Domestic Supply :verified: on Nostr: In the hands of a lesser artist, I would assume that my reaction to that and other ...

In the hands of a lesser artist, I would assume that my reaction to that and other Kelly Freas works is to a message he didn't explicitly intend. In fact, there's a good chance that he didn't intend my interpretation. Yet, I can imagine the man I once met sitting with a quiet smile, neither confirming nor denying it. Whether that would be from simple bemusement at over-analysis or happiness that his audience found something new.

That style, in other media of the time always strikes me as a faux-sophistication, manufactured by advertising. A presentation of a post-war society as something it was told it should aspire to, with houses in the suburbs, a perfectly manicured lawn, the right clothes, and a cocktail. Freas transplanted the style, and the optimism, while replacing that attempt at sophistication with the satisfaction of achievement in this case, or an impish, knowing irony in others.

The sharp, angular lines of this style have always felt to me like artists using the style of blueprints and technical drawings, absent the function embodied in them. In this piece, I can almost see instead, Freas reaching out not only to capture a moment, but to be the only sort of artist who might be present in it. Perhaps a draftsman who has an artistic flair, using the skills he knows professionally to record a scene in the only vocabulary he has for it.