Turning grey...

There’s a cold snap coming and for a few minutes it looked as if I might have to blog that today. Yes, when in doubt the weather is a reasonably safe subject. Unfortunately when I looked out of the window this morning I was met by a damp greyness much the same as the greyness that has been around for the last few weeks.

Nothing there then… well, nothing other than greyness and nobody really sees greyness after a while.

Chinese artist Liu Bolin isn’t grey. He has himself painted into invisibility with colour, merging like a chameleon into any background he chooses. Look closely and you’ll see him. It’s undoubtedly clever, certainly whimsical and amusing… but art? Now at this point I could blog about what art actually is. But of course that’s far too big a subject to be dealt with in this post. Besides I have a headache. I may come back to it at some other point though – so you have been warned.

Instead Liu made me think about how most of us try to merge into the background. He claims that his art is about how the individual is being absorbed into the fabric of China’s rapidly growing, ever changing backdrop. Okay I get that. I agree that it is hard to keep your individuality. Particularly as these days most people seem to be trying quite hard to become part of their surroundings, whatever those surroundings might be. Celebrity, the media, technology, the fact that there is hardly anywhere on earth where you can’t buy a pizza or grab a coke, probably all contribute to this greying out of our individuality.

For years I put on a suit and tie, cut my hair to an expected length, behaved in an acceptable way, did all the things that I was expected to do within the environment that surrounded me. We all do it. It’s easier to conform than to be different. For most people different is frightening, and fear will often lead to negative reactions. And of course, just how different can most people really be? Particularly as so many things that were once too different to be acceptable now pass without comment.

The world moves on and even those different people become the same eventually. Just look at all the old alternative comedians who are now fast becoming national treasures; the enfant terrible artists who are now the establishment of the art world; the wild rock stars whose outrages are no longer outrageous. Listen to the Sex Pistols; you’ll see what I mean. They sound so ordinary.

Perhaps as the world grows smaller, gets slowly more equal, flattens, and becomes bland and the same, there should be more chance to be different. But in a landscape where we increasingly all live in much the same way, access the same information, are sold and told to want the same things, and expect to live the life that television promises, we become increasingly uniform. Our tendency seems to be to allow ourselves to become sucked into the greyness.

The landscape we live in is changing. As it becomes less wrinkled, dangerous and varied we can step into it and, like a chameleon or Liu Bolin, stand invisible and unnoticed almost anywhere. Maybe, despite the wonderful colour the world has to offer, we are all turning grey.