Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Puppets

World Puppetry Day, comes every March 21.

The idea came from the puppet theater Artist Javad Zolfaghari from Iran. In 2000 at the XVIII Congress of the Union Internationale de la Marionnette, (UNIMA) in Magdeburg, he made the proposal for discussion. Two years later, at a meeting of the International Council of UNIMA in June 2002 in Atlanta, the date of the celebration was identified. The first celebration was in 2003.

Well then, all those media puppets whose strings are being pulled by corporations, banks, plutocrats et al, in this part of the world, should feel quite at home today.

What first came to mind when I noticed that it is World Puppetry Day ? This painting by Michael Cheval:

Clicking on the image should bring forth a slightly larger version.

There are other puppet-related paintings by this artist, including a different version of this one. I like this one because, looking closely, we see that even the puppeteers are subject to their own strings being pulled, from even higher up the "food chain".

No comments: