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Anthony Mastromatteo"Lovely Mary Jane" Post-Modern painting inspired by The Bluest Eye, Toni Morison2023
2023
About the Item
"Lovely Mary Jane" is a Post-Modern painting inspired by The Bluest Eye by Toni Morison.
Lovely Mary Jane is a candy wrapper, taped to a blue wall. It’s trash, glorified. But this is not a political statement about commercialism or recycling. This painting was inspired by one of the top 10 banned books across the country, Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” which is about a young black girl who wishes she had blue eyes, an envy shaped from her love of her favorite candy, Mary Jane. It’s a heartbreaking notion caused by an ideal of beauty perpetuated by a marketing campaign for a sweet treat. Classical painting also hails a certain ideal of beauty… and one wouldn’t usually find something as insignificant as a candy wrapper as the focal point of their pièce de résistance. However, Mastromatteo is asking us to see that here is power in idealization, especially in something so seemingly throwaway. He’s prodding us to be more aware…to make people aware of the significance of the seemingly insignificant. The one power an artist possesses is that of forcing the viewer to look at something of his choosing…and in this case he’s asking us to look at something that may be garbage. Consider Maurizio Cattelan, whom in 2019 taped a banana to the wall with duct tape, and it later sold for $120,000…art forces the viewer to consider something that everyone is telling you to look at. Mastromatteo’s candy wrapper is taped up to the wall in a similar fashion as Cattelan’s banana…if we look long enough at the tape, we’ll notice it’s resemblance to the “not-equal” sign…bringing our thoughts back to Morrison’s distressed little girl. Another fun point to mention, Morrison also hails from Ohio’s Cleveland.
- Creator:Anthony Mastromatteo (1970, American)
- Creation Year:2023
- Dimensions:Height: 12 in (30.48 cm)Width: 16 in (40.64 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Sag Harbor, NY
- Reference Number:
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