One of the many joys of art in Seattle is the relatively unsung Museum of Bad Art at Cafe Racer in the University District. If you frequent the joint, you surely have favorites: Perhaps you love the Peeps Christ, or a certain of the many clowns, Elvises, and dogs.

When it comes to clowns, Elvises, and dogs, their badness is for obvious reasons.

But sometimes you come across something at the Museum of Bad Art that stretches the brain with its badness.

Take this still-life of three bananas, one orange, and two lemons:

At first it seems there is nothing wrong with this painting, but quickly this painting comes across in fact as very wrong. Here is a closer view (I'm sorry about the picture quality; I had to ask someone sitting under the painting to take the picture and he was in a precarious position.)

I think the heart of the matter is the lemons. Lemons do not sit on bananas.

Furthermore, these lemons are too melony in appearance, which bring to mind the fact that it is only one little linguistic inversion that separates lemons from melons, but a whole universe in fruitness, since lemons and melons have nothing in common flavor-wise. This feels obscene, as if one of them needs a new word.

Here is another discovery I made on a wall near the lemons (please note the shadowy figure splattered in the corner, as if the human hit the wall, then fell into fetal; click to enlarge):

And one more: This painting is not at Cafe Racer's official Museum of Bad Art, but at Rosebud on Capitol Hill, which is Seattle's unofficial Museum of Bad Art.