Why are you remaking Romans of the Decadence?

I have a long history with the original painting by Couture. In my first encounter with the work in 2015 I came across the painting in an social media post online that displayed a photo of it as a backdrop in a travel article. I searched for more information about this oddly intriguing image, and as I learned more about it I became fascinated with the idea of an artist, who was essentially disgusted with and pissed off at his society attempting to present such a strong critique of his day using a time prior than his own and in such a large-scale historical painting format.

I had the privilege of making a trip to Paris specifically to see the painting at the Musée d'Orsay in 2016, and this began my interest in recreating this artwork. It was everything and more than I had imaged, a grand and sweeping gesture, heroically gutsy and important, and yet it has this odd air of being forgotten, overlooked, not taken to heart, as empires marched onwards after its creation, repeating the same mistakes; I am speaking specifically of the American empire. Additionally, the size of the painting, in person, felt off putting, as if Couture knew it was too much, like he was hiding a message that he felt might be too dangerous to make directly about the current powers that be, and yet he knew that with these almost absurd  proportions that the viewer would be forced into a deeper read.

I began to understand Romans of the Decadence as a message across the ages, a dire warning from one era of empire to future eras about the lies built into our ideas about progress. It said to me very clearly and very loudly that all future generations should heed this warning lest they fall into the same trap of privilege and malaise that Couture was forcing us to consider with this massive work of art. He could have not been louder or clearer, and all I could wonder is: How is it that we don't talk about this painting more? How is it that it feels like somewhat of a marginal artwork in the history of art? Why is this not taught in every school, in every art and history and sociology class? I had never heard of this painting after having attended four years of undergraduate school at UC Berkeley studying history and philosophy and art. I had never once heard this painting discussed in three years of my MFA program at UT Austin which had a strong art history requirement built into the curriculum. I knew that I had to bring this work to life in the present, and that was when my journey with this artwork began in true, because I knew, and I know even more clearly now that Couture's warning was spot on; we haven't evolved at all beyond the time of this painting; today we are just as mired in our own decadence; drunk with malaise, a culture drowning in mindless consumerism and self-fascination, and at such a great cost to ourselves and the world. So, this has become my purpose and mission with recreating this artwork; I want to present a critical and sober view of American decadence today, so that we may hopefully see ourselves and move forward from it. This has always been a recurring theme in my work: the idea of complicity, of participation, of asking how much of the blame for any of our social ills can be placed on the system and how much can be placed on us, and where is that line exactly, if it even truly exists or matters.

But: Why am I remaking it? Why does it matter to me so much?

The answer is, because over the past 10 years in particular I feel like living in the US is like living in a land of fucking zombies. Am I crazy? Let me explain it like this: recently, I watched a great documentary called “Breakdown: 1975” (Netflix, trailer here). It helped me frame very clearly why I want to make Americans of the Decadence right now, today. 1975 was a critical year, marking a massive shift away from the communalist "hippy" revolt of the 60's and 70's, where suddenly, in 1975, you saw the emergence of "radical nostalgia" in TV shows like Happy Days, which idealized the 1950's white suburban life, where everyone started looking back to those "good old days". We also saw TV shows like All In the Family, which was brilliant, and outlined the contrast between the 1960s–70s counterculture and the 1930s–40s generation. So, while there were holdouts of intelligence and cultural progress, like All in the Family, the slide truly started nonetheless in 1975, turning into an avalanche when the hippies began focusing on "me" and personal evolution. This is the thesis of the documentary, by the way - not my personal analysis - namely, that the "therapy" generation emerged, and people started blaming themselves for the world's ills rather than the system. It's a fascinating analysis when you think of it this way: the focus shifted from "us" and "we" to "me" - which, of course, we now see in the most extreme version of social media, much like watching crazed animals endlessly grooming themselves in front of the camera. 

At the same time Reagan stepped into the scene and is really - as you see in this documentary - the template for Trump, literally saying "Make America Great Again." Trump was also an actor, a famous reality TV host whose entire life had been on public display before his run for office in 2016. Right around 1975 we started seeing Reagan pop-up on shows like Johnny Carson, and Reagan, like Trump today, knew exactly how to speak to generations that had grown up on TV & Hollywood. 

