Panel from Circus Wagon c. 1938

Frank M. Keane made this panel for a circus wagon out of gouache and graphite. It feels like a plan of some sort, a design—I can imagine him dreaming up how this thing would look when it was built big and rolling down the road. There’s a lot going on here, right? With the flag in the background and these classical figures, all that gold leaf, he must have been thinking about how to make something super flashy. This was a commercial enterprise after all! I can feel Keane trying to figure out how to make the painting pop. I like the checkerboard effect, with the flag, the ornamentation, and those statues of these... are they American Indians? Interesting. Anyway, it’s like he’s trying to jam everything together, all these different elements to make one big statement. I think it works, somehow. It has this real homespun feel, with the hand-painted letters at the bottom and those cherubic figures at the top. Painters have always cribbed from each other, it is like one big conversation through time.