Ninety percent of the game is half mental. – Yogi Berra
I do not presume to mock Yogi Berra (or anyone or anything else) in this painting. It’s not my Berra to cross.
Lorenzo Pietro “Yogi” Berra was a Midwestern (St. Louis) second-generation Italian (Milan) who was worshipped in New York City and quoted everywhere else. In his teens, he reached a fork in the road: Does he stay in town and kiss the King of Beers’ royal ass till his lips are sore, or does he break from convention and go to New York City to play baseball? He took the fork and went on to win 10 of the 21 World Series’ he appeared in, plus he won 3 league MVPs in 5 years, something I’ve never done once.
I show Yogi squatting in Jellystone Park for the third leg of the Yogic Triple Clown, with style and color reminiscent of classical Indian art and Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Wearing his “tools of ignorance” (his words, not mine) he dons the red and yellow colors of a monk from Dharamsala, and as for the rest, there is no color more neutral than the Yankee road uniform. (It’s a bummer that Jellystone Park has been opened up to gas drilling and strip mining, but what’s good for Mr. Burns is good for us.)
Yogi is balanced by the chakras down the center of the painting, with his reverse image in pale line balancing the form and acting out in the flip-flop mirror space behind him. Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of great compassion, is also depicted in a four-armed aspect, you know. Think about that, but not for too long.