That is Priceless by Steve Melcher for October 03, 2022

Head of a Woman

Exhibit A presented by the artist’s estranged wife at their divorce trial.

hey Alfred, why the long face?

And now, on the planet Mon Calamari, Mona Lizarda

/// It stares out with huge anime eyes,

showing madness, or shock, or surprise,

and it seems to be half

human girl, half giraffe,

on a hillside ‘neath cloud-filled blue skies.

/// “It’s The Head of a Woman,” he swore.

With a nightmare look most would abhor.

Alfred’s painting was done

when he’s age sixty-one;

Maurer hanged himself at sixty-four.

But she has a great personality.

Well…um…er, the background is interesting.

Nah, I’ll skip the shave.

Franz Kafka’s first oil on canvas.

Next time, hold off on the peyote until AFTER you’re done with the painting.

The duchess-faced horse Dylan Thomas speaks of in A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

“Throwback Thursday, meet Throw UP Monday.”

Great. Not just nightmares, but scarred for life. Thanks, Alfred!

Had The Asteroid missed and gone on by

And the Dinosaurs lived on and bred,

What creature form would have evolved instead

To rule the world and the Ways of God to Justify?

.

Perhaps some species of Dinosauria

Would have emerged and dominated

So that mammals would not have propagated

And to their vain God sung In Excelsis Gloria.

.

What civil form would we in that world espy?

Would citizens saurian roam on roads?

Would they devise to transport merchant loads,

An economy based on wanted things to buy?

.

Are two appendages to walk upright

A standard form of their locomotion?

Would they have arms to swim the ocean?

At some stage advanced to achieve flight?

.

What of their philosophies and medicines?

What would one see in their eyes?

An intelligence both kind and wise,

A preternatural mind that knows not sins?

.

Or like Man, an urge to selfishness and greed?

So that the Earth would be liable to ravages

By creatures not too far above savages

A breed to war and cause other tribes to bleed?

.

Does the portrait merging Man and reptilian features:

Suggest the Earth evolves forms of bipedalism

And forward-facing, stereoscopic vision-ism

Inevitably in its sentient creatures?

She’s long necked, but not beer.

Jim Henson’s first production, for his parents after dinner one night.

Sadly, Vern’s portrait was a good likeness

If this is a woman’s head/

Where has evolution led ?/

And what’s coming next ?/

She’s completely de-sexed !

I’d opt for a robot instead !

“And that, boys and girls, completes our lesson on how excessive sunbathing can damage your skin.”

…so ET never did make it home, just got old here on Earth…..

If this is the way you see the world, you need some serious glasses. Or possibly LSD

“She walks in beauty like the night / of cloudless climes and starry skies…”

Nobody mentioned to Alfred that dropping “acid” did little to improve his artwork.

The product testers still weren’t sure if the beauty cream worked and debated on if they should apply it just one more time.

The neighbors were constantly complaining about the UFO traffic after word about his skill as a portraitist got around.

Great moment in strange portraiture.

For a moment, I thought I was looking at a Six Chicks comic.

From the Dr. Moreau collection.

Jar-Jar Binks

How hard could it be to get a camel to pose twice?

/// No one else understood how he felt.

She was sweet, (and he loved how she smelt).

He had made her, his bride,

but he took her outside,

and his chocolate girl started to melt.

/// They had love that no quarrels could smother.

It was like they were part of each other.

He showed great dedication

despite Mom’s desiccation.

Norman Bates was obsessed with his mother.

Never thought I’d see a painting that made Picasso look good.

Picasso meets Van Gogh.

Cecilia Jiminez got a whole traveling artist’s collection exhibit.

“Alfred Henry Maurer (April 21, 1868 – August 4, 1932) was an American modernist painter. He exhibited his work in avant-garde circles internationally and in New York City during the early twentieth century. …his work met with little critical or commercial success in his lifetime, and he died, a suicide, at the age of sixty-four.” — why am I not surprised?

Alfred hasn’t made the leap from Impressionism to Cubism yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Henry_Maurer

Pleased with the response to her “Monkey Christ,” Cecilia Giménez chose the Mona Lisa as her next restoration project.

Head of a Woman: 

Paste (including the quote marks) 

"Category:Alfred Henry Maurer" site=commons.wikimedia.org 

(syntax supported by the Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and Yandex search engines) in the browser address bar (or search for it using one of those search engines) and choose the first Category: found, and once there find the first Woman text string, and click its link for info and links that point to more info about this roughly jumbo envelope size, oil on fiberboard painting.

Again, a larger strip image is shown by (Ctrl- or right-) clicking the image in Mr. Melcher’s MASTERPIECE #3004 (October 3, 2022) blog entry, accessible by the Check out the blog! box after the last comment, and using the dropdown menu (even larger if you trim what’s after .png from the URL). I have added a comment there (awaiting Mr. Melcher’s approval) pointing to info about this artist I used to point to here. First work by this artist used here.

She sent him her head in a sack/

(She had severed the thing with one whack)/

She was glad that she had:/

(It was making her sad)/

So she asked that he not send it back…///

When he saw it, he had to agree/

But since he had got it “for free”/

He portrayed it somehow/

0n fiberboard- now/

Steve has shared it with you and with me !

“I am Groot!”

/// Greek and Roman mythology features

many odd and bizarre-looking creatures.

Here a young dryad stood,

(not much nymph, mostly wood).

She’s the spirit of old weathered bleachers.

Well … it started out as Great Moments In Phallic Portraiture …

Then I became … distracted.

While absence makes the heart grow fonder

absinthe makes the neck grow longer.

/// Did some flaw in the artist’s odd psyche

inspire eyelashes short, sparse, and spiky?

Did her Cupid’s-bow lips

come from peyote trips?

Well, whatever the cause… me no like-ee.

Is that a Hunter Biden painting?

Hmm, looks like a $900K Hunter Biden self-portrait