Evidently Gibbons did not post his missive because it is now framed and on view in a delightfully amusing exhibition called "Pull My Finger" at Allston Skirt Gallery . Curated by Boston artist Joe Zane , who, along with Gibbons, teaches art at MIT, the show offers a fine opportunity to ponder just what it is about hu morous contemporary art that makes it so funny.
Although its title could lead you to assume otherwise, the exhibition is not an exercise in juvenile scatology. It does feature a Pop-style text painting by Carl Ostendarp in which exuberant cartoon letters spell "iffffpfp ," which might be read as mimicking the sound that would customarily punctuate the old "pull my finger" routine. But Ostendarp's painting, in rich hues of cherry red and bubblegum pink, has a formal elegance and sensuous craft that belies its dumb surface impact.
The show's spirit inclines less toward slapstick than a kind of hyper-sophisticated goofiness. In a four-part work by David Robbins , a publicity headshot of Jerry Lewis -- drinking from a mug with his own caricatured mug printed on it -- is flanked by framed pieces of black paper. The work's title, "The Sphinx," links two kinds of enigma: that of the comedian whose public persona hides his true inner self (assuming there is one), and that of the Minimalist monochrome, whose blankness might or might not conceal some inner meaning.
Tony Matelli's painted bronze, doll-size "Vegetable Man" also productively meditates on art and kitsch. The figure of a man composed of asparagus, string beans, a carrot, a cucumber, and other vegetables, it resembles a novelty item you could buy at a county fair. But it also alludes to the 16th-century artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo , who created fantastic portraits of people composed of vegetables, and it mischievously comments on the interplay of illusionism, abstraction, and physical materials that has animated modern art from Manet to Koons.
