beauty in numbers
Magical realism and Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity) were bookmarking periods in literature and art that attempted to offer alternatives – a kind of healing – to the confusion of crowd meltdown. I’ve always been particulary interested to the weimar period because there was something tangible in the air that made communication an imperative; an attempt to reach the unknown mass collective through independent dethink. However, what Heartfield Grosz and Brecht got for their efforts was Stalin and public relations. Checkmate. I wondered why the police use a chequerboard as icon. The answer was they control all the squares and all the moves.
One factor that is central to our sedated age is the creativity of trauma. I see Paula Rego as Balthus reincarnated, reincarnating. No-one’s telling her she’s rearranging the furniture for remake/retake – her work is too valuable as angst-sink in high places. With Damian Hirst its the blankness of male insensitivity; flailing around in a meaningless fussball-laddcentric vacuum with patrons who will never see no wrong, because there is no wrong, mate – just squirrel-friendly, celebrity-authorised organic pesto from waitrose.
This “lack of moral traction,” pioneered by the B-29 and its successor B-52 (still flying after 55 years) is an endgame, kept fresh by the odd flurry of insurgency (current UK threat level on march 2 2010 is Severe) and financial collapse. It is the price we’ve paid to keep the west on bubble-support.
Some believe the crowd, in numbers, can change contexts. This is incorrect. It is the few who control the many, giving the illusion of free choice. The reality is mandelbrot, fibonacci as osmosis, growing from the singular, like Barbara Morgan’s Hearst over the people.
