What Piece of Art Would You Like to Analyze?

This is another wonderful question that Wake Forest University asks in its application supplement. It's really quite a difficult one and so needs some freewriting!

As a part of 2010 Wake Forest orientation, the freshman class examined The Andes of Ecuador, a painting by Frederic Church. Next year what work of visual or performing art should the incoming class analyze? Why? 

 Jo Albers' "Homage to a Square"

This is a difficult question because it depends on how you want to "analyze" a painting. There are some wonderful paintings out there with a neat history but that might not be enriching to analyze with a group of eighteen-year-olds. Sometimes you have to give them something rather obscure to analyze  simply for the sake of sparking interesting conversation. For this reason it might be interesting to analyze Jo Albers' "Homage to a Square," which is simply a series of super-imposed squares. As was quoted in a play I read called "The Heidi Chronicals," one character says, “Perception, integration, isolation. Just three squares, and they reflect the gross inadequacies of our society,” and the other responds, “Don’t give me a Marxist interpretation of Albers.” This could be a really interesting starting point for a conversation about this painting.

"Tiananmen Square" by Stuart Franklin

We don't simply have to look at paintings, though; freshmen in college might find it enthralling to look at some of the most influential photographs in history, like the ever-famous "Tiananmen Square" by Stuart Franklin. Since all kinds of rebellions have been happening in 2011, photos like these can spark interesting conversation about governments in other countries and people's ability to rebel and take a stand. Many photos depict the horrors of war due to a country in crisis, and these would be great to study.

Being an environmentalist, of course, I would always be willing to discuss some of the shocking photos out there that show the plight of our planet. The ones that tend to have the most influence are those of animals, like this one, "Oil-Contaminated Bird at the Coast of Alaska" by the German Press Agency. It's a shocking photo of the death that we cause to all kinds of creatures on this planet, and would hopefully be a wake-up call to those that don't think about the consequences of our actions on our planet.

Some pictures could spark interesting spiritual and scientific discussion, such as the photo "Earthrise" by Galen Rowell. I can't imagine the significance of being able to see the Earth from afar--the place that we all inhabit. It's a humbling photo in that the Earth seems unbelievably small, and the rest around it is just blackness. I would love to hear what some future philosophy, theology, and science majors would have to say about his photo taken from the moon.

This is a post that I'll definitely want to continue!