Some get to live through worse circumstances that others. And these current times, from the inside, don’t look good. Lost decade in all the areas. However, having said that, simply by looking at my own family, I see that my grandparents suffered the consequences of two world wars and one the Spanish side, the civil war as well. Seeing the desolating destruction to society that three decades of neoliberalism have caused, and still cause in its final downfall, I can’t even begin to imagine what a war would be like.
Madness can’t be understood until the vertigo of looking over the abyss of the mind of a mad person is felt. Real madness is not funny. It is terrifying. And in wars and crisis it emerges. Klee, who suffered the consequences of crisis, wars and nazi madness, kept being able to create subtlety. Perhaps knowing that each layer of watercolour took him further away from the horror. Making other realities visible. Concentrating of the important. Resisting.
Art takes us out of the shit. It elevates and heals us. That is why tyrants attack it, that is why speculators ridicule it. To annul it. To make sure we lower our heads. That is why the most advanced societies are the ones that have the most advanced art, most critical and most significative. That is why the people in the places with better art are freer. Because the art of a society expresses its level of development and freedom.
History will put the indecent ones that have put us in this mess where they deserve. The subtle product of the silent resistance will remain. The Klees of art and other disciplines are at it. Other realities will be made visible. There is no doubt.
Illustration from the Feminist Gooseneck Barnacles Series.
“Conversation”