The Real Inside Story

Roy De Forest, The Real Inside Story, 1973, acrylic on canvas, 66 x 72 ¹⁄₈ in. (167.5 x 183.2 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation, 1986.6.89

Artwork Details

Title: The Real Inside Story
Artist: Roy De Forest
Date: 1973
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 66 x 72 ¹⁄₈ in. (167.5 x 183.2 cm.)
Credit Line: Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation
Mediums: acrylic
Mediums Description: acrylic on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: Animal — horse
Animal — dog
Figure — head
Landscape — tree
Object Number: 1986.6.89
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1986.6.89

Artwork Description

In the early 1960s, De Forest turned from making scrap metal constructions and abstract paintings to works in which animals, totemic images, and fantastical beings engage us with storytelling and game playing. In The Real Inside Story, cutaway walls conflate inside and outside worlds, and animals and humans seem both toylike and symbolic. De Forest called art “one of the last strongholds of magic” and described his richly colored and textured fantasy worlds as “unknowable [though] hauntingly familiar.”

Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection, 2014