1

Wow, there’s that famous, ubiquitous portrait of XP done back in 1942 by Warner Salman. It’s amazing the places where it turns up.

2

I like this. Evocative of the Depression photos chronicling dustbowl farmers living in squalor that have worked their way from Tiime magazine covers to the mall poster n' frame shops.

What's the attraction? For me, I think it hits my Americana nerve, that shared visceral sense of who we are as a people. A gentle collision of Ansel Adams/Normal Rockwell. The dilapidated, boarded up lathe house, the tired, overgrown, sagging tares, and the handpump suggest a lost struggle with the environment. There is a story here, one which raises haunting questions. We know the ending, but wonder about some of the events, the gripping climax (if there was one). Where are the people who once belonged here? What were their lives like? What were their victories (small as they may have been), what were their struggles…

But the Great Promise is still there. In the background, the artist purposefully gives us a peek beyond this failure to create a larger context. There is order: trimmed fields, some straight line suggesting a road or boundary. Man is still active, at work taming the land. Sometimes winning, sometimes failing. So the struggle goes on.

Yes, this is art.