There’s a new video/performance/conceptual art piece that should not
be missed. Brilliantly elucidating (and exploiting) the shifting,
contradictory modes of perception endemic to late capitalism, it
foregrounds how postmodern technology creates virtual worlds of memory
and desire in order to create ever-larger (self-aware and mutually
reinforcing) nodes of economic potentiality; it problematizes the
societal valorization of commodification. Okay, just kidding. Yes,
Michael Moore is back with a new film, and desperate times call for
desperate jokes. Did half the country really miss the point of
Sicko? Does it really believe the screamers now want change
after having proposed nothing since 1994?
Bay Area artist and activist Art Hazelwood has a valentine
for capitalism that’s every bit as heartfelt as Moore’s: 26 satirical
prints that continue his quixotic crusade to bring reality back to
contemporary society, still largely driven by the profitable tickling
of the pleasure/anger/fear centers in consumer brains. Hazelwood
believes, with John Berger, that Picasso’s old-age failure to reach
beyond the boundaries of his rather capacious ego, to use his wealth
and power for others, condemned him to futility and despair, however
brilliantly or abjectly expressed: “The [real] artist is flesh and
blood and lives among us.” By that standard, we’re a society of
Picassos, morally, if not artistically. Hazelwood’s moral theater
employs symbolic figures deriving from medieval religious satire (the
ship of fools, the scramble for pelf/hay in Bosch, for example) and the
political cartoon tradition of the Gilded Age and Depression (Nast’s
vulturine crony capitalists, Gropper’s gasbag politicians, Grosz’s
porcine profiteers). Hazelwood’s main villains, corpulent baldies in
suits (no offense), gross and infantile, appear repeatedly. In “Trickle
Down,” societal totem-pole climbers hold out fishing nets to catch the
money falling from above; according to Moore, what we’ve had is a
cleverly engineered trickle-up. “The Sower” updates the ennobled
planter of Millet and Van Gogh, presenting a profiteer sowing money and
monstrosity. “Katrina Disaster: American Swamp” depicts a comfy couple
seated atop a raft of the heads of drowning and floundering. “Pillars
of Society” presents the unholy trio of general, businessman, and
preacher selling their ballistic missile wares to a docile public.
“Corporate Cookie Jar” presents a Godzilla-size capitalist colossus
lifting the Capitol dome to get congressional goodies inside.
“Investor” dances en pointe while factories spew pollutants into
the air and market indicators rise. “Freedom Suite” illustrates FDR’s
1941 Four Freedoms; Freedom from Fear and Want are still deemed
controversial. Art Hazelwood runs through November 13 at
Inferno Gallery (4401 San Leandro St., Oakland). InfernoGallery.com or
415-336-6831.
