Galamb ThordayREQUITAL

Fin de Millénaire.

Galamb Thorday's pictures are scenes of liquefaction. The old baroness's face is already fading behind the fan, whose choice of colours has become arbitrary. She bears it with composure because, like Madame Pompadour, she knows that "after us comes the deluge". It is triggered by a bearded mermaid who rises from the water, not to seduce but to destroy. Her hair forms a whirlpool and a flywheel that stirs up the sea. Through the eye of the wave, we can already see her destination: A town on the coast, where life still goes on as usual.
But the observant do not miss the changes. Even if "all that is stately and standing is vaporised and all that is sacred is desecrated" (Marx), the old ghosts creep back in. The blue fairies dwell at the chocolate fountain, and strange shadowy creatures watch as you squeeze a lemon to flavour your oysters. In another picture, two people raise their glasses once again to touch each other like Michelangelo's Adam. But the lens is cracked. No one believes that two gods are meeting here, but rather disenchanted people who want to drink and savour one last time before the sun parts and the waterfall falls on them.

No salvation comes from Asia either. The blue flower of romance, which many people today assume to be in the Far East, eludes the grasp of hands that have become functionless in the shape of the blue lotus. Their scissor fingers can at best cut. There is freshly brewed tea in the garden of the self-proclaimed master. But the black pot hovers menacingly over the ceremony. And the stone structure he has erected for the purpose of cosmic calming seems extremely unstable. Even the swing of the pendulum does not prevent the demons from coming. They are already creeping around the Western woman's bikini body, on which the last evening meal is quickly served as a sushi buffet, while it is already on its way to another world. It is the downfall not only of the West, but of the whole world. The culmination of the Fin de Siècle into the finale of humanity, the Fin de Milénaire, chronicled by Galamb Thorday. Born in the imperial and royal city of Keszthely, she probably has a particularly keen sense for declining splendour cultures and the Sunday of life, when you don't come to rest, but everything melts away.