Cul De Sac Party 

Curator: Looking at Carrie Graber's "Cul De Sac Party," you are immediately hit by the nostalgic glaze of Southern California modernism. What do you first make of it? Editor: That blue. It's impossibly vivid, the car looking freshly dipped in something cool. There is a studied quiet, and it makes me strangely anxious. It's beautiful, and a bit off-putting. Curator: I see that. There's something intentionally sterile about the landscape, and it plays directly into an assessment of post-war social politics. Look closely; these modern forms signify more than architectural trends; they define an era. Graber gives us not only a modern figuration, but also a landscape. A figurative landscape in paint, acrylic to be exact. Editor: That's true, the mid-century aesthetic feels meticulously constructed. Like a set piece rather than a reality. A staged commentary about belonging. But is there also some subtle humor? That car has a kind of cartoonish grandiosity to it, doesn't it? I picture someone cruising down the main street of Disneyland. Curator: I'd call it ironic, maybe even verging on sardonic. The cars and manicured lawns echo consumerist fantasies. Each element seems overly stylized. The color palette is just as heightened as the theme: everything clashes pleasantly. Think of "The Feminine Mystique", Betty Friedan, a critique of suburban domesticity published in the early sixties: these cars may bring women into the space of masculine work. And I do find the cars alluring. Editor: There is also that hint of unease bubbling beneath the placid surface. A disquiet, perhaps of lurking obsolescence. Like all of these players in a paused vignette are facing their own eventual slide into decline. The women stand passively, poised to collect mail and gossip in color coordinated outfits and that behemoth of a blue gas-guzzler is itself the beginning of the end to an age of endless fossil fuels. But the painting offers so much at once, it is very dense! Curator: Precisely. So, while seemingly cheerful, "Cul De Sac Party" subtly critiques that very notion of idyllic suburban life through the lens of class, consumerism and gender. A great example of American genre painting in a modern light. Editor: Well, that definitely tempers the anxiety that this perfect facade projects! Now I am ready to embrace the dark underbelly of this suburban dream.