All art critics agree that the sign of a good portrait painting is when the eyes follow you around the room.
Well, the eyes of Velázquez's Big Brother not only follow you around the room, they also follow you down the hallway, across the sculpture garden, through the mezzanine and into the museum shop, where the eyes glare at you malevolently unless you buy a jigsaw of the painting or at least a souvenir mug.
At home, later, you will wake up sweating in the middle of the night with a horrible, shapeless fear that the eyes are staring at you from behind your closet door, and that Big Brother himself is hiding under your bed. He's obviously a dwarf, so there's no escape even if you only sleep on a futon because he can easily squeeze his small body under the rickety frame.
Surely it's better to simply put your mind at rest by buying that framed print for $250.
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