This is a painting by Jean Dubuffet. It is titled "The Cow with the Subtle Nose". The painting is a simple depiction of a cow with a green background. The cow looks like it is content. The artist may have been a farmer or a person who lived in close proximity to cows. This person painted the cow in a slightly unrealistic way, so the emphasis is not the subject matter but what it represents. I feel that it represents hard work, because cows are generally associated with farming. It is a symbol of a simple existance. A life without lots of problems or material things. What they have is what they need, and they don't want anything else.Picture from http://www.artchive.com/ftp_site.htm.
Interesting choice. I am not sure I would consider this work to really be post-modern, as Debuffet was active in the modern era, and a lot of his thinking - using the art of children and the insane as inspiration, based on an idea of purer expression, is pretty modernist, as is the expressive use of formal invention. However, that doesn't mean that one couldn't discuss the work itself through a post-modern lens, thinking critically about the assumptions he makes and the context in which the work was made and shown. There has been a lot of post-modern critique of the various Imperialistic or paternalistic ways in which modernists such as Picasso appropriated so-called "primitive" art of Africa, etc, for his ideas. One could make a similar case for Debuffet and his references.
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