All Nations Have Their Moment Of Foolishness Analysis

School-wide Writing
In Richard Notkin piece “All Nations have their moment of Foolishness” everybody has their different views on why he made this piece. My views on this piece was that he was trying to tell a story with this sculpture he made. Before reading his artist statement about the piece I figured that it was how he made the piece and the story behind the piece. Notkins statement didn’t change my views about the piece because all he wrote about was about his other projects and how he built this piece. Notkins stats, “Consists of 344 separate unglazed earthenware tiles … tiles are fired in sawdust-filled sagger”. He goes on and talks about more about the tiles and how they're made. Overall, my analysis about this piece is I didn’t understand
the overall purpose of the artist making this piece. There are many ways how my overall views about this piece could of change if he stated more of a description for each of the micro images in this piece.
For instance, the overall image of this piece is George W. Bush, but if you look closely you can see micro images in the piece. You can see skulls, crates, braincells, a hooded prisoner, barbed wire, destroyed building and a lot more images hidden in this piece. The artist stats, “Relief images impressed on the tiles include buildings and cities demolished … skeletal remains, nuclear mushroom clouds, the infamous hooded prisoner in Abu clouds, barbed wire, bombs falling and additional images of war and destruction, including the iconic screaming horse from Picasso’s painting”. From this example stated this is exactly what I just mentioned, but there’s no reason for why he added those images except they all represent war and destruction. Overall, the images the Richard Notkin he explained didn’t have a reason for being in this, only because they represented war and destruction. I have many reasons why my views hasn’t changed about this piece. For example, he didn’t have an overall purpose for making this project. He also didn’t put any emotion into his artist statement or why he built it. The only thing that almost change my view about this piece is when he states, “My work is a visual plea for sanity. It’s really quite simple”. From this example it tells us that the only real reason for his work is because he needs to do something.Overall,
there are plenty more reasons why my views haven’t changed about this piece.
All in all, I felt like the purpose of Notkins’ statement was to give the reader an idea of how he built this piece and the reason for his other projects. In the beginning before reading his statement I felt that his piece told a story and he was going to tell the readers about it. Now I can see a story about this piece with all the micro images, I’m guessing that it’s telling about how war gambles on people's lives and the outcome isn’t the best from seeing the destroyed buildings and skeletal remains. After reading the artist statement I now realize the purpose of his statement was to give the reader detail about how this piece was made.