Squiggles

Setting: Interior of an art gallery

Gallery Salesperson: May I help you?

Arthur: Yes, I’m interested in some abstract art for my home. I don’t know much about art, so I thought I’d come to the exhibition to find something I like.

Gallery Salesperson: Feel free to look around.  Today we have some of the most prominent art collectors and critics in the world. Just stand in front of the artwork and ask them what they see and you will get a complete understanding of the artist’s interpretation.

(Arthur approaches four people silently looking at a lithograph on the wall.)

Arthur: What do you see?

Critic 1: I see the endless struggle of people against government regimes. See the people lining up in the corners. And the black and white represents the linear form of black and white immovable governments.

Critic 2: Really? I agree that the people represent oppression, but the black and white exhibits the fight for black and white people to been seen as one side by side. The curves and swirls show the past and present paths and circles of the movement’s progress and regression.

Critic 3: No, you’re both wrong. This is obviously a representation of the Nazi party during WWII. The larger people are Hitler and the generals looking down at the armies marching into different areas. The black and white paths are the many roads they traveled on their quest for domination.

Critic 4: You are all way off. The giant eye in the middle illustrates the view of God and his vantage point of his people throughout history. See the lines are the roads of good and evil demonstrated by the black and white lines and how mankind has taken various linear and circular paths to achieve atonement and enlightenment.

Critic 5: You all think too much. This demonstrates how the masses of people act like drones hypnotized by marketing and advertising to manipulate them. It’s so clear; the patterns in the swirls are used by hypnotists to give people something to concentrate on so they are open to suggestion.  

Arthur: Thank you all for your thoughts. I like it; I think I‘ll buy this piece.

 (The critics move to the next piece of art and a woman comes up to Arthur.)

Artist: Do you believe them? Hah! They could all make the Mona Lisa a protest piece. I’m the artist. I heard you say you want to buy the piece and I just want to get the record straight. This is my first showing and I don’t know if I am supposed to do this, but I didn’t have any big scheme in mind for this work.  I was just practicing. I started drawing different viewpoints of the bottles in my studio – that’s what they are.  And then I just drew black and white lines for practice with symmetry and got carried away. There is no deep meaning here. I exhibited it because I like it.

Arthur: Thank you for telling me.  I like it too.

(The artist left and the gallery salesperson came up to Arthur.)

Gallery Salesperson: I’m glad you found something you like. Did the critics interpret the art’s meaning for you.

Arthur: Yes. They all had very thought-provoking ideas about the artwork, but I just really like all the squiggles. I’m going to put it in my guest bathroom.

Gallery Salesperson: Your bathroom?

Arthur: Yes. I think it‘s a great place for people to look at it alone and make up their own mind about what it is. Plus, it gives them something to do in there.