The Fools We Are

Storytelling and Mockery in Art Reveal Our Shortcomings

It’s fall in full force in the art world. Exhibition season has started, the weather and our moods are crazy everywhere, and this creativity and madness stirs change. Three events collided in a copious amount of folly in my personal art world. Happy October, I guess! 

With a chill in the Canadian air, we set out on a ghost tour of Old Montréal. Stories of gruesome history and cultural injustices paved the way for hauntings and mysteries that continue inexplicably to this day. It made me think of the injustices that are happening around the world. Lives lost and people forgotten make us fools in storytelling but reckless in real life. What does it say about our humanity if we neglect the helpless? Storytelling, the most ancient artform, is meant to amuse, but there are homilies behind the anecdotes. Sometimes we have to hide what we’re really saying so as not to upset the fools. Or is it that only the fools can tell the truth? 

This lesson is more readily observed in an artwork I saw this week, which brings me to the second event. Storytelling is potent with a visual aid. This artwork by Banksy is a welcome mat made from used life vests found on the shores of the Mediterranean. Banksy has a profound commentary on the migrant crisis and Europe’s inability to deal with the problem in that area of the world. Here, he presents the irony of welcoming our neighbors juxtaposed by the bright cheery colors of the lifesaving device that’s often inadequate to those who drown from overcrowded and broken down vessels. The artwork is for sale in a partnership with Love Welcomes, an organization created in response to the refugee crisis. 

Welcome Mat was part of the exhibition “The Art of Banksy Without Limits” showing now in Montréal. Banksy knows we’re all fools and uses subversive humor to call out injustices and create dialogue around difficult issues. He’s an anonymous yet well-known street artist with a thirty year career. Traveling incognito around the world, his street art and graffiti appear overnight with no notice. The public finds it and hypes it on the internet. He’s got the greatest non-marketing marketing machine ever created. It’s crowdsourcing without an official campaign. His illegal acts draw attention to the farcity of war, the irresponsibility of governments and organizations, and the unbelievable non-response from all of us. He creates a call to action with his obscurity. With only stencils and spray paint, he enrages our political sensitivities while we laugh in amusement. It’s audacious artist activism for the masses- us fools.   

  

Third up on my list of buffoonery and moronic artistic storytelling this week is the exhibition “Saints, Sinners, Lovers and Fools: Three Hundred Years of Flemish Masterworks” at the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts. The last section was curated with flair. I’ll highlight the spotlight piece The Mocking of Human Follies (Frans Verbeeck, 1510-1570). This canvas of fools is rich in details and color. It’s the scene of a marketplace on the banks of a river teeming with boats delivering fools. Merchants sell fools that frolic in hiding places and scatter everywhere. The inn in the background is on fire and no one seems to notice. The entire scene is incendiary, engulfed in chaos and mockery, and noisy with the perils of brainlessness. We are delusional about our sins and shortcomings and oblivious to our burning houses. This masterpiece will drive you mad with mockery. And yet, we deserve it. We are all fools.