Hindsight is Always 20/20
• R. Luke DuBois’s “Hindsight is Always 20/20� was a one-person exhibition consisting of forty-one prints, one for each President in history that has delivered a State of the Union address. Each print, identical in size and shape, was spaced evenly around the perimeter of the gallery space in chronological order. Arrows marked the route the viewer was to follow.
• I thought the main theme of the exhibition was the importance of finding political reality to US citizens. These prints served as a metaphor for how leaders and the public see current issues and how sometimes citizens don’t agree with presidential rhetoric. DuBois emphasized the power of presidential rhetoric by making the word used most often in that President’s speech the biggest and boldest word on the print. But DuBois also emphasized the discord between the beliefs of citizens and that rhetoric by only grouping words on his prints according to his predetermined scheme, even if the words together didn’t make much sense. These jumbles of words that didn’t make sense to the viewer mirrored the confusion that citizens sometimes face when trying to interpret their leaders’ words. DuBois, in an exhibition placard, argued that the most important purpose of the State of the Union address is to regularly hold Presidents accountable to the democratically elected legislature. To him, preserving the sovereignty of our republic’s Congress is of utmost importance. I believe that the purpose of this exhibition was to get the audience to preserve the balance of power in American democracy by examining the present state of union critically, identifying political realities that might be shrouded in pathos, and then exercising their liberties if what they see doesn’t make sense.
• The last print in the collection was the speech of George Walker Bush’s. It could have been called George Walker Bush, or it could have been called TERROR, as that was the first and largest word on the print. It is difficult to determine a motivating factor for this specific work that is distinct from the inspiration for the collection as a whole, since to me this entire collection could be considered a single work founded upon a very interesting idea as opposed to a collection of displays of artistic skill that gave each work a special purpose. Nonetheless, I was drawn to this particular print because the first word was “terror,� and subsequent words included “Iraq, Iraqi, terrorist, Al Qaida, regime, Hussein, regimes, Iraqis, murder, terrorism, attacks, extremists,� and “protecting.� To me this observation about the artwork indicated that the majority of the words that Bush used in his address were very extreme and loaded. They were very frightening and clearly he was trying to associate Iraq with terrorism, be that the case or not. Perhaps DuBois thought this print would expose how (in my opinion) Bush tried to inspire fear in his citizens to take advantage of peoples’ feelings at the time.
• To a friend I would recommend this exhibition, but not as an out-of-the-way venture. To me it was difficult to justify these works as art. Sure the Snellen eye chart format was a nice touch, but as I mentioned earlier, this exhibition was just a really cool idea, not a form of communication that necessitated the visual choices DuBois made. I think that as long as an audience reads the word lists in any format DuBois could have conveyed his point effectively, and that a museum is an unnecessary venue, and in fact an ineffective one. If DuBois was seeking to reach the masses, as I believe he was, he would probably be more widely seen online, or on billboards, or in any medium that isn’t art but more a form of mass communication. Ultimately I would tell a friend to just Google the exhibition so that he or she could see a few of the prints and get what the idea was. That way I could pass on my discovery of an interesting concept without troubling my friend with an unnecessary trip to the museum.
Jessica Sun