My love of flags and bourgeois institutionality is unquenchable, and it’s not just irrational. I took this shot at the Met. I hope it conveys the linkage between hegemony and culture, or rather culture as hegemony. And all of that critical perspective remains true without obviating how art and collecting art and housing art is part of the civic fabric and social contract that most of us hold dear –with good reason. I like the red and white in combination with the beaux art decoration. On a hot day, it’s cool inside.
i like the fact that the civic fabric is fraying and torn at the upper left corner…. the infinite regress of bourgeois institutionality is, following benjamin (i just finished reading the arcades today, so forgive me), a sort of labyrinth. he says it lacks a Minotaur. i would say it has many and that its infinite complexity is a way of restraining them without the pretense of taming them. but there ought to be a tear in the fabric somewhere, there ought to be some hope of escape.
kudos to Hayyim’s excellent eye. the civic fabric in the flag in the photo is indeed just a little frayed. how could this happen at the Metropolitan of all places!!