Elements for Meatball Curtain 1970

Oyvind Fahlstrom made this work, *Elements for Meatball Curtain*, but when I look at it, I can't help but think, what’s a meatball curtain anyway? The piece is a riot of color and form – it feels like a sketchbook page exploding with ideas. The flatness of the colors and the clear, deliberate outlines give it a playful, almost cartoonish quality, but there is also a kind of earnestness in the way each figure is rendered. Take that blue blob monster holding an orange sun. The color is so flat, so blue, like a kid’s drawing, but it has an amazing presence. And the way the different elements are arranged, floating freely on the blank page, suggests a mind at work, trying to make sense of a world filled with strange and wonderful things. It reminds me of some of Red Grooms' cityscapes, but in two dimensions, or maybe like a mood board for Terry Gilliam's animation. Ultimately, it's up to you, the viewer, to pull the strings and invent what this curtain might be.