Artweek, Celebrating 30 Years – November 30, 1999
Review of "The Darker Side of Playland: Childhood Imagery from teh Locan Collection" at SFMOMA
'THE DARKER SIDE OF PLAYLAND: CHILDHOOD IMAGERY FROM THE LOGAN COLLECTION' AT SFMOMA
San Fracisco Museum of Modern Art
In 'The Darker Side of Playland', the endearing cuteness of beloved toys and cartoon characters turns menacing and monstrous.
Much of the work has the quality of childhood nightmares. In those dreams, long before any adult understanding of the specific pains and evils that live holds, the familiar and comforting objects and images of a child's world are rent with something untoward.
San Fracisco Museum of Modern Art
In 'The Darker Side of Playland', the endearing cuteness of beloved toys and cartoon characters turns menacing and monstrous.
Much of the work has the quality of childhood nightmares. In those dreams, long before any adult understanding of the specific pains and evils that live holds, the familiar and comforting objects and images of a child's world are rent with something untoward.
For children, not understanding what really to be afraid of, these dreams portend some pain and disturbance lurking into the landscape.
Perhaps nothing in the exhibition exemplifies this better than Gottfried Helnwein's 'Mickey'.
His portrait of Disney's favotite mouse occupies an entire wall of the gallery;
rendered from an oblique angle, his jaunty, ingenuous visage looks somehow sneaky and suspicious.
His broad smile, encasing a row of gleaming teeth, seems more a snarl or leer.
This is Mickey as Mr. Hyde, his hidden other self now disturbingly revealed.
Helnwein's Mickey is painted in shades of gray,
as if pictured on an old black-and-white TV set. We are meant to be transported to the flickering edges of our own childhood memories in a time imaginably more blameless, crime-less and guiltless.
But Mickey's terrifying demeanor hints of things to come. ...
COMIC RELIEF
Negotiating Identity for a new Generation
museums-tour starting at the Pittsburg Museum of Art
Pittsburg Museum of Art
The Carnegy - Mellon Foundation
Gottfried Helnwein in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
2000 Artweek Alicia Miller