Caravaggio, the tariffs and dream of America within the fifties | Culture | EUROtoday

Reactionary thought idealizes and falsifies a previous that, in actuality, by no means existed, however which is meant to return like a sort of Eden in entrance of a gift tanned by horrible issues, similar to thought woke, Me Too, the investigation of slavery as one of many key moments within the historical past of the US, the 2030 Agenda, the local weather disaster or equal rights whatever the shade of the pores and skin, intercourse or faith that’s professed. Behind the nonsense of the tariff struggle unleashed by Donald Trump, who can result in the world economic system and his personal nation to the recession, he hides not solely an issue within the industrial steadiness, however the nostalgia for an idealized America, arrested within the fifties, earlier than the hippies and the good modifications of the sixties.

In addition to a rare journey narrator and a stable and enjoyable disseminator, the American author Bill Bryson is a superb chronicler of American life by way of books similar to Made in America o The Lost Continent, that begins with an excellent phrase: “I was born in deso. Someone had to happen”, which summarizes the sensation that the west medium is the closest factor to being anyplace. It additionally has a valuable guide of reminiscences, Adventures and misadventures of the boy twinkle (RBA, translation by Pablo Álvarez Ellacuria), through which he describes his childhood within the dream America of the fifties.

“I cannot conceive that throughout history there has been a more pleasant place or time than the United States in the 1950s,” he writes in a guide through which, regardless of the story of his completely happy childhood in Iowa, he describes with crudeness the institutional racism suffered by blacks and anti -communist hysteria, which dramatically lower the freedoms of many Americans. So a lot prosperity. He had not suffered bombings, and he barely had rivals. The solely factor American corporations ought to do was cease constructing tanks and battles and begin Buick automobiles and frigidaire fridges … and what in the event that they did. By 1951, after I got here to come back to the world, nearly 90% of the nation’s households had fridges, and nearly three quarters had washing machines, phone, vacuum and gasoline kitchens or electrical, issues with which the remainder of the world might solely dream. The Americans had 80% of world home equipment, managed two thirds of world productive capability and produced greater than 40% of electrical energy, 60% of oil and 66% of the planet’s metal. 5% of the world’s inhabitants, that’s, the United States, had better wealth than the remaining 95%. ”

Trump goals of that America through which Bill Bryson was born, as if the previous might return and as if society had not modified since then. The image of what stays of that misplaced world is in one of many poorest and most violent cities within the nation, which sooner or later was the image of commercial energy, Detroit, situated in the identical geographical space because the native Iowa of the writer of the writer of A quick historical past of virtually every part. The Detroit Museum of Art is situated in anybody’s land, between town heart that, roughly, has been recovered and the areas left by the hand of God, with deserted homes and apples and apples that appear taken from a zombie film.

The place the place this museum is particularly wonderful, which is among the many finest within the United States and the world. It is a constructing Art Deco, which homes 65,000 artistic endeavors, which mirror the richness and energy of the US automotive business, which had its epicenter in Detroit. Not solely are the work of Pissarro, by Claude Monet, Diego Rivera’s murals: it was the primary American museum that purchased a Van Goghan 1887 self -portrait that acquired in 1922. Two masterpieces particularly appeal to consideration: a caravaggio of 1598, Marta and María Magdalenaas a result of there are only a few work of this painter on the planet, and probably the most well-known canvases of Pieter Brueghel el Viejo, The marriage ceremony dance, of 1566, a type of works which have appeared on innumerable covers of books and posters. The first was acquired in 1973, when town was geared toward decay, and the second in 1930, when the mass manufacturing of automobiles started.

During the disaster that led Detroit to chapter, and that made the lifetime of its poorest inhabitants – those who had no different place to go – town, town thought of promoting any of these cadres to get well public providers, similar to collective transport, nevertheless it was inconceivable as a result of nobody had the correct to promote them. Actually, they belong to the previous of a metropolis that went and won’t return. The downside of Trump’s tariffs isn’t solely in his zero financial logic, however within the dream of commercial America through which he grew up (he was born a bit earlier than Bryson, in 1946), through which all issues have been in his place and social and racial injustice have been completely accepted.