I spent part of my morning at a flea market today. I happened to come across a number of old LIFE magazines from the late fifties and early sixties as well as copies of THE SATURDAY EVENING POST dating from the same period. I was lucky enough to find two POSTs with Bradbury stories: "The Beggar on the Dublin Bridge" and "The Happiness Machine." (A third POST contained a Vonnegut story.) But the most intriguing item I saw at the show had to be the strange painting of a ramshackle carousel set against a windswept, autumnal landscape under stormy skies. The carousel horses jutted at odd angles as the wood rotted out beneath them. The horses' mouths were still contorted in pain or anguish or fear. Behind the merry-go-round, a fierce wind appeared to tear at the upper reaches of a tree. As soon as my eyes alighted on this image, I thought of Bradbury's fiction. A middle-aged couple drifted into the booth and scoffed at the painting. I continued to stare at it, wishing I could afford the asking price. It was a print, not an original, and it was signed by a Robert Addison; the date given was "55." I have never heard of the artist. A Google search proved fruitless. I tried eBay just to see if anyone had something by Addison for sale and found another painting of a carousel, but this one depicted a winter scene. Who is this man?
The paintings differ in their subject matter and use of color but share a luridness that I believe makes them the work of the same man. In "Maxwell Street," it is the artist's use of yellow and green that gives the piece a slightly disjointed, bizarre feel. In the painting of the carousel, the colors are muted, wan, but the subject matter is overtly fantastic. And, obviously, there is the same name on both paintings, and both date from the same time period.
Below is an image of The Carousel painted by Robert Addison in 1955. Mr. Addison painted Maxwell street in 1948 when he was a student at The Art Institiute. You can see much of Mr. Addiosn's at www.robertaddisongallery.com.
Hi MDS, and welcome. That is one very Bradburyesque image! Thanks for posting it. Looking through the Addison website, I see lots of other Bradburyesque images. Not an artist I'd seen before.
Thanks Phil. Robert Addison had a talent for adding a sense of melancholy and mystery to the everyday settings of his paintings. His rendering of the carousel pieces are definitely reminiscent of Mr. Bradbury's work but so are many of the abandoned structures and even the neighborhod scenes he depicted.
The_Carousel_1955.jpg (112 Kb, 17 downloads) The Carousel