Posted May 2008:
Luckily, Canadean’s Beer
Strategy Conference in Madrid (see my News Section)
coincided with a major art exhibition, showing more than 200
works by Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) at Madrid’s Prado art
museum. The exhibition titled “Goya in times of war” marks
the bicentennial of the 1808-1814 Peninsular War during
which Napoleon’s forces invaded Spain.
It is not a show for the
squeamish or the faint-hearted, as many of the paintings and
drawings depict in unnerving detail the horrors man is
capable of unleashing. The centrepiece of the exhibition
features two large-scale masterworks, called the Second and
Third of May 1808 in Madrid, specially restored for the
show. They depict a gruesome revolt against French forces in
Madrid and the chilling reprisal by Napoleon's troops the
following day.
What is most unnerving to
see in Goya’s paintings, even in his commissioned portraits,
is gradual degradation of human faces to mugs. Noblemen,
burghers, peasants, all share the same features: mouths
agape in an idiotic grin, eyes half shut. Blank. Without
esprit, thought, or intelligence. More ape-like than human.
The most disturbing of Goya’s paintings, the fourteen
“pinturas negras”, were not even included in the show but on
display in the permanent collection of the Prado one floor
down. Very little is known about these paintings only that
Goya directly painted them onto the walls of his country
house nine years before he died. Goya received no commission
for them nor was he under any obligation to make these
paintings. They were done for himself, as a visual
reflection on the condition of humankind and the world.
Goya’s world view must
have been Manichaean (the belief in the dualism of light and
darkness with no omnipotent merciful god) to be able to
stand the sight of these paintings as he ate and entertained
in these rooms. If these paintings exude any palpable
atmosphere, it is one of overwhelming darkness and despair.
The most heart wrenching painting of them all is the one
titled
“The half-submerged Dog". This is the most enigmatic of
all the black paintings. A dog, half sunk in sand or water,
gazing into emptiness, and nothing else. It is difficult to
say what the painting is all about. Is the dog sinking in or
trying to escape, jumping up and sticking out its head? All
these explanations are plausible but none of them is charged
with expressiveness as the painting itself is which emanates
ostracism, dejection, and anguish.
I am still pondering the
coincidence of half-submerged creatures in art, distanced by
one and a half centuries. A week after looking at Goya’s Dog
I went to see Samuel Beckett’s play “Happy Days” (1961) in a
production by the grand old man of experimental theatre,
Peter Brook (83) in Potsdam. Beckett’s protagonist Winnie, a
woman no longer young, is embedded up to her bosom in a
mound of earth. We learn that she has not always been buried
in this way but we never discover how she came to be trapped
so. Talking compulsively, Winnie begins her day. After the
sounding of the transcendental bell, she offers up a
half-forgotten prayer and then sets about her daily routine.
As she removes the items from her bag – a comb, a toothbrush
the writing on which she spends most of the first act trying
to decipher, toothpaste, a bottle of patent medicine,
lipstick, a nail file, a revolver which she feels the need
to quickly kiss and a music box – she prattles away to her
husband, Willie who lives in a cave behind the mound.
Winnie is certainly
terrified of being alone in that mound of earth under the
blazing sun, but she is particularly afraid of speaking
unheard, without the possibility of any response. Winnie's
raison d'être is to speak: “I talk therefore you are.” And
so she natters on and on, not to let the absurdity of life
and man’s abject destitution overtake her “pernicious and
incurable optimism” (Beckett).
Goya’s Dog and Beckett’s
Winnie: two ways of transmuting existential angst into
exaltation. Well, in Winnie’s case that was helped by a deep
gulp from that bottle of medicine for the “instantaneous
improvement” for a variety of ills, such as the “loss of
spirits, lack of keenness, want of appetite.” Did she have
beer perchance?
*
Ever since we met at
Rüdiger Ruoss’ World Beer & Drinks Forum in Munich in 2001,
Germain Hansmaennel, the one and only “independent world
beer economist”, and I have kept a dialogue going. What have
we talked about? The obvious: the international brewing
industry, the nature of deals and where it would all lead
to. Whenever we met, we exchanged views, did some more
research, met again, discussed our findings, agreed or
disagreed. Much like the Greek philosophers Plato and
Socrates who preferred the spoken word over the written, did
our dialogue avoid scripting. That I have now called this
site “beer monopoly” owes much to this dialogue. It is also
a tribute to Germaine, whose wealth of experience (at
Kronenbourg Breweries and later Danone), sharp intelligence
and charming unselfconsciousness have made our dialogue and
the search for truth so pleasurable.
In all fairness, it has to
be said that it was Germaine, who came up with idea that the
consolidation and globalisation processes in the brewing
industry resemble the Monopoly game – a board game which
itself was modelled on trends and tendencies in the market
economy, albeit with an added challenge: chance.
When we made our point at
the 2005 World Beer & Drinks Forum, arguing that over the
past two decades the brewing industry has been engaged in
what could only be called “Life imitating Art”, we were
publicly scolded by Wolfgang Salewski, then CEO of Mr
Schörghuber’s beer empire, Brau Holding International (Paulaner).
He thought the contention outrageous that deal-making in the
brewing industry was anything like a game. Apparently, Mr
Salwesky, a psychologist by training, had been unaware of
the finer points of the use of metaphor. In any case, a few
months later he was no more. Mr Schörghuber and Mr Salewski
had parted ways.
Germaine has since gone on
to expound his ideas particularly in the annual Barth-Report
and in numerous articles. He has recently published a
missive (in Brewing and Beverage Industry International
1/2008) that the time of the beer world monopoly is over. He
predicts that future deals will involve extra-brewing
industry players. Although I think that the new scenario
delineated by Germaine with some conviction is highly
likely, I do believe, however, that the era of the beer
monopoly is not quite completed yet, that a few changes in
the ownership of the brewing industry’s equivalent to
“Oxford Street”, “Park Lane” and “Mayfair” are still more
than likely.
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