Nothing Will Come Of Nothing

The painting "Poetry in America" contains two predominantfigures: For me, one of the dancers depict America and the other dancer represents Europe. The old poetry defends itself from extinction in the face of the new poetry.

Dali had a vital sense of the emergence of commercialisation, commoditization, globalization and the poer of consumerism. In Dali’s painting, the blood of Christ has been transformed into a dripping blood bottle of Coca Cola. A phone oozes black ink as the mass media consume "the word". The darkness of his vision of media is in sharp contrast with the light of Christ that is signified by the candle in the dancer’s head, the deep cavern humanity. Dali became more deeply smitten by his Catholic faith as he grew older.

In the "Poetry of America" two cosmic athletes, harmless sword fighters, dance around each other like yin and yang, completing each other, grappling through the air. The futile dance continues to revolve like the earths revolutions, as time runs ticks away in the background, rooted in the cradle of all civilization, Africa. A naked child seeks to confirm the "time of day" with a stick and tries to reconnect with the sun to dial in the time. All innocence is consumed with activity and consumption.

Here is how Dali replied when he was asked about The Poetry of America in 1966, in his own words:"The greatest passion of the American people is when they see little children killed. Why? Because, according to the greatest psychologists in the United States, the massacre of the innocents is the favourite theme, the one which is found in the innermost depths of their subconscious minds, since they are constantly annoyed by children, so that their libido projects itself filling the cosmic surfaces of their dreams".

A half century later, what would Dali see or say if he were here now? What would Dali make of our digitally connected, time poverty stricken, age of global consumption? Would his soft melting "French Camembert" have dissolved into a mist? Are the new and fast growing urban middle classes of India and China our ages new geopoliticus children?

Has the "Poetry of America" become the dance of the generation of globalised children? Turn on a television set, open up a computer or switch on the phone and the world is waiting to pour in from the other end. 50 years on we are more deeply, broadly and instantaneously connected than ever before. One of the consequences is that the culture of America has soaked the fabric of the world. Perhaps, half a century on, the two figures are the new poetry of America, dancing in the form of middle-class India and China?

"Nothing will come of nothing"
King Lear. Act I, Scene I.

Comments

[Bernie Quigley]

Michigan . . . alors, it is the greatest. I was always reminded of the clock in Ann Arbor, U. Mich, by the tower in Dali's "Poetry in America." It is, in its way - with Manitouu, the goddess mother of the Great Lakes, the "center of the world" - East, West, South and the Great White North as we enter now into the new century. - Quigley.