This is another older painting (someday soon I'll have newer stuff), from the 1990's. The francs were usable cash at the time. It is in the tradition of old trompe l'oeil collections of scraps, like Peto's and Harnett's letter racks, or bulletin board paintings. You put into them whatever you want, so they are sometimes called a
quod libet. The theme of this one is of the foolishness of desires and takes its title (The Temptation of St. Anthony) from the paperback book in the lower left, Flaubert's
Tentation de Saint'Antoine. So in a way it is also a Vanitas. But when I started it began with the wish that I could paint or have painted the Temptation of St. Anthony panel of the Issenheim Altarpiece. There it was on the cover of the book, so I built a still life around it. Some of the things on the table top are real things and some are painted illusions. In person you can't tell which is real and which painted, but in a photo I think it starts to be more obvious. The surface itself is an old drafting table top complete with cuts, scratches, and paint spots from decades of real use. The table fell apart so I used the top as a painting panel.
Flaubert wrote the book because he was torn inside from two sets of values. Part of him loved art and beautiful things and other such worldly pleasures. Part of him had a rather Puritan urge to forgo all the foolishness of desires and live a life of what we would call voluntary simplicity. These two characters fight also within me, and probably in a good number of us.
The painting won best in show in a regional juried exhibit, and is now owned by the Macon Museum of Art and Science. They had a conservator treat the match heads, lest a mouse scratch them and set the museum on fire. They aren't a museum that exhibits their own collection permanently, but every once in a while it gets selected to join other works in a curated exhibit. I can't resist saying that one time it was in with a show that included some quite famous names. See what I mean about temptation?
No, you can't see any credit card numbers on it.
