The Current Cinema - A note from John Conomos revelling in Ruben Östlund's Palme d'Or winner THE SQUARE (Sweden, 2017)

The two images (top and bottom, click to enlarge) are from Ruben Östlund's wickedly and achingly funny satire about our contemporary art world,  The Square (Sweden, 2017). In particular, these images are from the tour de force satire of the uber-conformity, theatricality and irrelevance of the art world in the context of our global dystopia/political order.

I have never laughed so much so in a movie theatre in a month of blue moons! The performance artist standing amongst the museum dinner crowd dressed to the nines savagely confronts them in his post-King Kong confrontation/mirror image with their life-denying, mechanised, sterile and intellectual and behavioural conformity rituals and beliefs . This bravura simian set piece of surreal satire and critique directly embodies all the underlying crippling mythologies and values that characterises our contemporary art world so much so that critics like Dave Hickey are waving goodbye to the herd circus that is our art world today. Harold Rosenberg in the past has written much about the herd aesthetics and dynamics of the self-promoting independent minds that make up such a paradoxical conflicted theatrical world.