and a blue shirt with red buttons. On his head he sported a tall, white pointed cap.

I was instantly taken by this wooden pinocchio, so while waiting for my meal, pulled out my sketchbook and made a quick drawing of him. The marionette seemed to have some age, which gave him some added quaintness. A quick Google search pointed to him being perhaps a vintage item from the 1960's.

As I worked with pencil on paper I wondered if there was a sardonic statement being made with this long nosed Pinocchio hovering over a blue American flag. I noticed that Pinocchio was dressed in red, white and blue as well. Certainly contemporary politics and media wars would make this juxtaposition rather apt, although not knowing the restaurant manager’s inclinations it would be difficult to ascertain whether right or left wing was being satirized here.

It took me a few months to finally paint this scene -I first saw it in August of this year. Apart from the delays of having other work ahead of this one in my studio pipeline, I just could not settle on whether this should be a drawing or a painting. I finally settled on a compromise by making a mostly black and white painting with black outlines. I thought of the muted tones and black outlines in the paintings of my former teacher, Leland Bell here.

While finishing up this painting, I listened to Bach Cantatas on Youtube. Perhaps fitting for a painting about duplicities, the Youtube cantatas were frequently interrupted by annoying ads from Epoch News. I guess their ad space that was revoked from social media platforms was reallocated to Youtube. It almost made me want to paint Pinocchio’s smile upside down.

I kept Pinocchio’s silly grin, however, but did change his eye, albeit partly by an uncoordinated accident. The eye, originally looking blankly forward, now cast a sidelong, furtive glance at the viewer. It was amazing how this tiny detail changed the entire tone of the work. Originally the painting was about chicanery - a nation fooled. With that eye upon the viewer, Pinocchio seems to now say, "And you as well, yes?"

The tall chair seen here was adapted from a work of art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's furniture collection: The chair designed by Charles Rohlfs  (1853 - 1936) and Anna Katherine Green (1846 - 1935).  According to the museum sign, the pierced decoration on the tall back of the chair represents the cellular structure of oak - a bit of truth at the core of an otherwise duplicitous painting.