New words: Big. Vagina. Scared.

May 14, 2014 10:08 AM

Peter sees the painting. "I could paint that", says Peter. "But you didn't", says Mummy. (mildly NSFW). In We go to the gallery, by British artist Miriam Elia, the titular characters of the Peter and Jane Keyword Readers of the 1960s visit a museum of contemporary art. Penguin, the publisher of the original books, is not amused, but the feathered creature may be actually dead in the water.
posted by elgilito (9 comments total)

I think Mummy's glosses of a lot of these works are pretty facile, but this is still pretty fantastic.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:24 AM on May 14, 2014

I'm just glad the word vagina is involved but the Peter in question's last name isn't Griffin.
posted by JHarris at 11:45 AM on May 14, 2014

Lovely stuff. Cheers
posted by dng at 2:41 PM on May 14, 2014

This looks great.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 3:16 PM on May 14, 2014

Am I right in thinking that the illustrations are a collage of characters scanned from actual Peter and Jane books and new backgrounds? Looking at the larger images, there are some really obvious Photoshop art filters. It's a shame, as the original pictures weren't anything to write home about - I think they were done with reference photos and an overhead projector - and were possibly done in a hurry by drunks.
posted by Grangousier at 3:52 PM on May 14, 2014

I showed this to a friend just now and he replied:

"There is [something] in the room because god is dead" was literally the argument of my hons thesis.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 3:54 PM on May 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

In the guardian interview, she says she learned to paint in the style of the originals, from her own collection of Peter and Jane books. The original pictures have a very distinctive house style to them, partly the font and page layout, but also that stiff flatness to the paintings. I remember as a little kid thinking that they were like holiday snapshots that had been painted exactly.
posted by viggorlijah at 7:09 PM on May 14, 2014

The hell are those clowns at right doing? The one sure doesn't think learning is fun. And why isn't the kid in the middle lighting his Molotov cocktails before throwing them? I'm glad I didn't have to rely on this series for my education.

Does parody count as a legal defense here?
posted by bryon at 9:26 PM on May 14, 2014

I showed this to a friend just now and he replied:
"There is [something] in the room because god is dead" was literally the argument of my hons thesis.

Well, sure, don't we all have a friend who works as a barrista and hates the world?
posted by aught at 6:00 AM on May 15, 2014