Wessie – Page 9 – Wessie du Toit

The end of extraordinary politics?

I’ve been overseas for a few weeks, so I missed the election results coming in on December 12^th, and most of the ensuing media frenzy. Based on the odd headline I did see, it seemed as though the British political system had just been administered an enormous quantity of laxative; though whether Boris Johnson’s breaking of three years of parliamentary deadlock was a moment of profound relief or terrifying incontinence was, naturally, a contentious issue.

When I got back to the UK a couple of days ago, sleep-deprived after my journey and struggling to work, I decided to watch some of the election night coverage. Amidst all the praise and recriminations in response to Johnson’s victory, one interview in particular stood out to me. It was with Nicholas Soames, a former minister and one of the MPs who had been kicked out of the Conservative party in September for obstructing Johnson’s theatrical drive for Brexit. The interviewer, Andrew Neil, put it to Soames that Conservative gains in the north and midlands would entail a fundamental transformation of the party. It was, Neil suggested, “the end of your kind of Tory party – a party that was pro-EU, was more southern than northern, was quite posh.”

This was an apt point to raise with Soames. Besides being, quite literally, an embodiment of the Tory heritage – Soames is Winston Churchill’s grandson, as the hangdog expression and comb-over make clear – he had just recently railed against Johnson for turning the party into “a Brexit sect.” But Soames was in a conciliatory mood. All these contradictions, he insisted, would now be dissolved in the aura of Johnson’s “One Nation” Conservatism. He even conceded Johnson had been right to eject him from the party, and was quick to point out he had “very generously” been reinstated. In any case, his opposition had merely been “a point of principle.”

This obsequious performance resonated with many of the responses I’m seeing from long-term Conservative supporters. I don’t doubt they are genuinely thrilled by the prospect of embracing their blue-collar compatriots under a Disraelian banner of queen and country. But it is notable that this “One Nation” fervour has made them forget their longstanding reservations about what Johnson is now shaping up to do. Most obviously, a majority of Tory stalwarts were for the longest time grimly opposed to high levels of government borrowing and spending (not to mention taxing) – the very thing that all tacitly concede will be a condition of cementing their new constituency. Then there is the fact that many of them were, like Soames, less than keen on Johnson himself. Nor is this surprising, given that nobody knew what he actually wanted to do with the power he so nakedly craved, only that he would do anything to get it.

But he did get it. And that, I would suggest, is the main reason that “points of principle” are receding so sharply into the background. In hindsight, it has to be said that Johnson’s outmanoeuvring of parliament and an inept Labour party was skilfully done. Taking seats like Blyth Valley and Redcar is no small achievement; after a decade with very few notable politicians on the British scene, it looks positively Bismarckian. It is intoxicating, all this talk of realignments, watersheds, historic breakthroughs, new eras. And somehow, Johnson’s mercurial (or if you prefer, unprincipled) character makes it all the more intoxicating. That shapeless quality behind the cartoonish façade has, for the time being, revealed itself as the spirit of pure power.

It should come as no surprise that politicians prove flexible in the presence of a winner. The recent kowtowing to king Boris echoes a ritual which has played out in countless courts and privy chambers over the centuries, as erstwhile enemies and fence-sitters bend the knee to the new authority in the land. More surprising, however, is that the rancour we’ve all been through in the past few years should be settled in such a time-honoured fashion. The British constitution, with all its ceremonies, conventions and medieval fripperies, is unmatched in its insistence on cloaking the ugly business of power competition in the sacred garb of custom. One can scarcely imagine, when one sees the Prime Minister’s car gliding along to Buckingham Palace for an audience with the Queen, that just a few months ago we were witnessing a constitutional bonfire, as the executive, legislature and judiciary wrestled for control of the Brexit proceedings. Yet the question remains how much exactly has been settled by this election. After all, those wranglings within the political system were only part of a wider turbulence that shows no signs of stopping.

