LAS VEGAS, May 22, 2001/ FW/ --- There are a variety of pictures of nude and not nude women in the exhibition. Some are fun, some are scary, some are sexy, some are scientific, a slight cacophony of images. Roy Lichenstein’s Ohhh, alright, 1964 is an example of pop artwork, as Martin imparts, “Girls with broken hearts, artists struggling for recognition, men in battle, women drowning in a swirling eddy of romance”.

I liked this interpretation, it had never occurred to me. This picture reminds me of Trudi, in L.A. Story; perfect makeup, ’30 minute lips’, sarcasm that keeps her man on edge, perfect, high maintenance.

Martin, who had the honor and pleasure of knowing Lichenstein mentions, “Once while we were standing in his studio, he turned a painting upside-down to show me that the drawing still held.”

The private collection has two sets of pictures with the title Two Women. David Parks’, Two Women, 1957, imprints on my mind as, Eve and Eve.

Martin’s take on this painting, “It took me a while to appreciate his work, which, like asparagus, I enjoy but can’t find the words to explain exactly why.” I found Willem de Kooning’s Two Women, 1952, pastel on paper, to be mysterious, splashes of emotion and color – Martian & robotic yet Isadora Duncan, yet Sonia Delaunay.

Martin, “When this drawing was made in 1952, he was in the midst of producing the most powerful works of his life: a series of paintings that reflect a man’s awestruck terror at the seductive, mothering power of the female.” My final impression was pastel fury.

Martin discusses Lucien Freud’s, Study of a Girl, 1966, “Freud’s crisp nudes are not the damsels, maidens and seductresses that the nineteenth century loved so dearly. These are naked people. Blunt and unflinching, Freud’s painting takes us starkly to the late twentieth century.”

My first emotion when I saw this painting was sadness; it makes me want to become a vegetarian. She is meat-like to me, a Hannibal Lecter woman ready for the rotisserie spit. Was Freud being painfully, truthfully Freudian?

I am Pollyanna and will not allow myself to see the Hannibal movies. I am an unabashed ‘chick flick’ collector. I think back to when I was sixteen in the Valley; My friend Fred (not Flicka) and I would sketch each other in charcoal on monster size pieces of paper. I wonder what the images look like today. My drawings of him were left behind, lost in a home in the forest outside Santa Cruz. Maybe he was better at archiving his artwork than I, and still has his drawings of me.

Fred helped me get over my first love, a Valley version of Romeo and Juliet. Fred and I use to spend hours talking about art, poetry, life and philosophy referring to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Hermann Hesse, Kahlil Gibran, over pots of coffee at Dyles Coffee Shop, or International House of Pancakes, or at a ramshackle place in Topanga Canyon. Sometimes we would venture over the hill to see a Fellini Movie, or the Doors at after-hours or go to LACMA to see an exhibit of Edvard Munch.

Edvard Munch’s paintings as somber as they can be, do not disturb me the way Freud’s, Study of a Girl did.

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