Nicole Eisenman’s Hillbilly Moonlight Dance sets up a curious juxtaposition between early twentieth century modernist painting and American Atomic Age animation. Eisenman references La Danse by Henri Matisse at the top of the canvas, with a ring of dancers around a bound figure. The tone of this piece is consistent with Eisenman’s on-brand sinister humor: a tall flame in the foreground illuminates the group of captors, creating the illusion of the bound figure being burned at the stake. Eisenman commands direction of sight by aligning her figures, from the top down, to the color spectrum – working from the blood-orange of the dancers, to an olive-green hill, to the pthalo blue Hillbillies. The titular hillbillies in the forefront appear to be a cross between Picasso’s blue period figures (the one on the far right specifically reminiscent of The Old Guitarist) and Hanna-Barbera’s Yogi the Bear, Huckleberry Hound, and other early television anthropomorphs.