It is from this point on in 1975 (my views now, not the film's) that the American social psychology starts to truly rot (though the rot has been there from day one - worse at times, more violent, vile and racist for sure). However, a deep new rot sets in: the rot of idiocy, exemplified by the mindless, drooling Wal Mart consumer who slowly but surely hands his life over to debt. This consumer accepts being devoured by an oligarchy that eats him alive, and he accepts it because he's trapped in front of a TV (now a smartphone) mesmerized by the distractions of a society built on the holy grail of endless fast-disposable debt-ridden consumption. This is compounded by a physical diet of chemicals that dull and stupefy, a predatory financial system and a drug pusher pharmaceutical system that literally hooks him on opioids and endless drugs from cradle to grave that drive him right to the most expedient death possible while extracting the most "value" to the corporate puppet masters pulling the strings above, all abetted by a fully sold out representative class in DC. This is further compounded by an education system that ranks among the poorest compared to peer countries, a health system that functions as a Ponzi scheme for creating more debt (the single greatest cause of individual bankruptcy in the US) and a gutted, carceral state with little or no remaining social safety net and the underlying message that the system could care less, you are on your own, and that’s how it supposed to be. In fact, that's what we call "freedom" now: the freedom to be enslaved to a late stage capitalism from which escape means nothing more than greater levels of consumption and debt. And all along, we have Hollywood making sure this message rings true, churning out "freedom, democracy, bootstraps, American dream and greatest country on earth" narratives. Celebrities now openly tell us that selling out is the end goal. Get your big TV, movie, music deal, you name it celebrity gig and get your clothing line, your big recurring commercial spot, your perfume, your sneaker line, your signature handbag line, and slop it up and guess what, they tell us: You too can sell out just like me and live the good life! And that's all we aspire to now: selling out as fast as possible, openly. Selling out is seen, in and of itself, as success. No matter how you got there player, you got there, am I right? Or my favorite: Don't blame the playa' blame the game.

So here we are, funding genocides, our politicians openly talking about nuclear options and the end of times in the same breath, the climate falling off a cliff we can’t climb back from while we guzzle more and more oil, and we can't get up. We're glued to the ground. We weigh 10,000 lbs. We can't do anything because we’ve lost the very functions needed to do so. Sociologists, anthropologists, historians and political scientists will write about this in the years ahead, if we survive ourselves, and the title of all those books will read: “It Took 50 Years”, and the analysis will all be the same: it took 50 years to create a totally passive, incapacitated, zombie society so distracted that it allowed a fraction of a fraction of its own population to walk them right off a cliff, happily, smiling, pushing an Amazon "buy now" button, hell, paying to push the button to pay for the thing! 

This is what is most disturbing to me. I feel like I'm in a land of zombies, because I am.

As I said, we have psychopathic religious zealots at the highest levels of political office openly stating their beliefs about the end of times with their finger on the nukes while we're out in the proverbial left field, bloated and grazing on Taylor Swifts, Kanyes, Final Fours and Met Galas. This isn't the US population ignoring another Vietnam. It's far worse. We are paying for a genocide; we are staring at our children gun each other down with assault rifles in school; we are watching school girls get bombed by AI. And we are doing nothing, glued to little televisions in our pockets 24/7, and we have no elected body to rely on. All of them are in on it. All of them are captive to the ruling order that controls them, which can't see beyond the bottom line. We are standing at the slaughter, and we can’t even see it, not even collectively as a society. We are utterly lost in the worst imaginable way and its being fully documented, and we're watching it run in front of our own eyes! That’s why I want to make Americans of the Decadence, because we are at the cliff. This is the end, and I don’t have any other skills aside from making art; that’s what I do, as they say. So, at the very, very least, I’ll say something about it, document it in some manner that hopefully is emotionally engaging and can be some sort of odd gift to future generations of humans (if we survive ourselves), that says what Couture says, that affirms his greatest fears, because he was right, but he had no idea how bad it could get, no idea.

If humanity survives the American nightmare then hopefully there will be something to learn from this moment, and some fraction of that will be expressed in this artwork.