the social barometer of the made or at least a twist an turn

throw back thursday on a slightly warming saturday.
PG 13 yet more moderate than a Victoria secret catalog

contemporary art lecture remembered...i show the first image and it took 15 minutes before anyone identifies how offensive my choices were. the works themselves not offensive yet offensive when combined. of course the topic was the manifestation of art from a sense of other, real and perceived oppression. as an affluent over educated white female and their professor, i had to do  some permission granting to coax them into touching on the politically incorrect offense, not even politically, just a flat out offense. finally a small population of the 90 began speaking up.  all lead by one brave she-child with the guts to point out how the specific offense related to the cow...you know who you are! good job. yay. It was a good day... relationships help us see what otherwise might go unnoticed. it allows us to see other; to see ourselves with more clarity if we dare to listen and see little truths without the gloss over of habit. comparative analysis which we partake in all day long in navigating this chair or that, this route or that, this person or that, allows us also to see culturally shifts and sameness. art as a social barometer for me is a key interest except when i just get tripped up on its trinkethood, art as product. it bores me. art as a social barometer, a barometer of self and other, a barometer of social habits unmasked, NOW that is of interest.

so i throw together images that on the surface [formally or content] seem similar...and through comparative analysis we hunt to see more than if they stood alone.

your turn. hunt and have fun with it. feel free to harvest for your own discussions and consider the images not my own but google harvested shared for educational purposes only...

there are superficial relationships, plus your current cultural baggage you bring to the analysis, but in each pairing if you do some background research (even google skimming), the similarities and differences are deep and profound. for instance many of these pairs have years, decades, some centuries, bridging their making, others span oceans, gender, the real and the made, education, affluence, margin, medium, and method...i finally started learning my geography and world history through the analysis of art which made it living and breathing enough so it enthralled.