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JANUARY 4, 2022
Meyerson on TAP
Stormy Weather
Our imperiled democracy, by Robert Longo
Like many of you, I needed a break over the holidays, so the week
between Christmas and New Year's found me in Palm Springs, a
traditional hangout of people in flight from winter. On my last day
there, my friend M and I visited the Palm Springs Art Museum, which, as
M had assured me, actually boasted a first-rate permanent collection and
terrific temporary exhibits. (As the winter and weekend haunt of the
rich-present company excluded-Palm Springs has plenty of potential
artwork donors, many of whom, apparently, have realized their
potential.)
Topping even the museum's Helen Frankenthaler show was a dimly lit
giant room where three massive artworks by Robert Longo
dominated three
of the four walls. Longo has been winning acclaim for decades for his
charcoal artworks, based, and riffed, on photographs. The three giant
artworks were his takes on three prominent buildings-the Capitol, the
White House, and the Supreme Court.
But these were our three branches of government under pressure, menacing
in themselves and surrounded by landscapes and skies suitable for a
filmed version of, say,
**Macbeth**(now showing in a theater near you). A veritable Birnam Wood
appears to be advancing on the White House. The Supreme Court is
sundered down the middle. The columns on the buildings are darkened, all
but warning us away. The statues glare like gargoyles.
I don't know if Longo produced this work before or after January 6th
of last year, but the fragility of our democracy-whether through the
Trumpification of our institutions or the Trumpified climate threatening
them, or both-has seldom been conveyed more breathtakingly and
gut-punchingly.
In the apprehension that these artworks evoke, they seem to me a
chilling representation of the empirically justified mood of the moment:
dread.
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter
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