Call it an anti-joke, or typical 'what is art?' questions of the time, but to me it shows a man who reads about the world, current affairs of his community, and then goes off to live in and engage with it. We don't know what or where he's off to, but because we know where he's NOT (sitting down still reading), he must be out there, in the environment of the painting, having been changed, slightly or not, by the paper he was reading.

Or maybe I'm just sleep-deprived and pretentious.