Art is Provocative

Cold and wet, I finally stumbled into Woods Hall to begin my English 101 class. The trip had been a tedious one that involved large amounts of drifting and asking the typical freshmen question of “Where is this place?”. Furthering my depression the pouring rain and the lack of an umbrella only almost completely halted my trip to class that day. I begrudgingly waited for my hour and fifteen minute class on art to begin. “Yippee“, I thought sarcastically. Yet, during a brief discussion on a piece in which I had no particular interest, my eyes discovered two very fascinating works that required further inspection. Both were extremely abstract, so I could not prevent myself from inquiring as to what they meant. My brain would not allow me to believe someone would work on something with absolutely no goal in mind. Looking desperately for answers, I formulated my own hypothesis.
While appearing completely opposites of one another-- one large, the other small; one was titled, the other was not; one used words, the other did not¾ the differences were very apparent, but their meaning seemed similar. They both seemed to represent an anti-propaganda theme that the news media presents to us.
Catching my eye first was Kevin Wilson’s “Untitled“, a large painting with engravings on certain characters. The colors were mostly a blend of blue grey similar to a cloudy stormy day, with a deep black along the bottom fourth of the painting and top left hand side. The dark colors set a somber mood. The center had the outline of the upper body of a man who was standing sideways. His head was black with a grey brain located directly above a lap top. At his neck, the color scheme turned grey, and funnel a led to two sacks of blue that ended at the bottom of the page. Puncturing the man’s neck were two lines that lead to smaller blob men on each side. Black-grey fog grabbed my attention started in a cloud from the top left corner and proceeded into the figure’s nose to his brain and down through the computer, funnel and blue like sacs. Beside the black upper left hand corner of smoke was a much smaller horizontal man whose was sketched out in white but his head resembled a sun. In between the horizontal man and the sideways upper body was a horizontal box with two antenna’s and an x in the middle. From the box, two black lines led to a red boxes that partially blocked the lines, but not enough to not lead them to two more boxes one black with white dots and the other with a purplish blur. The right half of the painting had a large black circle in the middle and at the top of the circle a blob man appeared to be opening a trap door that revealed a grey light and the upper portion of a man. This grey light formed a triangle whose base was at the top of the right hand corner. Inside it were eight men with TV’s for heads. The bottom of the circle ad a man with deer antlers and a beam leading to the bottom right corner. The far right of the circle had a man with a box on his head and the left side had a man with a shadow below him.
The television men convinced me this must be against the news media. Looking like a sun the horizontal man resembled the beginning of a fabricated story. The black fog represented their stories that had been edited and polluted with lies. As the smoke enters the brain, it changes, keeps going beyond the rational, the calculator, and is filtered into the rest of the body. The multiple blue sacs show how the story is manipulated and in turn affect everything in your body just like it would in real life. Crooked like the media, the black TV above is putting out messages that get blocked by the red brick wall leaving only static and a blur. The black circle on the right hand side have people that are products of listening to the mass media. The man with the antlers is just blind sided by lies, the man in the box is completely in the dark about the truth; the man with shadow is only a product of what people tell him. The tv heads floating are representative of the major mass media sources: MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CNN, CBS, FOX, HEADLINE NEWS, and local news. This painting oozed of symbolism that represented a distaste for mass media.
The other painting, James William’s “Strangers”, was almost consumed its competition to the left. About a sixth of the size, it seemed much more to the point. It was black with grey outlining the words, “Strangers on this road we are on but we are not two, we are one.” A white face, outlined in black, took up the top right corner. Portion of the face has a red intricately designed floral pattern bearing resemblance to wall paper. The “strangers” are news anchors that obscure your path of intellectual freedom. “We are one” makes a firm stand that you should form your own opinions and not be influenced from outside sources.
Class ended with no finite answer, only assumptions; however, there was still hope because two artists were coming to class Thursday to discuss their pieces. My questions could haunt me no more. Unfortunately, neither of them was the artist of my piece, and I could not obtain the answers I craved, although during her discussion with a fellow classmate, one of the artists helped alleviate my desire for answers with three simple words: “art is provocative,” those words say more about that painting then my detailed hypothesis. It was meant for some over analytic individual to form his/her own opinions. Some might be more readily proved and others more abstract then the painting itself, but at least the on looker is forming some opinion. Knowing that, I feel I have a better understanding of the real definition of art as opposed to my misconstrued one. The ability to provoke thought is what makes it art.