Mixed Media
A Wagnerian Symphony
By Sylvia L. Mayuga
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 01:19:00 09/21/2008
Filed Under: Economy, Business & Finance
Sept.21, 2008 has a powerful beat and melody, especially for Filipinos old enough to remember martial law descending on us in 1972. Today, to the full-throated cello of memory in the background, drums and cymbals crash in the foreground – a Wagnerian symphony that began last weekend after a whole year’s suspenseful overture.
Pundits here and abroad have variously labeled this symphony the death of capitalism, the end of Wall Street’s high-flying party, even the world falling apart. Here’s a sampler:
From “The End Days” by the Manila-based Standard columnist Tony Abaya: “The world seems to be falling apart. A financial tsunami has been gathering momentum since the sub-prime mortgage industry in the US unraveled in July 2007, and now that tsunami threatens to devastate the entire banking and financial sectors of the capitalist system.
“At the same time, natural disasters in the natural world seem to be increasing in both frequency and ferocity as earthquakes come one after another – Japan, Indonesia, China, the Philippines, Iran in recent weeks – and hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones – different names for the same phenomena – cut swaths of death and destruction across Cuba, Haiti, the US, Taiwan, China, India and the Philippines.
“And looming in the horizon is the threat of a wider war in the Middle East, especially if the Republican team, Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin, were to win in the Nov. 4 US presidential elections.”
Closer to that action, Roger Cohen of the New York Times begins a column with the lyrics of a soundtrack for Wall Street’s “Black Monday” on Sept.15, 2008:
“ They’re listening to Coldplay down on Wall Street:
“I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word.
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own
“…The leverage party’s over for the masters of the universe. Shed a tear. When you trade pieces of paper for other pieces of paper instead of trading them for real things, one day someone wakes up and realizes the paper’s worth nothing. And Lehman Brothers, after 158 years, has gone poof in the night.
“We’re witnessing the passing of more than a venerable firm. We’re seeing the death of a culture… That’s the culture we’ve lived with. It’s over now. Some new American beginning is needed.”
Here’s the rest of this distinguished commentary.
And here’s Nicholas Kristof, Cohen’s neighbor on the New York Times op-ed page, tearing into those fallen “masters of the universe”: “…one of our broad national problems is rising inequality, and it is exacerbated by corporate executives helping themselves to shareholders’ cash. Three decades ago, C.E.O.’s typically earned 30 to 40 times the income of ordinary workers. Last year, C.E.O.’s of large public companies averaged 344 times the average pay of workers.
“…These Brobdingnagian paychecks are partly the result of taxpayer subsidies. A study released a few weeks ago by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington found five major elements in the tax code that encourage overpaying executives. These cost taxpayers more than $20 billion a year.
“That’s enough money to de-worm every child in the world, cut maternal mortality around the globe by two-thirds and also provide iodized salt to prevent tens of millions of children from suffering mild retardation or worse. Alternatively, it could pay for health care for most uninsured children in America.”
Here are the rest of Kristof’s dark ruminations.
The pundits agree: This Wall Street crash is all about greed, and the US government looking the other way as financial instruments progressively defying gravity and common sense, grew in volume, complexity and interconnection throughout the world’s banking system – like an infestation of starfish in the millions, eating away at coral reefs that were the spawning grounds and shelter of capital.
Stock markets plunged worldwide with shaken investor confidence midweek, but began a rally as the week ended with a rescue package from the US Fed, with sizable infusions by several foreign central banks. The entire package totals US$240 billion at this writing; whether that will be enough to save a collapsing global economic infrastructure remains an open question.
But dramatic as these annals of late capitalism have been this week –with Lehman Brothers declaring bankruptcy; the Bank of America buying Merrill Lynch for half its value; and the Fed bailing out the American Insurance Group from crashing on the heads of its clients worldwide – the picture is not quite complete without a simultaneous global event on Sept.15 and 16.
Another order entirely
Of another order entirely, that event was the record-breaking Sotheby auction of art by Damien Hirst, a 43-year old British artist born in Bristol, northern England. “A profound artistic imagination;” “a very original thinker;” “one of the most inventive minds” are some of the labels critics and collectors have pinned on him since he first burst into the London art scene in 1988.
Exactly 20 years later, a two-day sale of over 200 pieces of his art fetched 111 million pounds (US $250 million). That Sotheby auction titled “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” took Damien Hirst galloping way past Pablo Picasso’s record $25 million for 88 works in 1993, said Sotheby.
“And it proved there is no shortage of art buyers even in the current economic gloom, which hit new depths after the collapse of US investment giant Lehman Brothers plunged the financial markets into turmoil,” noted the AFP.
The Independent reported Qatar's royal family, the Scottish property entrepreneur David Roberts, and a number of oil-wealthy Russians among Hirst's biggest patrons in that auction.
Before you get lost in facts and figures that can only boggle the minds of millions of desperately struggling inhabitants of this planet, spend a moment contemplating the auction’s outrageously daring bestseller, The Golden Calf.
Inside a tank made of glass and gold-plated steel was a real calf with solid 18-carat hoofs, horns and a golden disc on its forehead that sold for 10.3 million pounds (US $18.8). Beyond price, the London Guardian spells out its pinpoint symbolism of world history at the edge: “the false idol set up and worshipped by the Israelites before an enraged Moses berated them for idolatry.” The art world found it irresistible:
We know that Moses, fresh from the Burning Bush (yes, a strange coincidence, that), went beyond berating the idolaters of his day when he smashed their idol with the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Biblical history repeating itself is a possibility broached by a 21st century artist described as “obsessing about life and death, questioning art world fame, and believing that art and beauty make a difference in the modern world.”
That quote is found in the Guardian article where you can also click to the slide show of some main pieces in that historic Sotheby auction, their unique materials and processes, and the religious provenance of their symbols.
Here now is deeper light from Damien Hirst’s biography in his website and this review of “I Want To Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now”— a book he wrote and produced to contain as much of his art philosophy and practice as could be contained between pages.
But since a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s a final eloquent image from Damien Hirst today. Encrusted with 8601 flawless diamonds and titled “For the Love of God,” a whole book has been written about this stunning piece.
There is, however, nothing quite like staring into its eyes. In this realm, in these times, even hyperbolic money lost and gained is less a measure of earthly worth as a coin of the unforgettable.
Respond to: slmayuga@yahoo.com
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