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About the Picture
Schlegal wrote in the fragments that: ‘Morality without a sense of paradox is vulgar’ (Schlegal, Ideas, 76).
The judgement being passed here through the lenses of the German expressionist artists Otto Dix and George Grosz, is that:
for one to experience a sense of moral outrage, one must first have thought the sin themselves. In the warehouses, loading
bays and stock rooms live a motley cast of characters. It is not only the bourgeoisie who stand in line for social criticism.
A fat ghost encourages a young boy's lust, as he vainly throws out the snake in his bucket: his double, the serpent boss coils
under the sheets of an old tabloid. The man in his bow tie turns on an axis with a skeletal partner. Ignoring everything
stands a gaggle of slothful workers, taking an endless coffee break. Warming all their souls the dragon-vase breaths fire
into the machine-room. A businessman rushes through the scene, his wristwatch transformed into a gormless fish. Everyone
working here, lord, serf or slave, is torn ironically between productivity and inactivity, need and abstinence, control and
irresponsibility.
Click on the image to see the picture in more detail.
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