Art is Provocative Revised

Cold and wet, I finally stumbled into Woods Hall to begin my English 101 class. The trek was a tedious one, involving much drifting and time wasting. When the rain began to really pour, I began to contemplate skipping class. When I realized that I lacked an umbrella as well, I seriously considered turning around. But, being the determined student that I am, I kept hauling my soaking wet body. Upon arriving, I begrudgingly waited for my hour and fifteen minute class on art to begin. My enthusiasm for this class overwhelmed me; “Yippee“, I thought sarcastically. Yet, during a brief discussion on a piece in which I had no particular interest, my eyes wandered on two very fascinating works that required further inspection. Both were extremely abstract, which peaked my interest. After several minutes of staring, I was stumped without ascertaining their meaning at all. My brain would not allow this mystery to go unsolved, so I began looking desperately for answers. While there were obvious differences from each other, one large, tilted and wordy, one small, straight, and silent. However, it was apparent to me that their meanings were similar in nature. There was a distinct anti-propaganda theme in both. My analysis follows thusly.
The first painting to catch my eye was Kevin Wilson’s “Untitled“, a large painting with engravings of human figurines. The dark, somber colors set a deep gloomy tone. The blue-grey colors were similar to a cloudy stormy day offset by a jet black strip along the bottom and jutting up the side. The center outlined a profile view of a man’s torso. The most provocative detail was definitely the exposed grey brain set against the man’s black head. Located directly above the eerie brain was a lap top. At his neck, the color scheme returned to grey and funneled into two sacks of blue that dragged to the bottom of the page. The man’s neck was punctured by two lines, leading to smaller distorted men on each side. Throughout the painting a black-grey fog flows from a cloud into the figure’s nose and travels throughout his body and ends at the bottom of the picture. Beside the smoke, a horizontal man was sketched, except his head, which resembled a sun. In between this man and the torso, a television-like box was laid sideways and had an x in the middle. From the box, two black lines led to red boxes and eventually to two more boxes, one black with white dots and the other a purplish blur. The right half of the painting had a large black circle. At the bottom of the circle had a man with deer antlers as well as a beam leading to the bottom right corner. At the top of the circle another distorted man appeared to be opening a trap door, revealing a torso in a grey light, which formed a triangle, which had eight men with TV’s for heads inside of it. At the far right of the circle was a man with a box on his head and the left side of the circle had a man with a shadow below him.
The men with television heads convinced me of a possible resistance to the news media. The sun-like horizontal man seemed to start the beginning of a story. To me, the black fog represented all the men’s stories that had been edited and polluted with lies. As the smoke enters the brain, it changes and seems to go beyond the rational, the calculated, and filters into the rest of the body. The multiple blue sacs seem to show how the story is manipulated and what manipulation, in turn, affect everything in your body. Crooked like the media, The black TV above appears to portray messages that get blocked by the red brick wall leaving only static and a blur. This image seemed to make a connection between how crooked the media may be and the crooked TV is. 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 large amount of propaganda in society. This painting oozed of symbolism that demonstrated a distaste for society.
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 the strange ways that propaganda ease into society. “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.