Art in the current world can mean many things. It seems as though each day we find some new artist that has created a master piece that will “finally make people think”. After awhile, it might seem unoriginal and not particularly creative, and concepts appear to be recycled rather often. This is some of the criticism that Paul Kuczynski  receives. Here are some examples of his artwork, and yes, if you take a quick look at them you can probably figure out his point fairly easily.

A public speaker- Paul makes us wonder about the sewage they seem to spew.

Don’t drink the water! But of course, go ahead and preach it.

Fixing the land is as simple as stitches on a small cut…. hah.

As long as it looks prettier, then it is cleaner, right?

I think that his illustrations are fairly witty, and some of them I would like for myself. I can get the general idea of why he created these, but I do not feel that it diminishes the overall impact at all. Of many blogs about him, self proclaimed “art scholars” complained that his art is too easy to figure out and diminishes the impact of the concept. I am pretty sure that is the point- while he may have some deeper meaning rather than what is fairly easy to discern, this art is created for the purpose of causing a flicker in someones mind. They should be able to see and identify these things and think about them, not stare at a painting for two hours trying to figure out the deeper intent. The subject matter is simplified for maximum impact to the maximum number of viewers.  While you may be able to find artists with a more refined and complex message, I think that artists like Paul Kuczynski are important. They pick to the bare bones of something that is corrupt or just messed up in our society, and can clearly depict that in a satirical way that makes citizens think.

Much of his art is not like the above paintings, but instead focus on socioeconomic injustice or other things, but I think that these drawings pertain specifically to our class. The first one is of Christmas, with Asian countries supplying all the goods. It gets the point that Westerners just want the image kept up, without a care to who is actually making and distributing the goods. I also really liked the illustration of the public speaker, because it goes along with our class theme that you really can’t believe everything you hear or read, because often it is really just trash. You have to think and investigate for yourself. My next favorite was the illustration of soldiers stitching the land. Although this seems to play into the current wars, I think it also holds importance for this class in that we are so focused on the quick fix for issues we just brush them under the rug or apply a quick fix like stitches- we didn’t do anything to prevent getting cut in the first place.

Art like this helps to inspire cause and interest in the average person. Without understanding among the masses we are never going to affect a change, and social media like this is a step in the right direction.