Outsider artist painting: James Dean features James Dean with Liz Taylo - by Harriet Young
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  • James Dean

  • 1992
  • Acrylic Gel
  • 26" x 32"

 
Harriet loved dots. James Dean is about as dotty as she ever got.

Dotty or not, Harriet is having a very bad day here. With her troubled schizophrenic youngest son, Ira, permanently institutionalized at the notorious Byberry State Mental Hospital nearby, and her older son Jack now estranged from her, she probably had a lot of them.

Pop artist Harriet Young hides the phrase fuck you in her painting of James Dean
(hey, we're just the messenger).

For anyone interested, you should be able to locate this bit of nefarious subterfuge via the enlargement feature. If you still can’t find it, consider cutting your losses and losing yourself in some of the most intense, over-the-top detail work she ever did.

For something a little easier to locate, check out the Grand Tetons, complete with pasties that she threw in for good measure.

Against this female-centric backdrop it’s hardly gratuitous to point out that Dean, who died in 1955 at the age of 24, played both sides of the street. This was common knowledge in Hollywood, and Harriet drops the hint in her depiction of him.