Weapons of the weak, China's problems, war's strange effects in Turkey & a political poet
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Max Ernst, Compendium of the History of the Universe, 1953.
As a young man in Cologne at the turn of the twentieth century, Ernst visited asylums and became obsessed with the art produced by patients there. As for other founders of Dada and Surrealism in the shadow of the birth of psychoanalysis, he sought ways to express the mess of the unconscious on canvas — but the curators at MOMA also sense another, more historically particular, basis for his interest in collage. Ernst produced art, as Freud treated patients, amid the fall of nineteenth century European civilisations and the experience of a hopeful and terrifying twentieth century, which saw him imprisoned in Paris as a German and then again by the Nazis as a maker of degenerate art before settling in America:
The fragmented logic of collage, which Ernst referred to as “the culture of systematic displacement,” persists in his paintings, whose subjects are disjointed even if their surfaces are smooth. In these foreboding dreamscapes, headless bodies and body-less hands appear incongruously amid lush forests or on deserted beaches. In the years leading up to World War II, and during his time as an émigré to the United States from 1941 to 1953, Ernst made work that once again reflected the menacing atmosphere of war.
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Weapons of the weak
From Lebanon to Iraq, groups under the Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance” umbrella have expressed their frustration with the lack of wider regional support for Palestinians in Gaza and confrontations with Israel. A rebel group from one of the poorest countries on earth, much battered by foreign aggression, has proved perhaps the most dedicated and effective of all in mounting that challenge. “A chain breaks,” Lenin famously said, “at its weakest link”:
To avoid Houthi threat in Red Sea, 299 vessels with a combined capacity to carry 4.3 million containers have either changed course or plan to. That’s about double the number from a week ago and equates to about 18% of global capacity. The diverted journeys around Africa can take as much as 25% longer than using the Suez Canal shortcut between Asia and Europe, according to Flexport. Those trips are more costly and may lead to higher prices for consumers on everything from sneakers to food to oil if the longer journeys persist.
Source: Bloomberg
China’s coming slump
Nearly nine-tenths of the foreign money that flowed into China’s stock market in 2023 has already left, spurred by mounting doubts about Beijing’s willingness to take serious action to boost flagging growth. Since peaking at Rmb235bn ($33bn) in August, net foreign investment in China-listed shares this year has dropped 87 per cent to just Rmb30.7bn, according to Financial Times calculations based on data from Hong Kong’s Stock Connect trading scheme. Traders and analysts said the reversal reflected pessimism over the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy among global fund managers. International investors have been persistent net sellers since August, when missed bond payments by developer Country Garden revealed the severity of a liquidity crisis in the country’s property sector. “The confidence issue goes beyond real estate, although real estate is key,” said Wang Qi, chief investment officer for wealth management at UOB Kay Hian in Hong Kong. “I’m referring to consumer confidence, business confidence and investor confidence — both from domestic and foreign investors.” Chinese shares have continued to underperform global peers in recent weeks despite a run of positive economic data, signs of a thaw in US-China relations and moves to give the financial system a stronger buffer against slowing growth by cutting the rates most lenders pay on deposits.
Source: FT
Overspill: Russia’s war shapes Istanbul’s housing market
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Deaths of despair are changing - and that tells us a lot about America
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Max Ernst, L’Ange du Foyer, 1937
120 years of American voting, in numbers
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The great political poet of mid-century France
Lilacs and the Roses by Louis Aragon
O months of flowering months of metamorphosis
May without a cloud and June lacerated
I will never forget the lilacs or the roses
Nor those spring’s folds have consecrated
I will never forget the tragic illusion
The procession cries crowd the sunlit clarity
The tanks laden with love the gifts from Belgium
The air that quivers the road this buzzing of bees
The rashness of victory that primes a quarrel
The red blood that a carmine kiss prefigures
And those about to die at the turrets, mortal,
Covered in lilacs by intoxicated watchers
I will never forget the gardens of France
Seeming the missals of vanished centuries
Nor the uneasy twilights enigma of silence
The roses all along the route of our journeys
The denial by flowers of the winds of panic
Of the soldiers passing by on wings of fear
Of the mad bicycles of the cannon, ironic,
Of the fake campers’ pitiable gear
Yet why does this tempest of images
Return me forever to one point of rest
At Saint Marthe A General Dark branches
A Norman villa the forest’s furthest edge
All’s quiet the enemy at rest in shadows
They say that Paris surrendered tonight
I’ll never forget the lilacs or the roses
Nor the twin loves we have lost outright
The first day’s bouquets lilacs lilacs from Flanders
Shadowy softness whose face death paints anew
And bouquets of the retreat roses tender
The colour of fire far roses of Anjou
May and June in this poem refer to May 1940 and June 1940 and the rollercoaster from the phony war to total defeat at the hands of the Wehrmacht, which France experienced during this period. Aragon’s poem appeared in December 1940 and is widely seen as heralding the emerging of the intellectual resistance.
Max Ernst, Castor and Pollution, 1923