131

Drawing (131) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP

"Dial NERVOUS for the Time: in the 70s, dialing the letters of the word "nervous" on New York telephones would give you 637868770, the number of the speaking clock. Nervous Nuts and doped-up junkies: an office scene with four models staged as a caricature of business life – an advertising photo from the period for the drink Hohes C – at some point shortly before heroin and cocaine replaced the vitamins previously handed out on management floors and in real estate offices, thus allowing cynicism to become real. Hazelnuts in all combinations of positive and negative, a telephone conversation being held with the biggest nut there, with an assistant with meticulously blown-dry hair on hand with a shorthand notebook at the ready, behind her a cross-eyed boss idolized by his trainee with a suitable sense of devotion. There is no object at the centre of the image, but rather an imaginary framework of lines of sight, holding this society together with a voice from the other side which is by no means as civil as it sounds: 'One final push if you want to be Republicans.'" (From: arsenal, september 13).

(1978)

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