Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Art / Politics Things We Learned, or Think We Learned, from the New Yorker Portraits of World Leaders
Posted by Mark Asch on Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 2:07 PM
You really need to see them full-sized in print to appreciate, say, the full majesty of Silvio Berlusconi's botox, and the details of Victor Yuschenko's dioxin-damaged pores, but in their online form they're presented as a gallery with the photographer's commentary.
The length of his commentaries is roughly commensurate to the status of his subjects (Mahmoud Abbas gets 40 seconds; Heinz Fischer, the president of Austria, gets 20, and it's about his hair), and they're mostly anecdotes and aesthetic reflections—not politicized, in other words, but (like the project itself), hardly apolitical. It's fascinating to hear the way aesthetics seem to suggest, or stand in for, ethical and political judgements—like the two very different kinds of awe Platon expresses for the hunted-looking Paul Kagame and the uniquely grotesque Robert Mugabe.
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The Confusing mirror. I have come to a place in my life where after a lifetime of being an activist I’m trying to take a more philosophical view of world affairs and its star players. I tell myself that the leaders and circumstances that come up are a reflection of our own selves. I seem to alternate between this ideal place and familiar rushes of political anger when I perceive any injustice.
I tend to view leaders in two categories, wolves in sheep’s clothing or sheep in wolves clothing. Just when my view is certain I take another look in the mirror and I see a fuzzy reflection, then I’m no longer sure what I see.
Are the images I see through the haze the same leader that invoked positive emotions that reached the very essence of my being, just last week? Do I see my image blended in the mix because the feelings really came from me and I attributed them to him?
When I get anxious, I convince my self the state of affairs inherited by the reflection were the worst set of circumstances in our history, and this pacifies me for a while. Yet, underneath it all, I have an unsettled feeling. I then tell myself that this feeling stems from being at an early stage of the game, a complex game, which is only fair to score at the finish line.
I hope and pray that during the game the reflection will become clearer, stronger, remain there and not vanish into that huge pile of broken dreams.
http://www.johnmolinari.blogspot.com
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