Capitalism

This work is special to me because it is the very first canvas I have created and the confirmation that I am capable of painting.

Beyond that, it comes from a series of twelve illustrations, which I will call frescos. Frescoes that I produced without thinking about them when I was at my worst, in pain, in distress. Like the other twelve frescoes, this one did not have a proper meaning when I drew it. I started by drawing panicked hair. Then I added little gaunt faces, the faces merged into a bloated body, with a grotesque head, not knowing if it is even panicked or if it is trying to scare. It is either a bear or a lion. So all the details appeared, without my pre-consciousness.

When one of these frescoes was being drawn, I would lock myself away for hours and days, drawing day and night until I had produced the impulse that ran through me.


It was only when a fresco was finished that I would attribute meaning to it. Most of the time by looking for the symbolism of the elements I had integrated into it. In this case, it is the fire wagon of capitalism.

The one that burns everything in its path, that destroys and ravages. Perhaps it is a necessary evil. Its driver is the Anglo-Saxon lion, ennobled with his wig. Or maybe it is the symbolic bear of the falling stock market. It doesn't matter which, the conquering lion will collapse on the ashes of all that he has taken.

The cart itself reminds me of a passage in one of my favourite books. (Lewis Mumford - The City Through Time: "Rome indicates, with particular emphasis, what in the field must be avoided at all costs. When living conditions in overcrowded centres deteriorate while housing prices soar, when the desire to exploit distant territories overrides the search for internal harmony, we inevitably think of those Roman precedents. Thus we find today, the arenas, the tenements, the exhibitions, the great shows, with our football matches, our beauty contests, the continual striptease repeated on the billboards, all these multiple nervous jolts of eroticism, drink, violence, in a climate worthy in every way of ancient Rome. (...) However, the eyes of a thousand ephemeral and shiny objects, marvels of a collective technology, made available to all covetousness: symptoms of decadence, degeneration of an unlimited power, diminishment of life. The edifice is still solid and not a stone has been moved, but these signs do not deceive us: the barbarians have infiltrated the defences, they are installed within our walls. These are the signs of the next necropolis. The executioner is waiting. Soon the crows will appear.)

What more can I say about the meaning of the painting, except to explain some other symbols. The one who burns everything in his path, who destroys and ravages.

The bull is the same one that stands in front of Wall-street, and that some equate with Baal, vomiting his horn of plenty. As for the whip and of course the ability to exploit any object or person. However, what do a thousand ephemeral and shiny objects, marvels of a collective technology, put within reach of all covetousness, attract our eyes: I simply know that they are emaciated, ghostly, becoming virtual. Perhaps they represent us, the viewer of the painting, subjected to the mad rush of the cart.