Life — February 22, 1929 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Page Analysis: Life Magazine, Page 10 This page contains two cartoons and a poem. The upper cartoon shows a man and children viewing grotesque face masks or heads through a window, with the caption "You must sort of half close your eyes to see these art pictures." This satirizes modernist or abstract art as incomprehensible nonsense requiring self-deception to appreciate. The lower cartoon depicts a furniture showroom where a former snake charmer now works as a window demonstrator, surrounded by customers examining furniture. The joke plays on the absurdity of career transitions—a snake charmer's skills have no obvious application to furniture sales, suggesting desperation or poor job matching. The right column features "Ballad of the Gentle Reader," a poem by Arthur Guiterman critiquing various literary trends and pretentious writers of the era.