On the goofy side of greatness
“A cross between PT Barnum and Marcel Duchamp,” someone called Red Grooms. The mind stoops defensively into boggling mode , but then remembers that surrealism was a circus, after all, and maybe Grooms even had another showman in mind, Dali, when he painted “Deli”.
“Red” is a nickname, something to do with his hair colour, though he uses it a lot in his pictures too. His real name is Charles Rogers Grooms.
“Deli” is a “3-D lithograph”, it says here. I don’t know about that, but for sure it’s an aromatic cut-out pastiche of someplace in the hungry imagination called Red & Bud’s Midtown Deli, all New York noise and real-life character actors. That’s Grooms bussing tables and not looking too happy about it. See the rest.
