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WTC > paintings

 

When I was a kid, 2001 was the predicted year when Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's Space Wheel # 5
would finally and at last achieve its Blue Danube beautiful swirl around the Earth. Her graceful revolutions leaving far behind
the tin can mechanic called ISS -only existing International Space Station since 1998, year of its start of blending.

Instead of this in 2001, we had the Bin Laden murderer and his al Qaeda devout accomplices.

In 2001, instead of progress and optimism, of the beauty of an orbital Space Wheel and the message of hope and dream that
she sent to the stars, we got chaos, carnage, ruin, war, the hatred and the obscurantism of a fanatical totalitarianism which,
since the 11th of September 2001, has proven to Mankind every day that it had nothing to envy its two predecessors
of the XXth Century. The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The red, the brown, and the green.

In 2001, in place of the World Trade Center remained nothing but a bleeding city under debris, corpses, dust, toxic fumes.
And then the world got ravaged by a blind and groundless war led by a mountebank who willingly mistook his enemy's country
and his target. Because he just fancied the idea of finishing his father's job in Iraq. A disastrous and meaningless remake of
the Nineties Gulf War. And an alibi for grabbing the oil.

In 2001, in place of the vanished World Trade Center, we had to try and tame Fear, Death and Horror.
We had to decide that we would not endure their outrages, their crimes and their injustice. These are the reasons of my
2002 project. I rejected chaos and nothingness, and I decided to believe that the marvelous architectures of a Great
Space Wheel above the sky, and that of Twin Towers upright towards the sky would not die, because Dream never must.
That is why I imagined a Renaissance of the Towers, and made my paintings. Unrealistic, and megalomaniac, and ridiculous?
Perhaps. Possibly. And so what. The New York Twin Towers were unique and therefore deserved a singular effort and an unconditional dedication. I gave them both, because I believed in a Renaissance for them that could have happened.

Here is the story of why and how it did not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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© Jacques Benoit. Design, œuvres, photographies et textes par Jacques Benoit et placés sous son copyright. Les contenus provenant d'autres sources sont crédités comme tel, ainsi que leur origine.
© Jacques Benoit. Design, works, photographies and texts by Jacques Benoit and under the author’s copyright. Except when derived from other sources and then mentioned as such.