Label
Richard Dishinger, b. 1942
Stickey Fingers, 1991
Pastel
In 1991 University of Kansas Professor Emeritus Richard Dishinger showed a series of works called The Perils of Modern Life. It is likely that Stickey Fingers was part of that series. The elegant dress of the woman on the left was clearly intended to throw off suspicion, as she pick-pockets an African-American woman who seems to be dressed as a cotton-picker with a straw hat and a bag slung over her shoulder. Dishinger’s work is an updated version of a well-known type of 17th-century Baroque painting, some by such artists as Caravaggio and Georges de la Tour, in which worldly-wise women con, cheat, and pick-pocket young innocents. In the context of American history, during which African American agricultural workers were often exploited, do you think some kind of historical criticism is intended here?