I’d pay as much as ten whole American dollars at the thrift store to have that in the bin in my basement labeled “Halloween Party.”
It does suggest to me some anticipatorily-grieving parent who wanted to capture a good likeness of their child before he succumbed to consumption or whatever the popular child-ravaging plague was that year, Then said parent walks into the studio as the painting is in progress and says, “okay, yeah, but why does it look like my kid wants to bite me? That’s terrifying.” The artist steps back six, eight feet, squints slightly, and breathes “fuck.”
