The shows I saw at the Jewish Museum opened my eyes to the fact that art is such a broad term, because everyone has a different vision that comes to mind when envisioning art. The type of art that I experienced at the Jewish Museum at “Chagall, Lissitsky, Malevich: The Russian Avant-Garde in Vitebsk, 1918-1922” and “Martha Rosler: Irrespective” was definitely more experimental art than other pieces of art I’ve experienced throughout the course of this class. The pieces I saw were all both experimental and political works of art in their own ways.
“Point n Shoot” by Martha Rosler is an example of both avant-garde art and political art. In this piece, a picture of President Donald Trump is shown with names in the background of colored-Americans who have died because of police officers or while in police custody, and without the police officers themselves receiving any sort of punishment for it. The main writing in the art is in red letters across the entire picture which is a quote from Trump where he says “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s like incredible.” This work is a mimesis of a campaign rally which captures an image and text from this moment in time at the campaign rally.
Because the color of the words spoken by President Trump are red, which is usually a color that symbolizes violence, blood, or evil things, along with the picture of Trump that is shown, which is an unflattering photo, leads me to conclude that Rosler wants to portray Trump in a negative way with this work of art. In addition, the words being quoted by Trump are ones which make him look like a bad President who does not care about the people of this country, and only cares that he has enough people voting for him so that is enough. I feel the message that she intended for it to hold was that had there been stronger gun control laws, maybe so many minorities would not have lost their lives from police officers to begin with. In this work, President Trump clearly does not believe in stricter gun control laws, considering he gives people listening an image of himself shooting somebody in the middle of Fifth avenue. I think this work is trying to change the way viewers look at gun control, if they do not already believe that we need more control over it, and that the lives of these minorities which were taken are important and always will be. Although this is what I got out of this work of art, this is something that is always open to the interpretation from its viewers, and I feel that is an aspect that was definitely a major point of Rosler’s intentions with this piece.
I completely agree with Alexandra that this piece of art is a political statement about gun control and about Donald Trump’s often jarring statements as the president of the United States of America. When I first noticed the picture, I did not interpret Rosler’s use of red as symbolizing blood or violence, so I appreciated Alexandra pointing this out and paying close attention to it. Though Martha Rosler is making a different political statement than the one in my work of art, her methods are the same. She does not want her viewers to shy away from the issues or skirt around them, but rather face them head on and look them directly in the face. Here, she wants them to do this quite literally. This is why she blows up the large picture of Donald Trump’s face, and perhaps it serves as another explanation to why she choses the bold and vibrant red color that she does.
Hi Alexandra,
I really liked your post and your analysis as a whole. This piece of art was a close second to the one that I used in my blog post. I really like how you brought attention the the President painting a picture of himself shooting someone through his words. I completely agree with your interpretation of the color red and its negative connotations. While reading your post, I thought about the words in the background of this work, the names of the people, the minorities that have died at the hands of people in power. I thought about how those names were in the background all behind the picture of our President looking like he’s about to shoot someone. It made me think of how we forget these lost lives and these lost people and stories, and elect people to power who won’t do justice to these lost people but instead will just blow themselves up over these people, forget the lost lives in the background, and speak about shooting and killing as if multitudes of people aren’t dying.
Great post!