Back to The Atrocity Exhibition
Note: The commentary is by Ballard, and unique to the RE/Search edition |
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Apocalypse
A disquieting feature of this annual exhibition–to which the patients themselves were not invited–was the marked preoccupation of the paintings with the theme of world cataclysm, as if these long-incarcerated patients had sensed some seismic upheaval within the minds of their doctors and nurses. As Catherine Austin walked around the converted gymnasium these |
Commentary:”Eniwetok and Luna Park” may seem like a strange pairing, the H-bomb test site in the Marshall Islands with the Paris fun fair loved by the surrealists. But the endless newsreel clips of nuclear explosions that we saw on TV in the 1960s (a powerful incitement to the psychotic imagination, sanctioning everything) did have a carnival air, a media phenomenon which Stanley Kubrick caught perfectly at the end of Dr. Strangelove. I imagine my mental patients conflating Freud and Liz Taylor in their Warhol-like efforts, unerringly homing in on the first signs of their doctor’s nervous breakdown. The Atrocity Exhibition’s original dedication should have been “To the insane.” I owe them everything. |
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