WelcomeSurrealism
The context of the above picture (photograph) is serious: The scene where Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York City, +1965.02.21. Would it have made a difference for America had he lived? But I wish to leave that aside on this page and just look at the picture as an esthetic object, an inadvertant work of art that happens to be from reality not mere fantasy. Doesn'tt it look surrealistic to you?
The picture seems emphatically to be telling a story, but it's not telling us what that story is. The scene seems to me somewhat like Waiting for Godot, or have Vladimir and Estragon already left, wither with or without Mr. Godot? Who is the chair? Is the chair confronting what looks like a limp towel that's maybe trying to rise up to confront the chair, to to our left, in front of the chair?
Then there is the very heavy table, perhaps like an oversizes pool table, behind that pair, with what looks like maybe a body bag (with a body in it) on top. But the bag is not long enough to hold an adult corpse.
Finally, there is the wilderness (picture) in the background of the picture. [We know what the holes are: they are bullet holes from shots that were aimed at Malcolm X, but that is not evident from the picture itself, so let us put that information aside.] Are the holes from a shootout, not at the OK Corral but somebody firing a rifle to kill wilderness as such? Take this, Mother Nature! Has the human world ended?
What to you see, my reader? Does it seem eerie to you? Am I "just seeing things"? bradmcc@bmccedd.org
