Stump Speaker Bank c. 1938

This is Florian Rokita's "Stump Speaker Bank," made with who-knows-what, at who-knows-when! I'm imagining Rokita, hunched over, squinting, building up these thin layers of color, carefully delineating the typography on the side of the bank. Look how he's used the hatching marks to create depth on the money bag. It’s a slow, deliberate process. How often do we actually see the object of the labor right in front of us like this? There’s so much humor and, well, a little bit of something else too. I mean, just look at the wide, almost crazed eyes! You can feel the artist's hand, trying to capture the realness of the figure, but also its artificiality as a manufactured object. Painters are always in dialogue with each other, even across time. It reminds me of Red Grooms's crazy, satirical cardboard constructions of urban life. It's this tradition of the artist as trickster, showing us the world through a funhouse mirror.