And if You Gaze Into the Garbage Pail, the Garbage Pail Also Gazes Into You: The Library of Disposable Art, #6

By David Macpherson

What secrets will you find if you stare at a piece of art for three hours?

 

Will truth open itself to you just by gazing at something long enough? The Three Hour Gaze was first suggested by a professor of art history from Harvard.

 

With that in mind, David Macpherson decided to try this exercise in art appreciation by staring at a newly opened pack of Garbage Pail Kids Stickers for three hours and dictate the experience.

 

Garbage Pail Kids are the notorious sticker series that scandalized parents and entertained kids back in the 1980s. Staring at five of these stickers should allow secrets to be revealed. Or it just make David lose his mind slightly. He used a pack from 1986 and stared and stared.

 

In addition to the transcript of the Three Hour Gaze, David goes into the history and legacy of the Garbage Pail Kids and trading cards in general. Join David for the long stare. It is a fascinating examination of art and pop culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Macpherson
• Release date: Nov 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393212508

Book preview

Before the Gaze

The filmmaker and novelist, Ruth Ozeki, wrote a short book called The Face: A Time Code. In it she writes about her life and her perception of self while staring at her face in the mirror for three hours. That’s the thing. Three hours to truly look and be aware of every part of her face. She noticed the effects of aging. She recognized her father in parts of her face and was happy for the reunion. She kept on looking and meditating on the moment. She saw it as a part of her zen practice. She quoted zen buddhists who stare at dead bodies for a long time to understand the nature of mortality.

Why three hours? She took that idea from a college homework assignment. She read about an assignment given to students of art history by Professor Jennifer L. Roberts. Professor Roberts had her students pick a painting in a museum or gallery and intently look at it for three hours. The student would take notes of their experience and many of them found things in the painting that they would never have realized without such a prolonged viewing.

This is bonkers. 

Professor Roberts is not dissuaded from her students, or by me, shouting raspberries in the back. She is sure that a long study of art is not only helpful, but necessary. She writes, The art historian David Joselit has described paintings as deep reservoirs of temporal experience—time batteries—exorbitant stockpiles of experience and information. I would suggest that the same holds true for anything a student might want to study at Harvard University—a star, a sonnet, a chromosome. There are infinite depths of information at any point in the students’ education. They just need to take the time to unlock that wealth.

This makes some kind of sense. But in her article, she used as an example staring at a work by John Singleton Copely, who worked in England and America in the 18th century. The painting was entitled Boy with Squirrel. She was able to find much about history and art in the work. Copley is an important artist of the time. HIs work has value. They are large and are seen in many museums. It might be worth staring at a painting by him for three hours.

And Ruth Ozeki can give value to her own face. It is the portrait she carries around with her for her entire life. There can be a sense of vanity to stare at your own face for three hours. The book does show that it is difficult to look for that long and not find things of interest. Things that might not want to be seen. It is a very simple form of self-examination.

But what if you are one of Professor Robert’s students at Harvard and pick your painting poorly? What if you decide to stare at a piece of crap? Dogs playing poker? Elvis on black velvet? What if you decide that Thomas Kincaide is the guy for your three hour stare?

While contemplating this, I thought of what type of art we had as kids. There were comics. There were the Mad Magazine paperback collections. There were posters of Farah Fawcett resplendent in a red bathing suit. And there were stickers. We put stickers on our school notebooks. When I was young, we bought Wacky Packages and put the stickers everywhere. We didn’t know half of the products that were being satirized, we just knew that something was being ridiculed. There was something being attacked and we were allowed to display it anywhere we might choose, or at least get away with.

The big one, the one that really rocked the boat was the Garbage Pail Kids. They made fun of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. I was fifteen when Garbage Pail Kids came out, so I was out of the demographic. But I noticed them. I was aware of how gross they were and that parents were disgusted by them. They were kids with bodily functions on full display. When I saw them, they reminded me of illustrations from Mad Magazine.

If I wanted to upset my parents, I didn’t need a series of stickers. I had loud pretentious music to play. I had gory horror movies to watch. Though, I didn’t let my grown-ups know that a lot of the music was repetitive, and the films were more boring than horrifying. I kept that little bit of truth for myself.

As I thought of it, Garbage Pail Kids seemed to be the perfect vehicle for this Long Gaze. It was art that was made for the popular market. It was not made for walls. But the thing is, they were on walls. And in the inside of lockers. And on Biology textbooks. They were placed by kids feeling like they were curators facing a blank wall.

On doing the research to start this exercise. I have been surprised that many people call the Garbage Pail Kids cards. The term used is non-sports cards which is a ridiculous moniker. That means that the world of bubble gum cards are divided into two camps. Those that feature baseball or hockey or basketball. And then there is everything else. Everything else. They are defined by what they are not. Star Wars does not feature any sporting activity, so those cards are non-sports.

The Pulitzer Prize winning historian, Barbara Tuchman, complained about her books being considered non-fiction. She hated that term. She found it nebulous and imprecise. With that designation, everything other than a made-up tale is non-fiction. Non-fiction is seen by what it is not.

And Garbage Pail Kids are also thought of as something they are not. They are not cards. They are stickers. The front image can be removed from a cardboard backing and placed somewhere. They can be put in a place of honor. It can be adhered into a secret place, a place that acknowledges a sense of shame.

Groupings can be created. It is like a 19th century painting salon. People would come and stare at the wall of paintings. So many paintings crowded on the wall that