One of the most intriguing books I came across this year was a study called Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary by Andreas Kalyvas, professor at New York’s New School for Social Research. Borrowing from the ideas of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt, the book considers what happens when democratic politics are subject to exceptional strain or rupture, overflowing their constitutional limits and entering the domains of culture and everyday life. Needless to say, many of its themes resonated with the experience of western countries in recent years. Institutions that had seemed to operate with the assurance of natural laws are revealed as arbitrary customs. Formerly trivial issues become symbolic of wide-ranging and fundamental questions of worldview. The primacy of identity leads to a resurrection of the primitive friend/enemy distinction. In a climate of endless possibility, charisma emerges as an almost magical force, and people flock to all manner of saints and charlatans.

All of this signals a diversification of power. As politics enters new arenas, so too does an awareness of how new forms of authority might be leveraged, new constituencies mobilised. This is what much of the commentary on the contemporary left, in particular, overlooks. From the perspective of ordinary politics, the UK Labour party and perhaps also the US Democrats appear determined to make themselves unelectable. But the left faces a genuine dilemma on account of the possibilities that seem to be opened up by extraordinary politics. The emotive potential of online discourse, hegemony in cultural institutions, the emergence of leaders who exude genuine conviction – all of these forms of power rely on an adversarial, or at least selective relationship with traditional forms of authority. It is easy to portray such tendencies as delusional when the right wins elections, and this could turn out to be the correct verdict. It could turn out that the right has capitalised on the potential of extraordinary politics to effect a reorientation of the electorate, ushering in a new sense of the ordinary. Then again, it could not. Only time will tell who is backing the right horse.

It might seem cynical to speak in these terms. After all, it is often said that we are currently seeing the return of a politics based on values rather than interests. Notions like equality, justice, patriotism and solidarity are now back on the table. But if this period of extraordinary politics has taught us anything, it is surely that values and power are not as distinct as we would like to imagine. The recalibration of principles after a decisive election victory is nothing compared to what happens when political conflicts spill into culture at large and become supercharged by tribalism. There the language of values, rights and integrity quickly becomes a tool for different purposes: signalling strength, claiming territory and cultivating solidarity. Power is no longer a means to an end, but an end in itself – one which perpetually creates other ends to serve as its means. And eventually, it is difficult to tell where values stop and the desire for power begins.

Reading Antigone in an age of resistance

The play opens with two sisters, Antigone and Ismene, arguing about their duties to family versus those to the state. Their two brothers have just killed each other while leading opposing sides of a civil war in Thebes. Their uncle Creon has now taken charge of the city, and has decreed that one of the brothers, Polynices, is to be denied a funeral: “he must be left unburied, his corpse / carrion for the birds and dogs to tear, / an obscenity for the citizens to behold.”

Ismene chooses obedience to Creon, but Antigone decides to rebel. She casts a symbolic handful of dust over Polynices’ corpse, and when brought before Creon, affirms her action in the name of “the great unwritten, unshakeable traditions” demanding funeral rites for the dead. So begins a confrontation between two headstrong, unflinching protagonists. It will end with Antigone hanging herself in her jail cell, leading to the suicide both of Creon’s son (who was engaged to Antigone), and consequently of his wife.

* * *

“When I see that king in that play, the first name that came to mind was Donald Trump: arrogance, misogyny, tunnel vision.” This was reportedly one audience member’s response to Antigone in Ferguson, a 2018 theatre piece that brought a famous Greek tragedy into the context of US race relations. That tragedy is Sophocles’ Antigone, which I have summarised above. The play is now frequently being used to explore contemporary politics, especially in relation to the theme of resistance. “It’s a story of a woman who finds the courage of her convictions to speak truth to power,” said Carl Cofield, who directed another production of Antigone in New York last year. Cofield drew parallels with the #MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter, and “the resistance to the outcome of the presidential race.”

This reading of Antigone has become increasingly common since the post-war era. Its originator was perhaps Bertolt Brecht’s 1948 adaptation, which imagined a scenario where the German people had risen against Hitler. Since the 1970s Antigone has often been portrayed as a feminist heroine, and the play has served as a call-to-arms in countless non-western contexts too. As Fanny Söderbäck proudly notes: “Whenever and wherever civil liberties are endangered, when the rights or existence of aboriginal peoples are threatened, when revolutions are underway, when injustices take place – wherever she is needed, Antigone appears.”

