Paradox

Featured image: Release of the Doves

As a ”wordy,” I find the word, paradox to be playful, fun and intriguing. It means that there is a concept, an idea, that goes against what the majority of people believe. Paradoxes have been found in literature throughout history. The most famous book of paradoxes is the Bible and some of the comments that have been attributed to Jesus.

This word, paradox, makes so much sense to me because there are always two sides to everything. In our current culture we seem to have forgotten that.
Using an art example, I think of the work of Robert Raushenberg, a favorite 60’s artist of mine that was known for his ideas of breaking the rules and pointing out the complexity, paradoxes of our culture. Rauschenberg frequently put drawn 3-D boxes in his work. See the below example. I have always wondered about those boxes and have written frequently about what they could possibly mean. Today is no different. I think that boxes will begin appearing in my work as a reminder that there are two sides to everything. A box has a front and a back, a left and a right, a top and a bottom. And then to confuse the issue further there is the inside, a front and back….. you get the idea.

Photographer Chris Rauschenberg, son of Robert Rauschenberg, on his father’s desire to ‘talk about the world in all its complexity’ with Buffalo II — sold for $88,805,000 on 15 May


1964 was a year of socio-political, technological and cultural change in America: the nation mourned the murder of President John F. Kennedy; Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act; and The Beatles led the ‘British Invasion’ of the American pop market. But 1964 also marked a pivotal moment in the canon of post-war American art.