Fin de Millénaire.

Text by Dr. Moritz Rudolph

Galamb Thorday’s paintings show scenes of liquefaction. The face of the old baroness is already fading behind the fan, of which the choice of colour has become arbitrary. She bears it with composure, for she knows, just like Madame Pompadour, that «after us, the flood». The flood is triggered by a bearded mermaid who rises from the water, not to seduce but to destroy. His hair forms a flywheel that churns up the sea. Through the eye of the wave, we can already see its destination: A town on the coast where life still goes on as usual. Yet the changes do not escape the attentive. Even though «all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned» (Marx), the old ghosts creep back in. Blue fairies dwell at the chocolate fountain, and those who squeeze a lemon to season their oysters are watched by strange shadowy creatures. In another painting, two people raise their glasses once more to touch each other like Michelangelo’s Adam. But the lens is cracked. No one believes that two gods are meeting here, instead disenchanted people sit by the waterfall who just want to drink and enjoy the scenery once more before the sun sets and the waterfall comes down on them. No salvation comes from Asia either. In the shape of the blue lotus the Blue Flower of Romanticism, which today many assume to be in the Far East, eludes the grasp of hands that have become functionless. Their scissor fingers can at best cut. In the garden of the self-proclaimed master, there is indeed freshly brewed tea. The black pot hovers menacingly over the ceremony. The stone structure he has built 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 supper is still being quickly served as a sushi buffet, while it is already on its way to another world. It is the downfall not only of the Occident, but of the whole world. The culmination of the Fin de Siècle into the finale of humanity, the Fin de Millénaire, of which Galamb Thorday is the chronicler. Born in the Imperial and Royal city of Keszthely, she presumably has a particularly fine sense for declining pompous cultures and the “Sunday of life” when one does not come to rest, but everything melts away.