Such appropriation of a classical figure is by no means unique. It echoes the canonisation of Socrates as a martyr for free speech and civil disobedience, most notably by John Stuart Mill, Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. And just as this image of Socrates rests on Plato’s Apology of Socrates, but ignores the quite different portrait in the Crito, the “resistance” reading of Antigone bears little resemblance to how the play was originally intended and received.

An audience in 5^thcentury Athens would not have regarded Antigone as subversive towards the authority of the state. In fact, if you accept the conventional dating of the play (441 BC), the Athenian people elected Sophocles to serve as a general immediately after its first performance. Rather, the dramatic impact of Antigone lay in the clash of two traditional visions of justice. Creon’s position at the outset – “whoever places a friend / above the good of his own country, he is nothing” – was not a queue for booing and hissing, but a statement of conventional wisdom. Likewise, Antigone’s insistence on burying her brother was an assertion of divine law, and more particularly, her religious duties as a woman. Thus Creon’s error is not that he defends the prerogatives of the state, but that he makes them incompatible with the claims of the gods.

Sophocles’ protagonists were not just embodiments of abstract principles, though. He was also interested in what motivates individuals to defend a particular idea of justice. Creon, it seems, is susceptible to megalomania and paranoia. And as Antigone famously admits in her final speech, her determination to bury her brother was a very personal obsession, born from her uniquely wretched circumstances.

* * *

It’s hardly surprising that our intuitive reading of Antigone has changed over more than two millennia. The world we inhabit, and the moral assumptions that guide us through it, are radically different. Moreover, Antigone is one of those works that seem to demand a new interpretation in every epoch. Hegel, for instance, used the play to illustrate his theory of dialectical progress in history. The moral claims of Antigone and Creon – or in Hegel’s scheme, family and state – are both inadequate, but the need to synthesise them cannot be grasped until they have clashed and been found wanting. Simone de Beauvoir also identified both protagonists with flawed outlooks, though in her reading Antigone is a “moral idealist” and Creon a “political realist” – two ways, according to de Beauvoir, of avoiding moral responsibility.

So neither Hegel nor de Beauvoir recognised Antigone as the obvious voice of justice. Then again, they were clearly reading the play with the templates provided by their own moments in history. Hegel’s historical forces belong to the tumultuous conflicts of the early 19^thcentury, in which he had staked out a position as both a monarchist and a supporter of the French Revolution. De Beauvoir’s archetypes belong to Nazi-occupied France – a world of vicious dilemmas in which pacifists, collaborators and resistors had all claimed to act for the greater good, and were all, in her eyes, morally compromised.

Thus, each era tries to understand Antigone using the roles and narratives particular to its own moral universe. And this, I would argue, is a natural part of artistic and political discourse. Such works cannot be quarantined in their original context – they have different resonances for different audiences. Moreover, the question of how one interprets something is always preceded by the question of why one bothers to interpret it at all, and that second question is inevitably bound up with what we consider important in the here and now. Our own moral universe, as I’ve already suggested, is largely defined by the righteousness of resistance and the struggle for freedom. Consequently, works from the past tend to be interpreted according to a narrative where one agent or category of agent suppresses the autonomy of another.

Nonetheless, there are pitfalls here. I think it is important for us to remain aware that our intuitive reading of a play like Antigone is precisely that – our intuitive reading. Otherwise, we may succumb to a kind of wishful thinking. We may end up being so comfortable projecting our values across time that we forget they belong to a contingent moment in history. We might forget, in other words, that our values are the product of a particular set of circumstances, not of some divine edict, and so cannot simply be accepted as right.

Of course we can always try to reason about right and wrong. But if we unthinkingly apply our worldview to people in other eras, we are doing precisely the opposite. We are turning history itself into a vast echo chamber, relieving us of the need to examine or defend our assumptions.

* * *

The task of guarding against such myopia has traditionally fallen to academic scholarship. And in a sense, this institution has never been better equipped to do it. Since the advent of New Historicism in the 1980s, the importance of the context in which works are made, as well as the context in which they are read, has been widely acknowledged in the humanities. But this has had a peculiarly inverse effect. The apparent impossibility of establishing any objective or timeless lesson in a play like Antigone has only heightened the temptation to claim it for ourselves.

