The Follies of a Peninsular Existence

“The political pitch of Frederic Cabocel’s The Follies of a Peninsular Existence is obvious at a first glance, however metaphorical one chooses to take its theatrical tableau as; At the time of the painting’s completion, the artist’s homeland of France seemed to be on an inexorable path towards a graceless absorption by the European Union.

As usual, the silkscreened symbols in the background of the artist’s paintings are just as important as the foreground subjects, and so the viewer will find an inventory useful:

A labyrinth represents the Gordian Knot of European bureaucracy, shielding a delusional idealism from its inevitable collapse. The curious clock mechanism, originally sketched by Da Vinci, not only symbolizes the irredeemability of time, but is the artist’s own reference to the sinful and multicultural Tower of Babel (whose depiction by Bruegel the Elder served as the architectural inspiration for the European Union’s seat of parliament in Strasbourg). The coat of arms, found engraved on the Bridge of Sighs at Oxford University evokes the tenuous connection of Great Britain to the Continent.

Most esoteric (yet most significant) are the Ermines, the heraldic symbol of Brittany, rising together in the golden field to do battle with the monolithically hostile and spiritually hollow circle-of-stars. Breton nationalism is not as well-known as its Basque or Catalan analogues but nonetheless provides one of the countless challenges to the supremacy of the federal European superstate: If the small peninsula of Brittany—with its own ethnic heritage and regional language of Breizh—can find irreconcilable differences with the state of France, then what hope does the European Union have of peacefully integrating the culturally distinct nations of Europe?

The work’s color scheme matches that of his earlier painting, To All the Glories of France, but whereas the portrait of Louis XIV expressed nostalgia for a monarchic past, here is painted a terrifying vision of Europe’s neoliberal future, in which the blind drag the silenced into the blue, federalized abyss. The fourth character, a spectator, is both enlightened and passionate (observe the brightness of his face and the optically impossible coloring of his heart), but he is presently unable to act and save his people, either too cowardly to speak or too distracted by the spectacle to strike. Above him, the spirit of a renaissance warrior promises that bloody conflict will be inevitable, whether the individual desires it or not.”

Sinclair Britten Cabocel June 21, 2019