01/05/2020
TO PAUL
The year of 2020 was meant to be yours, dear Paul, and a great year in general (such a beautiful and mystic number, twenty-twenty…) but let’s face it, we failed and your precious anniversary is completely spoiled...
I never got it why we would celebrate the jubilee of someone’s death. Of course, we need to maintain the memory of a person, the more and more idealized image of this spotless mind, but still, I don’t like this framework. And indeed, even though we were planning big celebrations, exhibitions, wannabe-objective-and-still-slightly-nostalgic lectures about you – our inspiring celebrity, the honorable man, the gentleman, the legend – all this became unimportant, postponed and finally forgotten one morning.
I am going through your paintings right now, and can’t help myself comparing it with the current landscape. Where did we go wrong? I’m so curious if you had believed in God, or have served anybody else? The notion of the landscape has been expanding for a very long time, but what did it mean for you? It couldn’t be merely the biosphere, the set, as you depicted it – a backdrop for your gentry friends, a nature with no soul.
I have a feeling that now the landscape is equal to one’s mental state or that of a collective, or of the times we live in; we cannot be really sure, whose augmented mindset we are wandering in when we go for a walk, virtual or real. One thing’s for sure, the set is driven by rage and a global fever. And it feels as if this – our contemporary composition – could recompose or rearrange any second now. We hear and feel the gears – lubed by old pus – start moving after a really long break.
When we encounter the unknown, most of us get scared, afraid and start closing down. We hide in our bunkers (which are of course very comfortable) in the company of our close, beloved ones and wait for better times – hopefully coming soon.
History repeats itself. All this is starting to remind me of a re-enactment of the Theophany from the Book of Exodus.