How Do I Look? (Or: Paintings from “Understanding Human Behavior”)

Miss Fipi Lele sent me a couple of scans from a 1974 book titled Understanding Human Behavior: An Illustrated Guide to Successful Human Relationships, whose cover clearly marks it as a book from that era…

The book should come with an explanation titled “Understanding this book’s cover”.

Here’s a painting in the book depicting the many ways a businessman is perceived, depending on the circumstances and who’s doing the perceiving (I added annotations):

When I first saw this painting, I thought of the version in the upper left-hand corner as sober and all the others as varying degrees of drunk.

Here’s the text that accompanies the painting:

These five characters are studies of human personality, portraits of the many kinds of people we can be in a variety of situations. At the bottom is a man as he really is, but the other four figures circling around him show him in entirely different lights. Beginning at the lower left is the way his secretary sees him with a lecherous grin. That noble manly visage is how he imagines himself and the bland, unprepossessing creature is his wife’s perception. Last, downtrodden and ineffectual, is how he feels after confronting his boss.

Another set of paintings depict the different ways a husband a wife are perceived. Here’s the wife:

Desperate Housewives, summed in four paintings.

Here’s the husband:

Mid-life crisis in 3…2…1…

The best and most succinct review of the book comes from one “Bob” who says: “It’s more like a handbook on how to live a life of quiet desperation. With a few pictures of boobs in it.” Based on that, I might pick up this book if I ever stumble across it at a used bookstore.