Consider the approach taken by the influential gender theorist Judith Butler in her book Antigone’s Claim (2000). Using modern psychoanalytic concepts, Butler delves into the murky world of family and sexuality in the play (Antigone is the daughter of the infamously incestuous Oedipus, whose “curse” she is said to have inherited). Butler thus unearths “a classical western dilemma” about the treatment of those who do not fit within “normative versions of kinship.”

However Butler is not interested in establishing any timeless insights about Antigone. As she makes clear throughout her analysis, she is interested in Antigone “as a figure for politics,” and in particular, for the contemporary politics of resistance. “I began to think about Antigone a few years ago,” she says, “as I wondered what had happened to those feminist efforts to confront and defy the state.” She then sets out her aim of using the play to examine contemporary society, asking

what the conditions of intelligibility could have been that would have made [Antigone’s] life possible, indeed, what sustaining web of relations makes our lives possible, those of us who confound kinship in the rearticulation of its terms?

This leads her to compare Antigone’s plight to that of AIDS victims and those in alternative parenting arrangements, while also hinting at “the direction for a psychoanalytic theory” which avoids “heterosexual closure.”

Butler is clearly not guilty, then, of forgetting her own situatedness in history. However this does raise the question, if one is only interested in the present, why use a work from the past at all? Butler may well answer that such texts are an integral part of the political culture she is criticising. And that is fine, as far as it goes. But this approach seems to risk undermining the whole point of historicism. For although it does not pretend that people in other times had access to the same ideas and beliefs as we do, it does imply that the past is only worth considering in terms our own ideas and beliefs. And the result is very similar: Antigone becomes, effectively, a play about us.

In other words, Butler’s way of appropriating the past subtly makes it conform to contemporary values. And in doing so, it lays the ground for that echo-chamber I described earlier, whereby works from the past merely serve as opportunities to give our own beliefs a sheen of eternal truth. Indeed, elsewhere in the recent scholarship on Antigone, one finds that an impeccably historicist reading can nonetheless end like this:

Thus is the nature of political activism bent on the expansion of human rights and the extension of human dignity. … Antigone is a charter member of a small human community that is “la Résistance,” wherever it pops up in the history of human civilisation. (My emphasis)

Such statements are not just nonsensical, but self-defeating. However valuable ideas like human rights, human dignity, and resistance might be, they do not belong to “the history of human civilisation.” Moreover, it is impossible to understand their value unless one realises this.

The crucial question here is what we do with the knowledge that values differ across time. There is, perhaps, a natural tendency to see this as demanding an assertion of the ultimate validity of our own worldview. In this sense, our desire to portray Antigone as a figure of resistance recalls those theologians who used to scour classical texts for foreshadowings of Christ. I would argue, however, that we should treat the contingency of our beliefs as a warning against excessive certainty. Ideas are always changing in relation to circumstances, and as such, need to be constantly questioned.

The Forgotten Books of Dorothea Tanning

This article was first published by MutualArt on 4 April 2019

It has often been said that Dorothea Tanning had two careers in her exceptionally long life: first as a visual artist, then as a writer. At the current Tate Modern exhibition of Tanning’s paintings and sculptures, you can read her statement that it was after the death of her husband Max Ernst in 1976 that she “gave full rein to her long felt compulsion to write.” The decades before her own death in 2012 were increasingly dedicated to literature, as she produced two memoirs, a novel, and two well-regarded collections of poetry.

Nonetheless, it would be truer to say that word and image went hand-in-hand throughout Tanning’s career. She published a steady stream of texts during the height of her visual output from the 1940s until the 1970s. Moreover, as the wealth of literary allusions in her paintings suggests, she drew constant inspiration from the horde of books she and Ernst kept in their home. Tanning told the New York Times in 1995: “All my life I’ve been on the fence about whether to be an artist or writer.”

But the most overlooked aspect of Tanning’s literary-artistic career is her involvement in numerous books of poetry and printmaking in France from the 1950s onwards. These include collaborations with several French authors, and two books of Tanning’s own French poetry and prints – Demain (1963) and En chair et en or (1974).

