
 Pawel Kuczynski is an artist from Poland who uses satirical elements in his artwork, such as irony. In his portfolio there is a drawing that stands out especially because of the current presidential election campaigns and debates. The drawing shows a man and his dog leading a flock of sheep to their green pasture. The pasture is in a check box on a voting ballot. The artwork is ironic because elections are supposed to be an individual affair but people really do not realize how much they are being influenced by the media and by the elected. Kuczynski’s drawing is showing how willing people are to be led like sheep in events like politics, although the opportunities are abundant. The situation could be an election, or a celebrity endorsing a product, or even a parent persuading their child. Kuczynski’s artwork shows the ease of controlling the public opinion by comparing the general populace to sheep, using the man in the suit as a symbol of higher power, and the check boxes as life choices. Everyone in the modern world has an opinion on one politician or product in the mainstream, and the artwork is subtly telling the viewer how quickly opinions can change.

People want to fit in with the crowd; going against the grain is frowned upon, and very rarely works out the way people hope it will. Few people have achieved great success through going up river so to many people it is much easier to stay within the safety of the majority ideology. If the crowd thinks one thing, people will go with the crowd to avoid looking like an outcast. In Kuczynski’s drawing, he represented the general populace as sheep. A sheep is a very simple minded creature—they will simply do what the other sheep do. Once you get two or three moving into one direction the rest will follow. People are similar. Although we all have our opinions on one thing or the other it can be changed. If we see someone achieve success in one field, there is suddenly a mad rush to attempt the same success in a similar way. When Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook there was an upheaval in copies and social media outlets. In the context of the picture, if one politician gets a leg up on the opponent, the public opinion will change and the ‘sheep’ will change sides. Granted, such an immediate radical shift in political parties is rare. To go deeper in to the text, the viewer could imagine that there are actually two groups of sheep. The man is leading one of those groups to the box that would benefit him the most. And although the man could not get all the sheep into his box, he got a large amount of ‘votes’ by leading one group and relying on the rest to follow suit. Much like the sheep are lead to their great green pastures, people are lead to make a decision in the voting booth.

Kuczynski included a man in a suit to lead the sheep. The man represents a higher entity that influences the thoughts and opinions of the public. There are a few outputs of how the entity gets its point across; the media, a political party, or a celebrity. If the man in the suit is a symbol of the media the drawing shows how the media influences opinions. There are few occasions where the news channels ever tell the whole truth. Simply put it makes them more money. If their story is interesting it generates views and that generates income. By keeping some facts under the radar, or by showing only half the story, the media controls the public opinion on racism, police violence, politics, food, everything that could kill someone. By shining whatever the topic is in a positive or negative light will lead the public to believe one thing, while making the media outlets heaps of money. If the man in the suit represents a political party, the drawing shows how candidates can sway votes from supporters or potential supporters. By telling people what they want to hear in political campaigns the candidates can lead their sheep into whatever pasture they want. Once the people are put right where the politician wants them, they give up their vote for something that may really not support or believe in. The final thing the man in the suit could represent is a celebrity or popular icon. Although this option does not have as big of consequences, there are still opportunities to create waves in mainstream media. If a celebrity endorses a specific product they are putting their name onto it. The product gets sold because people see their favorite actor using it and they want to be just like them. For example, an actor endorses Apple phones. If a secret that Apple has been hiding about their phones blowing up, then the company will tank and the celebrity’s reputation with their fans will too. On the other hand, Apple could be using the celebrity to influence the sheep into their product base to beat out the competition. The man in the suit could represent a few different things, but at the end of the day he really represents a corrupted higher power controlling the thoughts and opinions of the general public. 

In “Voting”, the ground that the man and the sheep are standing on is an unorthodox item. A voting ballot acts as the floor of the picture. Kuczynski had a clear intention to show how simple minded the people can be, and although the voting ballot is a straightforward way to tie in the people to elections, the check boxes could mean something else. Instead of a choice of a vote, they could also represent all the choices we as humans make in our daily lives. According to Quora.com, the human adult makes 35,000 decisions a day. Although that person does not actively think about thousands of thoughts daily, simply reaching for a pen instead of a pencil is a decision made. In this way, almost everything humans do is a vote between one action or another. Kuczynski tried to show that the means of performing the action, or the different actions themselves can be influenced by outside forces. A pen that fits into someone’s hand near perfectly could subtly change the action over choosing that pen over a pencil. The voting ballot

in the drawing represents all the choices given to someone at a specific moment in their life, and even if the choice is up to them on the surface, there will always be some entity pulling hidden strings to get the desired end effect.

In conclusion, Kuczynski’s drawing of a miniature sheep flock has a deep meaning for such a simple looking picture. A well-dressed man leads a flock of sheep to their pasture. The sheep are following each other because that is what sheep do. The man leads them to a pasture of his choosing. The voting ballot underneath is when the bigger picture starts to be realized. The sheep become the people, the man becomes an entity controlling the peoples thoughts, and the ballot becomes all of the peoples choices. In a simple and straightforward drawing, Kuczunski created a satirical work of art subtly telling people that their opinions can be quickly changed.
