Topsy-Turvy

When High Art hits the street, literally:

(I took these photos on St. Patrick's Day last weekend, in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park)
The work of Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham and Spike Jonze becomes the nightly resting place for an hapless indigent. Though I agree "there are times when people need stories more than they need nourishment, because the stories feed something deeper than the needs of the body" (thank you, Charles de Lindt), I suspect this fellow would like a softer place to fall.

This imagery embraces a favorite theme of mine, the social meaning of Carnival and the Grotesque, which I mentioned a couple of days ago. In Carnival there is the "temporary suspension of all hierarchic distinctions and barriers among men,"* and "bringing life down to earth," and so High Art becomes tushy cushion under a bum's bum. But I'm too tired to bore you more with that now. Click on the title, "Topsy-Turvy," then you can read all about it.


*Mikhail Bakhtin