The Politics of Dancing

A Weimar Monarchy Freud wrote that humans are incapable of fully comprehending their own extinction.   A similar incomprehension I believe can happen on a much larger scale, that is with respect to whole societies, and this denial is particularly pronounced in the Anglosphere democracies.   The denial takes the form of reasoning that, despite Trump and Brexit, the truly bad stuff cannot happen here. This complacent reasoning has first to overcome the obstacle that the bad stuff is already happening, and secondly that simply waiting for Trump’s term of office to expire or for Brexit to be done and dusted will not do. The damage done, not least in the great divisions created, will not disappear any time soon, indeed with respect to Brexit, we have not reached anything like the nadir yet. Already the fascist trope about being stabbed in the back/betrayed by cosmopolitans’narrative is being promoted by hard-line Brexiteers. Whilst the coming economic problems are unlikely to ...

REFLECTIONS ON SURREALISM  It is difficult to believe but we will soon be approaching the hundredth birthday of Surrealism, child of DADA and Freud, the most famous art movement of the 20 th Century. From advertising to comic books and movie posters surrealist images are ubiquitous and ingrained into the culture. What precocious teenager did not have an Athena Salvador Dali poster on their wall? For a taste for surrealism was a short cut to showing that you were ‘deep’ and ‘arty.’ Iconic Dali Image It’s very success was its greatest failure, when images adorn every Tube station platform or magazine advert they cease to be original, let alone shocking. So, it was with mixed feelings that I approached the Dorothea Tanning exhibition at the Tate. Volkswagon Advertisement Given the rampant sexism that even now characterises the art world, it is perhaps understandable, if unforgivable, that I had only ever heard of Tanning as the wife of Max Ernst so that her work wa...