It’s never a comfortable situation when family members face indictment, but recently surfaced psychoanalytical art evidence suggests Silbergleit foul play in the death of Emily’s undeniably ugly, yet once functional designer sunglasses.

In Exhibit #1 we see what appears to be an innocuous, demi-nouveau, pastoral/expressionist/dadaish, chair-in-the-wayish scene that Joanie is well-known for producing. The style is unmistakable (see Joanie’s Lime in Repose series numbers 1-29), but this particular painting, Solitary Break-fest, also betrays a clue to Joanie’s criminal intent if you concentrate on the area highlighted by the red arrow. Don’t be distracted by the chair, the Capn Crunch, or the pop tart; they and the rest of the breakfast are nothing but red herrings! The action, my friends, is on the water colored floor where you can clearly see the future crime scene!

Exhibit #1

In Exhibit #2, we see a close up of the floor section of the painting and upon careful inspection the evidence mounts like a bloody leather glove left behind a pool house. The injured and gasping spectacles are an obvious allusion to future nefarious plans, but note also the angry azure pebbles and the Daliesque warping of earth patterns culminating in ferocious flesh-toned stones; these “flesh” formations suggest that the eyewear will be bludgeoned physically, brutally, haphazardly, yet in a seemingly accidental manner.

The malevolent minerals foreshadow menacingly, “maybe you’ll be stepped on… or maybe you’ll be sat on… but in any case, you won’t see it coming. You might allow other people to gaze into the blinding sun, but you’ll never see your own death coming.”

Everything about this painting warns like the yellow and black stripes on a wasp’s abdomen, “DANGER! MY ASS IS A DEADLY WEAPON!”

Exhibit #2

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “nice try, buddy, but where are your culturally-established art critic/historian credentials? You may draw a mean stick figure, you may even be the master of the crayon and construction paper greeting card, but that doesn’t make you any Robert Hughes. Great artists do not necessarily make great art critics! For all we know, you could be completely off-base (if not patently postmodern) in your interpretation, and your ‘evidence’ looks largely contrived, tenuous, and circumstantial. Why should we believe YOU!?”

Is Joanie guilty, Mr. Eight Ball?

No problem, doubter! I understand that some of you put faith only in narrow-minded specialists, believing perhaps that Renaissance men of genius no longer walk the earth in this day and age. But you don’t have to take my amateur word for it. I’ve set up an unassailable test for confirmation. Earlier today, coffee mug in hand, I formally asked the unquestionable, omniscient oracle perched on my desk, “did Joanie intentionally destroy Emily’s sunglasses with her derriere?” The eight-ball’s second answer (his first answer was a disappointing and inconclusive “concentrate and ask again”) pretty much removes any question of Joanie’s guilt.