Look and Look Again
Persian Telephone – Parvis Tanovoli
At my first look at this piece, I thought it was a representation of the human being, representing both men and women. The part protruding from the sculpture could have been the male gentital while the part that the protruding part could have been the female part of the sculpture. At first glance I believed that it was trying to say how men and women are both the same, emphasizing a probably androgyny in the time it was created. But looking at the title and blurb, the sculpture is a telephone. Looking at the detail of the telephone, there are spikes in both the base of the telephone and the number pad. This is probably trying to change objects that are known to Iranian society. Turning the phone into a phallic object could possibly be another way Tanovoli to change traditional compositions of that phone.
Spade – David Hommons
At first glance I see that the piece puts a black man on the face of a card. More importantly, he’s on the face of a spade which is the highest suit in a deck of cards. This is probably saying that the black man is powerful, that he can beat anything that comes against him. Looking deeper into the painting a second time, I saw that the man had features that are pinned to the stereotypical black man. He had big lips and an afro, both of which looked imprinted onto the card. Thinking about it, it seems as if the man had fallen onto the card like maybe he was dropped. Maybe the man was forced there and was forced to be played like a game.
