Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/16/nighthawks-in-quarantine.html
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Erasing humans from his paintings oddly just reinforces the feeling of nothingess and detachment one was left with after seeing a recent exhibit of his work at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
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I like this version better.
The OP one suggests that diner won’t be coming back.
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Looks like empty shelves of toilet paper.
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The OP one is probably more accurate. There is going to be a bloodbath of small businesses and even more consolidation by the Big Boys.
That may be why it’s so affecting.
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Especially with restaurants, which are pretty low-margin to begin with. Being shut down for weeks/months isn’t survivable for most. When the dust settles - hell, even before that - it’ll be weird to see whole sectors of the economy laid to waste as restaurants and nightclubs and bars and movie theaters, etc. are just gone…
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Yep. And then the commercial landlords that will go belly up because their tenants won’t be paying rent, the landlords for the waitstaff and cooks etc. etc. The idea that we can get out of this without a major recession is the most unbelievable of fantasies. The fact that Trump promotes that very fantasy is just another piece of evidence of just how stupid he is. How can anybody not SEE that?
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This is why I thought the stock market response was actually quite optimistic. And why I find the Trump/Republican economic aid response to be appallingly inadequate and even downright disingenuous. (I wonder if the actual purpose of the proposed payroll tax break was to just weaken social security and medicare, since it did nothing for workers without paychecks.)
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I call it “piling sandbags on the low-tide line.”
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last time i was at the Chicago Art Institute I was entertaining myself by photographing closeups of obscure details of famous paintings. This is mine of Nighthawks, which made me notice this new rendering not only took out the people but all the other details and color too.
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Yeah, it’s really awful to think about. The big corporations have already started the heavy lobbying process for bailouts and Mnuchin is pressuring congress to gut the parts of Dodd/Frank that prevent the Fed from gifting to various financial and other corporate entities. Small business doesn’t have an office on K street and doesn’t have a voice.
I wonder just what the political outcome will be from another forgiveness program for parasites (banks, private equity, hedge funds, and any of the numerous corporations that have been issuing debt to buy back their own shares at the market top rather than invest for the future).
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I agree with @stefanjones. The @mstrohb is more optimistic.
Because they’ve been told to not see it.
True believers quickly become stuck in a paradox. They are indoctrinated from birth into a universe of fiction. The first time they see a fact that conflicts with the information they’ve been taught to believe, their brain kicks in and says, “wait, that’s not what I was told.” Their leaders counter their observation with “it’s the devil’s trick; listen to what we told you, and believe harder.”
By the time they reach adulthood, they are immune to actual facts, and have developed coping mechanisms for dealing with inconvenient truths. At this point they are able to witness a crime and deny it happened.
It’s not because they’re stupid. Their willful ignorance is due entirely to the effects of their upbringing; which they unfortunately pass on to their own offspring. They just can’t escape it because the capacity to question authority has been stripped from their toolboxes.
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A view of the original. [if my pc lets me post it]
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