Sculpture As Prophecy

The above sculpture can be found by a Seventh Street Washington Mutual entrance in Los Angeles. In front of the statue is a poem by Phillip Larkin which follows.

They said
I had a head
for business.
They said
to get ahead
I had to lose
my head.
They said
be concrete
& I became
concrete.
They said
go, my son,
multiply,
divide, conquer.
I did my best.

The sculpture was built in 1990 to protest the '80s saving & loans bailout (provided to the American taxpayer by John McCain, Shambollocks shall remind you). Its current placement proves distinctly prophetic. Two decades from now, let's make sure hard lessons will be learned so that this statue reflects an understanding that the market not only provides but can just as casually dissolve assets at an alarming rate.

Picture from View From A Loft.

Fortieth Anniversary of Paris Protests

Over forty years ago this year, middle-class Parisians, teachers, and students took to the streets of their city to protest the poverty and unemployment which they had been subjected to by the de Gaulle government. Students and faculty took over the Ecole des Beaux Arts and formed the Atelier Populaire. The Atelier Populaire paperbilled the cities with a series of screens. Creative Review features a number of these posters from an exhibit at the Hayward Project Space in London.

The Paris street protests took down de Gaulle's government and ushered in the social protections which would become standard all over Western Europe. All in all, these protestors were much more able than our own. An interesting look back, and some fascinating street art.