Showing posts with label bourgeois individualism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bourgeois individualism. Show all posts

12 Mar 2014

On the Myth of Atlas

 Atlas, by Lee Lawrie (1937)

One of the most depressing and hateful works of art in the world is Lee Lawrie's seven ton, four-story high, art deco bronze sculpture of Atlas, which stands in front of the Rockefeller Centre in midtown Manhattan. The work, installed in 1937, depicts the ancient Greek Titan holding the heavens forever separate from the earth upon which he stands (it's a common misconception that he supports the latter on his mighty shoulders).

This eternal task or burden - assigned to Atlas as a punishment for his role in the war of the Titans against the gods of Olympus - makes my back ache just to think about it. I'm reminded of how Lawrence once joked that, similarly, it was time for Christ to come down from his Cross and give his poor arms a rest. I must confess, therefore, that the idea of Atlas having done with the judgement of Zeus - of simply shrugging his shoulders and walking away in an act of titanic irresponsibility - very much appeals. 

But, of course, for Ayn Rand and her objectivist-libertarian followers, this sculpture symbolizes something rather different. Atlas is not understood as a primeval deity or immortal giant, but as a more contemporary and more bourgeois figure; namely, a capitalist superman. And the conceit is that such a figure supports an ungrateful humanity on his back through his hard work, entrepreneurial genius and his tax dollars. If he were to simply shrug and shut-up shop, then as the protagonist of Rand's appalling fantasy John Galt says, the engine of the world would grind to a halt.  

This, of course, is an outrageous inversion of the fact that it is he and his tiny parasitic class who feed off the labour and the lives of the vast majority. The rich and powerful think they stand prior to, apart from, and above the rest of humanity, refusing to see how their own success is entirely dependent upon an intimate network of support (is a social phenomenon and not an individual accomplishment).

It's because the Randroids have so completely taken over the Atlas myth and made it their own that I find Lawrie's sculpture so compromised and objectionable: that and its fascistic execution in the first place.