I just noticed a painting left in the trash room. I used to have a thing for thrown-away paintings, I used to collect them, as space and priorites permitted.¹ Some I would hang up, some would never make it out from behind my bookcase. Most were the only thing I left on the walls when it came time to pack up and move to another apartment, but by then I had usually had my fill.

I left this latest thrown-away painting where it lie though. It would have had to have been truly exceptional for me to justify picking it from the trash at my age, and it wasn't. Our tolerance for irony lowers, I'm finding out, and this thrown-away painting was nothing I hadn't picked from the trash before.

It was of the Abstract Expressionist genre.² Rendered in a palette heavily favoring red and muted purples. Mauves, I guess. And though every time I say something like this it gets me yelled at,³ I digress and assume that Untitled (The Thrown-Away Painting Currently In The Trash Room) was painted by a female. In fact, I've assumed that of many of the thrown-away paintings I've found. A lot of them have shared in their compositions, their abstractions, a certain womanliness--not necessarily feministness, not necessarily bows and kittensness, but certainly not manliness, or even gay manliness.⁴ I digress further and assume that the thrown-away painting currently in the trash room, what with the red and mauves, is a comment on menstruation. A bold comment in fact, given its large size.⁵

Or maybe those are the only colors she had to work with.⁶

Either way, in a matter of hours, the murdered creation of one of my articidal neighbors will be taken away with the trash and I will have done nothing to stop it. Not sure how I feel about that.


¹Though, of course, I can never know for sure, I'm assuming most of the paintings I have found in the trash have been thrown-away by their respective artists, and here's why: A lot seem to be unfinished, past the point where scraping clean the canvas and starting over is an option, but rarely being branded with their artist's signature. Some have still been wet. Also, I do not go looking for this particular type of garbage. The paintings I have found were not buried in the trash, but rather almost on display. There for the taking. I've attributed this to the suffering that pervades amateur Expressionistic painting. Many of the artists, I'm sure, toss their paintings in the trash with as much attention to angst as they began them, perhaps even picking them out and tossing them in again, so that they land just right. And then slowly walking away from the scene. I've always assumed if someone were to throw away a painting they received as a gift, the guilt would weigh heavily on them as they did so, and the painting would be sufficiently buried.

²Most thrown-away paintings I've found have been Abstract Expressionist ones. I only ever found three that were not: A paint-by-number found on the Upper East Side. A botched self-portrait that was perhaps on its way to becoming abstracted when the artist, a student at the University of Cincinnati, just said, "Fuck it." The word JESUS in neon pink fingerpaint, thrown-away out front a Catholic elementary school.

³Which is way unfair.

⁴To try and compare them to an artist I know would be difficult as I have neither met nor learned of anyone in my art history classes that they could be compared to. There might be some Outsiders out there that bear resemblance, but I'm not familiar enough with Outsider Art to know who or whom that might be.

⁵An estimated 30" x 40" rolled canvas.

⁶On his death bed, Picasso confessed that his infamous Blue Period was brought on by a drop in the price of blue pigment.<sup>7

7</sup>That's a lie. Picasso is not the animation industry.




Tom, March 25, 2006, 10:42 PM          (link here)