Robert Arneson "California Artist"

 

I like this work by Robert Arneson because he depicted himself in an unflattering way. It is a risk to present oneself as socially undesirable, and Robert Arneson took this risk. Arneson completed this ceramic sculpture in 1982 to show the physical representation of what a New York critic had described him as. The critic said he was the "impoverished sensibility of the provincial cultural life of California" and depicted Arneson's work as the "mark of a mind that is too easily pleased with his own jokes." In response to these comments he made this sculpture. I think this courageous and funny.