These works deserve more attention. For one thing, the etchings and lithographs Tanning produced for these books amount to a significant and distinctive part of her oeuvre. According to Clare Elliott, curator of an upcoming show of Tanning’s graphic works at the Menil Collection in Houston, her prints “achieve a variety of visual effects impossible to achieve with other materials. Ranging from dreamlike representation to near total abstraction, they reveal the breadth of her formal innovation.”

What is more, a closer look at Tanning’s bookmaking years can give us a unique perspective on her as an artist – her working methods, her outlook, and her relationship to the movement she was most influenced by, Surrealism.

Book mania

Arriving in Paris in 1950, Tanning discovered a thriving scene around the beau livre, or limited edition artist’s book. “Paris in the first fifty years of our century spawned more beau livresthan the rest of the world together,” she recalled in 1983. “To call it mania would not have surprised or displeased anyone.” Mostly these books were collaborations between an artist and a poet, “with mutual admiration as the basic glue that held them together,” as well as an editor who normally bankrolled the project.

Tanning dove straight into this milieu. In 1950 she produced a series of lithographs, Les 7 Périls Spectraux (The 7 Spectral Perils), to accompany text by the Surrealist poet André Pieyre de Mandiargues. Here we can recognise several motifs from Tanning’s early paintings – most notably in Premier peril, where a female figure with a dishevelled mask of hair presses herself against an open door, which is also the cover of a book. But with her combination of visual textures, Tanning achieves a new depth in these images, showing her embrace of the lithographic process in all its layered intricacy.

As the collaborations continued during the 1950s and 60s, Tanning’s printmaking ambitions grew. Like many artists before her, she discovered in etching and lithography a seemingly limitless arena for experimentation, attempting a wide range of techniques and compositions. And in 1963 she went a step further, replacing the poetry of other authors with her own.

Screenshot 2019-05-14 at 13.17.58 — Dorothea Tanning, “Frontispiece for Demain” and “Untitled for Demain” (1963). Courtesy of the Dorothea Tanning Foundation.

The result was Demain (Tomorrow), a book of six etchings and a poem in French dispersed across several pages. Though modest in size – just ten squared centimetres – it is a punchy work of Surrealism. The poem progresses through a series of menacing images, as language breaks down in the presence of time and memory. It concludes: “The night chews its bone / My house asks itself / And deplores / Tonight, bath of mud / Evening fetish of a hundred thousand years, / My vampire.” The etchings convey a similar sense of dissolution, with vague forms emerging from a fog of aquatint.

Making Demain involved frustrations any printmaker could recognise. She would later describe watching her printer, Georges Visat, “wiping colours on the little plates while I stood by, always imploring for another try. There must have been fifty of these.” She was, however, thrilled by the result: “For my own words my own images – what more could one ask?”

Eleven years later Tanning produced En chair et en or (Of flesh and gold), a more substantial and, in every respect, more accomplished book. Its ten etchings, in which curvaceous, almost-human figures are suspended above landscapes of pale yellow and blue, show us what to expect from the accompanying poem. Everything expresses a sense of poise, a dazzling, enigmatic tension:

Body and face drift
Down with nightfall, unnoticed.
Draw near, draw nearer
Your destination.

Gradually, Tanning introduces notes of violence and desire, culminating in the striking final stanza: “Death on a weekend / Opened the dance like a vein / Flaming flesh and gold.”

Second languages

Dorothea Tanning, “Quoi de plus,” from “En chair et en or” (1974). Courtesy of the Dorothea Tanning foundation.

By the time of En chair et en or, we can identify some characteristic features in Tanning’s printmaking and poetry. Her etchings typically present coarse background textures, ghostly colours, and loosely organic forms. Her poems, meanwhile, reveal her exposure to the international Surrealist movement during the 1940s. (In “Demain”for instance, there are direct echoes of the Mexican poet Octavio Paz).

But this is not the most insightful way to approach Tanning’s books. For what really appealed to her, an English-speaking painter, about printmaking and French poetry was the opportunity to escape familiar forms of expression.

