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Filed under: Sempé Fi Tagged: art, books, cartoons, comics, covers, Fantagraphics, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Ivan Brunetti, Pollux
Pollux writes:
The color gray dominates Ivan Brunetti’s bird’s-eye-view of a typical American cube farm on the cover of The New Yorker for March 2, 2009. In this corporate necropolis of worthless PCs, dried-out water coolers, filthy coffee pots, and nauseating microwaveable meals, the wheels of American commerce fitfully turn like those on a rusty pump trolley. Even more defective than the machinery are the workers themselves: they weep, sleep, drink coffee, throw around office equipment, argue, and suffer termination, germophobia, and Post-it Note overload. They look for shoes and romance, both of the online and office varieties, and dance fitfully at a potluck. They get caught looking at pornography and lose precious time as the bespectacled Help Desk Guy dismantles their computer with a ruthless drill.
Brunetti’s “Ecosystem” is a corporate world that at first glance seems to be a beehive of industry and activity, but we soon come to an awful conclusion about this American workplace: little work is actually being done. In the sickly gasps of a failing economy, we hear verses, through a defective intercom system, from Alighieri’s Inferno: “Here heartsick sighs and groanings and shrill cries / Re-echoed through the air devoid of stars.”
I wish this world were imaginary, for the U.S. economy’s sake, but as a reluctant inhabitant of this type of purgatory myself, I find Brunetti’s vision all too familiar. I have witnessed a Mardi Gras Potluck in which managers and supervisors walked around in feathered carnival masks while workers happily clipped their fingernails, checked Facebook for the umpteenth time, made multiple trips to the break room for bratwurst, Lay’s Potato Chips, and stomach-churning lumps of cheese and steak, and looked forward to a night of office-sponsored glow-in-the-dark miniature golfing.
By a trick of perspective we look at Brunetti’s egg-headed, stick-limbed figures not from above, but follow them on a downward trajectory as if in an etching by Piranesi. All are locked in their compartments, doomed to scamper endlessly on a hamster wheel they themselves have maintained. The artist’s cartoon figures, normally subjected to the most wicked and outrageous torments (see, for example, his book HAW!: Horrible, Horrible Cartoons), now participate in the most perverse ordeal of all: the daily routine of office life.
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Hello! We're a small band of media enthusiasts, culture addicts, and journalists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, formerly a New Yorker fan site, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, politics, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
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Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Writing on theater: reviews (for Time Out Chicago; imperfect but workable search results)
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
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Comments
Outstanding once again, Pollux. Not only is it apparently abuzz with activity that is (upon closer inspection) completely pointless, it’s also the most adorable representation of sheer misery I can remember seeing, ever. Even after you take in all the horrific details, it continues being cute as hell.