Frank Holiday’s piece “The Lingerie Family” intrigued me the most out of any painting in the exhibit. Its disorienting swirl of color and form coupled with unsettling imagery to create an unsettling mood. It seems to be very ominous, with the depictions of a bleeding finger, a mysterious hand winding up the central figure like a toy, and the uncanny appearances of the subjects. The people are disproportional, and some of the figures in the background resemble skeletons and appear to be closer to creatures than humans. But most disconcerting of all is the digital eye blinking and twitching, appearing to take in the room around it and its visitors. It seems to me that the family is the three characters in the foreground; the man with the beard is the father, the woman in lingerie is the mother, and the person in the onesie is the child. These outlandish costumes, gaudy figures, and bright colors reflect the brazen, shameless atmosphere of Club 57, which served as an accommodating space for people who wanted to push the limits of what society considered proper dress and behavior. This painting also shows how film and fine art converged during the time period it was created, the 1970s-1980s. The static canvas painting is combined with a video recording and contrasts the abstract, exaggerated forms with an image of a real eye. Along the walls of the exhibit were several other paintings, and in the very center a film was being played on a screen. Holiday’s piece was placed both near the paintings and the film, so their convergence is made even more obvious. I also found the distinction between the foreground and the background to be interesting; the artist added blue to the figures in the back so they would fade behind the three central characters. To make them stand out, he used bright colors that were not distributed to the background characters.
