The Student's Initiation

With a hoarde of students and faculty alike in the left third, and a small gathering of the tenured above a flock of sheep in the right third, I draw the viewer's eye to the middle third and the necessity to read the print and the edited line sticks out, forcing the eye to read "subordinate member of a social institution". This figure seems to be giving us a warning from behind the frontlines of the future of conformity we try to avoid. The truth we already know is worse than we wanted it to be. Tacked to the back of his desk chair, as it burns around him in defiance, is the harrowing martyrd message "free of all constraint".

(self immolations return to the public consciousness just the year after this is created)