Art & Max

It's a very strange book. There are two reptiles of some kind, named Art and Max. Art is painting a portrait, and Max wants to paint to. He says, "What should I paint?" Art says, "You can paint me." Max says, "Okay," and starts putting paint all over Art (who keeps insisting his name is "Arthur"). Then Art gets mad and the paint breaks and falls off of him and he begins falling apart. All his colors go away and he's transparent, and then he becomes a line drawing which untangles and then Max puts him back together again and sprays a bunch of paint on him. Then he looks pontillistic. At the end, Max is painting a portrait and Art is putting paint all over a cactus, Jackson Pollock-style.

This is very strange. It's surreal. It doesn't really resolve anything. Things keep happening that you would expect would upset people, but nobody is really that upset by it. It's just weird. I don't understand what's going on in this book. It seems kind of pretentious in a way, like it's supposed to be artistic and I don't really understand where it's going. There's no message. It's just baffling. I'm really confused by it. It's pretty, but very confusing.