Can I still call myself Surrealist -- this once shocking label -- or rather, Postrealist? There's nothing left to Surr- about. Reality has ceased to exist. In little Sweden, we've just had a case in the Supreme Court where a translator from Japanese was just this close to get sentenced for owning equally Japanese drawings of naked children. Or semi-naked. Very few people know. We're not allowed to see them. While the translator got away (but just barely; good for keeping others on their toes) the insecurity remains. Svenska Dagbladet (major Swedish daily) quotes mangaka Natalia Batista who laments the "mental handcuffs" and general fear among comic artists that followed in the wake of this little scene, straight out of Franz Kafka. Do I dare to draw this and that? -- they wonder. Will I land in jail for holding a pencil? (I might not, in the future, be allowed to draw slightly melting houses as they aren't safe for the Toons to live in.)
This queasiness must be precisely what the Court intended. I'm not as optimistic as the accused, Mr. Lundström, who is now "relieved" that Sweden has not become "a place that prohibited certain expressions of the imagination". As I see it, the Supreme Kafka has jolly well tried, through frightening as many illustrators as possible.
We must do the opposite -- by drawing (or writing, or composing, or simply thinking) yet more wicked things, increasing the general subversion, perhaps also perversion. When reality is no more (and it can't be said to exist any more when you end up in court for drawing pictures of imaginary crimes) it is up to us to decide which kind of reality we want; colourful or boring.
Colour brings us back to surrealism, this excellent tool for subversion. Our young accordionist above (I still add a little on "City Lights" now and then) was inked with simple lines, with space for serendipitous subconscious at work; a classic surreal method. Now, in oil, she's kind of lingering between being clothed and not-- indeed, one might see hints of both, and I should get highly individual answers from my audience on which she is; the subconscious is a democratic thing. (You really won't know before the music stops...) Thus, what the artist does is but to set your imagination going, and I am beginning to wonder if certain officials are against "certain expressions of the imagination" -- or imagination on the whole. Shoot the messenger.
...perhaps, I think, it wants a little colour too?
