Santiago Rusiñol, Spanish
“Okay, Now Let’s Get a Shot Where You’re a Creepy Marionette Trying To Look Casual,” 1894
Oil on canvas
Follow That Is Priceless on Social Media and GoComics (the Link button):
Click to Follow This Blog or Share This Masterpiece:
Info, or perhaps links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here, here, here, here, here, here (archived if necessary, text Google translated), here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated Catalan Wikipedia page has more).
/// In a world of backbiting and sin,
those who don’t toughen up never win.
While she laughs to distract us,
we are watching her practice
how to deal with a fist to the chin.
/// Here Luisa, the Laughing Girl, stoops;
her left hand o’er the mantelpiece droops.
She looks slightly demented.
It’s too bad he prevented
her from wearing a neckline that scoops.
/// Though her pose says, “I’m having a ball,”
the girl’s eyes aren’t smiling at all.
She bends low, but stares straight
at the painter, her mate,
who is seated (or not very tall).
/// The spine “doctor” she saw was a whelp
who prescribed a warm poultice of kelp.
Though she posed for his ad,
her forced grin’s really sad,
and this painting is her cry for help.
/// The expression she tried for is “wacky,”
but Luisa comes off kinda tacky.
Her smile’s clearly fake.
(This is was all a mistake.
Better off to smoke hemp-laced “tobacky.”)
/// She is trying to be a “good sport”
and to pose as he asked. To contort
her spine hurts her. In short,
without proper support,
it’s to laudanum she will resort.