Now, you could take this picture as yet another dig at any of a number of world leaders, but...you'd be wrong!

Actually, I was thinking of Andy Warhol when I made it. Because one of the great things about Warhol was his appreciation of the artistry in commercial art. We all tend to ignore the art these folks create because it's ubiquitous. Somebody had to come up with the design for this toy's packaging. For that matter, given that this "portrait" of the robot toy that came in the box is a fairly accurate portrait, it's a portrait of someone's design for the painting on the robot. And, of course, someone had to design the robot itself. Think it's easy? Try it.

On an even more subtle level, someone designed the very type you're reading. Each letter, each "E", "t", "q", each ".", """, "?" - all of these were designed by someone.

Part of Warhol's genius was in pointing this out to us. Not explicitly - he didn't say, "Look, you fools! Can't you see! Somebody laboured long and hard over that soup can!" But he was saying pretty much just that nonetheless. Repetition dulls our perceptions. Given the same image over and over again, we just come to accept it as part of the world and ignore it.

Hmmmm....maybe there's a political comment in here after all.