In 2004 I painted a series of images of Judy Garland. As a “younger” (?!!) gay man, I’m impressed by how many gay men over fifty are infatuated with the character and persona of Judy Garland, and how many gay men younger than fifty are terrified by her. Like so many “reporters” investigating cults, I found myself “becoming a member” by obsessively playing her music and movies, and really channeling her energy. She was a GENIUS in her ability to convey emotion and nuance in her music—like Elvis or a method actor, she was able to communicate in song and acting a breadth of REALNESS filtered through the iconographic allegorical language of the lyrics and lines that she was given. This is what I am trying to do through my painting of an appropriated image …
Judy was a super-strong woman who was stigmatized by the misogyny of her time, in addition to being an artist whose creativity continually struggled to prevail over the commodity capital culture that exploited her. I feel as tragic a figure as she has come to symbolize, it is her empowered struggle (and many successes) that made her such a giant with the gay (and larger) community that adored her, and her unbridled talent.
In this image, she of course is Dorothy, who was all about the other side of the rainbow and finding Oz. As Oz is commonly perceived to be a positive allegory regarding capitalism, I feel in this painting she’s looking for the Emerald City, only to be looking at its devastation in the Kong painting across the way. Contained in the painting itself is her iconic persona, and as I was painting her I was alternately listening to the entirety of her catalog and the plight of Cindy Sheehan on Air America radio as she was camped out in front of Bush’s “ranch” wanting to interview him to ask him why he created his war that her son was murdered in …
After painting this, I realized Dorothy herself looked a bit like a doll, with the ribbon on her left looking much like one of the keys used to turn a toy on so it will move and sing. I wonder how Judy might have gotten tired singing her signature song, that, like so much with language, became the performative theme of her life…