Ed Dykhuizen, "Man Thinking About a Man Thinking About a Worm" c 1979

Ed Dykhuizen, "Man Thinking About a Man Thinking About a Worm" c 1979: This seminal work shocked the world of preschool art with its searing critique of the indulgent self-reflection typical to contemporary art. The first man, supine with hauntingly glassy eyes, is left catatonic and armless (symbolizing an inability to function in society) as his thoughts burst with a giant Everyman -- an Everyman who, despite striding purposefully, is also in deep contemplation, of a worm. The worm represents the end point of such self-reflection: the ultimate end of all men, which is to become decaying matter fed to vermin. 

Thus, the "examined life" so extolled by the likes of Plato is revealed to be a not only futile but also incapacitating, rendering the examiner paralyzed with the realization that all his strivings, both intellectual and physical, are but fodder for worms. The prominent navels in both figures provide the last, haunting, mocking vestige of the only time that both that Man could have felt a completeness, could have been blissfully ignorant of the true nature of existence -- while being sustained both physically and spiritually through an umbilical cord in the womb.

Dykhuizen, an artist always unwilling to explain his pieces, described the work with a typical understatement: "It's a picture of a man thinking about a man thinking about a worm. Can I have a cookie?" Displayed is a reproduction in the medium of needlepoint by the artist's grandma. The original has unfortunately been lost.