An Artistic Examination Of “Stuff Being Thrown At My Head”

I don’t know much about art, that much is certain. Really, if you break it down, I don’t know much about much, which in itself is kind of special, which means it’s sort of art, my not knowing anything… Or not. But this is art, and maybe its meaning is deeper than we at first imagine. Or maybe it’s just someone getting hit with stuff. I dunno, but that’s been established…

Originally posted on Your Daily Media

Art takes many forms. Sometimes it is born of love and struggle and anguish–paint splashed upon canvas, formless and abstract, to be interpreted by the viewer through the eyes of their own collected life’s experiences. Other times they are forms carved from solid rock that take shape through the patient effort of skilled hands, chipping away at a surface until what was hidden within’ is revealed for all to see, the way the artist had known it to exist all along.

And still other times it’s pictures of stuff hitting someone in the face.

Latvian photographer Kaija Straumanis’s photo series “Stuff Being Thrown at My Head” is about as straight forward as the name suggests.

Stuff–things even–seemingly being thrown in the face of a young be-spectacled lady.

Its popularity does of course, beg several questions. Is this for example, a statement about a woman’s perceived societal role? The intelligence of the fairer sex, being depicted by the woman in glasses?

The dodge ball, a symbol of juvenile male aggression, striking the defenseless woman, signifying an impotent rage wrongfully ingrained in men from childhood. The drink here, a juxtaposition of a bar scene played out often in the reverse, a cause of shame and frustration burning within man, turned outward and returned in kind.

The message may be as simple as, “The power and beauty of woman is threatening to me, and the need to lash out is ever constant, ever vague, ever confusing. I wish to destroy something beautiful so that I may feel its destruction as a confirmation of my own existence!”

Or maybe it’s just funny that the lady got hit in the face with the jack-o-lantern. I’ll leave that debate to the art scholars, who are far more capable of unraveling useless mysteries than I.

via: Your Daily Media

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