Afterword by Chester Arnold

As I looked through the Chester Arnold collection at the Nevada Museum of Art, the piece Afterword caught my eye. Glimpsing at the plaque nearby, I was even more intrigued by the thought that the piece could be on “the business of capitalism.” So, I started looking and studying the piece further.

There were a few things that caught my attention immediately. Why in all the paper were there remnants of technology? There was a discarded computer and a discarded phone. To me, I thought they were included in the paper garbage to signify that even though we have the technology, we still have excessive paper waste. So, if we are not going to use them for what they were developed for, we might as well throw them out with the rest of the garbage.

I then started to think a little more about the discarded phone. In corporate America, we have moved away from taking a man on his word. We can no longer accept someone agreeing to anything without it being written in ink and signed in ink. We cannot take a man’s word over the phone anymore. America has drifted to the point where a man’s word is not good enough.

I also found it interesting how Arnold included a few coffee cups spread out amongst the paper. The coffee cups had a definite appearance of cups from any of the various Starbuck-like coffee houses that you can find on just about any corner in any town. Is America so dependent on caffeine that it makes its way into all aspects of our life?

There were several books and pictures scattered around the painting. Why would we throw away things that help us to remember? I feel Arnold was trying to point out that we are not remembering what the nation was built on. Pictures and books help us to recall the past, and we are not looking at the past to learn what mistakes have already been made so we progress forward.

After spending several minutes looking at the painting, I picked up the book on Chester Arnold and thumbed through it. I was looking specifically for the pages containing Afterword. Once I found it, there was another painting very similar to the Afterword. It was titled The Business of America is Business. I took another looking around the gallery and was surprised by how many similar paintings there were. It was evident that the “business of capitalism” is dispersed throughout his more recent works.

Overall, I was very impressed by Chester Arnold’s works. I believe various people from different walks of life can relate at least to one or more pieces of his work. To me, it was Afterword.

- Kent Cramer