Now, if it was to a painting of two guys by a houseboat ...

http://blog.art21.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/070827_070827_p233_web.jpg

Why aren't there flies swarming around their malnourished gaping mouths?

fuck

Chuck?: It looks to me like the kid in the first image is just too stoned (or bone idle lazy) to move.

Either way, what does it (or the second image) have to do with the third image?... Unless you are trying to draw attention to the fact that the subject of the third, Brook Watson (1735–1807), rose from his seemingly “rock bottom” situation, and despite losing a leg to the shark (and being an orphan to begin with) put an imprint on the world as a successful merchant, politician and Mayor of London while the subjects of the other two images are (one assumes) destroyed by their environments and the events around them… (Hell, at least the subject of the second image is doing something to trying to save his skin…)

Only a weak mind would link these images (reclined man at rest = recumbent man in action surrounded by sharks = convulsing, drowning man surrounded by sharks) while ignoring the important common element shared by the last two images… man struggling to survive events beyond his control. While the last two images are filled with movement, tension and action, the only activity in the first is the corn growing (and the kid paying with the stick).

I think the more important issue is how under the justice of a Marxist society, both boys would have equal access to sticks to play with and there would be no capitalist radio to poison their young impressionable minds with antirevolutionary propaganda.

Nice to see some classic art pulled in too, instead of that metal-strap-and-plywood bullshit often posted as the "what's currently hanging" "art."

Did you support that Chuckles?

The "kid" is not "playing with a stick". He's holding an african hoe/shovel. I served in the Peace Corps in West Africa - in a village and a hut that looked alot like this one. There it was called a "daba" and using it to cultivate corn or other crops is hard, back breaking work.

What you all are missing is that these guys are probably on a break from using said daba in the fields. Zimbababwe is a long way from West Africa & the cultures are different, but many times I joined my friends and colleagues in a scene much like this one, hanging out, drinking tea, listening to political news on the radio - after they had spent long morning hours in the field. This is not the rock bottom of the world - it's folks living their lives, listening. They could use some assistance, yes, but the description you give reeks of condescension.

Maybe it's the other way round...wtf?

Wow. Uh… okay. So there’s another incongruity. The subjects of the last two images appear to have mastered the manufacture and use of complex tools and iron implements while the subjects of the first have not (which would go along way to explain a lot…).

Primitives, how quaint!