War Is Closer Than You Think.

Martha Rosler-Irrespective- House Beautiful- Bringing the War Home

This particular piece was displayed in the Martha Rosler exhibit in the Jewish Museum. This was the first piece that really grabbed my attention. As we’ve been learning, art is usually an imitation of something, usually of life. However this piece goes beyond just an imitation. It is avant-garde in its sense of subject and the juxtaposition of the subjects. in the work we can clearly see a right and a left. On the right is evidence of a beautiful, modernly built home and two beautiful women who are seeming to be focused on what they are seeing in their technology and expressing a look of fake shock, and on the left are dead children, fires, soldiers, and obvious scenes of war. it is very unusual to juxtapose horrific scenes of war with a beautiful orderly home and people who don’t seem to be caring about the war at all. This work pushes the boundaries of ignorance to war, it truly shoes how the war was going on directly behind people backs and they still chose to only focus on what was in from of them. As well, this piece juxtaposes the scenes of a beautiful home and beautiful women with the horrific and destructive scenes of war, showing two very opposite perspectives. It introduces the use of two different sides of life, one of war, and one of order to show the different experiences of people, some people paying attention to themselves and some ending up dead because of the war and its events. It also shows us how close things can be to us and we still will choose to look beyond them. This piece is abstract in the sense that for one, a house with the war so close would not look so orderly and also because, it juxtaposes order and chaos, death and life, self-centeredness and selflessness, all completely opposing view points in one image with clear sides.

Here, the image, at least for me forces you to look at the women first and then see the scenes of war as a background to show that even though it is so close to you, the most horrific events are just still background thoughts. That’s what makes this piece so political, it shows by means of vision and attention the issue of distraction in our lives. The politics of this work deals with distraction and war and how even if something so horrific, devastating, and chaotic, is outside our doors, we still will be forced by the means of nature and the things around us, to focus on something else, something much more appealing and orderly. This piece is trying to force people to realize that horrific events tend to take the backseat in our minds due to the distractions that are very present in our daily lives. Through realizing this, it is trying to make us more aware of our thoughts and thus make us realize the things that we should be thinking about rather than being distraction.

The avant-garde aspect of this art in regards to the juxtaposition of the two completely opposite views is related to the political aspect of this piece because the political aspect of this piece is designed for us to change our train of thought or rather to change the sides of that are thoughts are on, going back to the right and left of the piece. The message of the piece is meant to encourage us to put the important things in the front and the distractions in the back, in this case distractions to the left, important events on the right. The clear division of sides used in this picture encourages us to visualize the sides of our thoughts and where we put the things we choose to focus on, or rather for this case, not focus on.