“Much of this work, and etchings that follow, have to do with chance,” she wrote about one of her collaborations, “for so many things can happen to a copper plate, depending on how you treat it, that implications are myriad.” Very few artists master the printmaking process to the degree that they know exactly what they are going to get at the end of it, but for Tanning this was part of its allure. In her comments about printmaking, she often used words like “discovery” and “adventure.” Unpredictability, in other words, was a creative asset.

The same can be said of her poetry in this period. The Irish playwright Samuel Beckett claimed that he wrote in French precisely because he did not know it as well as English, and so was less confined by conventional style and idiom. Likewise, it is striking how raw and immediate Tanning’s French poetry is by comparison with her later work in English.

All of this resonates with what originally drew Tanning to Surrealism – in her often quoted phrase from 1936, “the limitless expanse of POSSIBILITY.” In its earliest and most dramatic phase, an important aim of Surrealism had been for artists to loosen their control over expression, thus allowing more spontaneous, expansive forms of communication and meaning. This is what printmaking and French – both, in a sense, second languages – allowed Tanning to do.

Notes on The Artist’s Studio

The series of paintings known as Concetto spaziale, by the Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana, is one of those moments in art history whose significance is easily overlooked today. It is difficult to imagine how radical they must have looked during the 1960s: plain white canvases presenting nothing more than one or a few slits where Fontana slashed the surface with a blade. Moreover, as I realised when I reviewed an exhibition featuring Fontana in 2015 (you can read that review here), it is only by considering the atmosphere of post-war Europe that one can grasp how freighted with purpose and symbolism this simple gesture had been.

But there are always new ways of looking at an artwork. The other evening I was visiting some galleries near Piccadilly and found myself, unexpectedly, confronted by one of the Concetto spaziale paintings once more. Only I wasn’t looking at the painting itself, but at a series of photographs that showed Fontana in his studio making it. Where previously there had been the stark aura of an iconic artwork, now there was melodrama and a rye sense of humour. The images, taken by the Italian photographer Ugo Mulas, were arranged in a climactic sequence. First we see Fontana poised at some distance from canvas, Stanley-knife in hand, his tense wrist and neatly folded sleeve suggesting the commencement of a long-anticipated act. There is a mood of ritual silence in the room, heightened by the soft light pouring through a large window. Then Fontana is approaching the canvas uncertainly, and making the first incision on its white surface – a moment pictured first in wide-angle, then close-up. Finally, the deed done, he lingers in a ceremonious bowing posture, the canvas now divided by a metre-long cleft.

Installation shot of Ugo Mulas, Lucio Fontana, L’Attesa, Milano 1-6, 1964 (2019). Modern print. Gelatin silver print on baritated paper. Edition of 8. Courtesy of Robilant+Voena.

These are just some of the photographs Mulas took of artists in their studios during the 1960s and 70s, which can be seen at Robilant+Voena gallery on Dover Street. Much like Fontana’s paintings, Mulas’ photographs require one to step imaginatively backwards in time; they now appear so classical in style, and so gorgeous in tone, that one can overlook their more subtle aspects. In particular, I get the sense Mulas was aware of his role as a myth-maker. His images playfully pander to the romance surrounding the artist’s studio – the setting where, in the popular imagination, unusual individuals go to perform some exotic and mysterious process of magic.

* * *

I have always been fascinated by studios, probably because I grew up with one at home. This was my mother’s studio. It was located between the kitchen and my brother’s bedroom, but I was always aware that it was a different kind of room from the others in the house. A place of inspiration, yes: a realm of coffee, bookshelves, and classical music. But also a site of labour, which smelled of turpentine and had a cold cement floor, a place where my old clothes became rags to wipe etching plates. Above all it was (and remains) a very particular setting, shaped by the contingencies of one person’s working life as it had evolved over many years.

Insofar as artists’ studios really are special, mysterious places, it is because of this particularity. This is rarely reflected, though, in the photography and journalism that surrounds them. Rather, studios tend to attract attention according to how well they embody a particular conception of the artist as an outsider, an unconventional or even otherworldly being. One studio that fits this template belongs to the monk-like painter Frank Auerbach, who has worked in the same dank cell in Mornington Crescent more or less every day since 1954 (Auerbach once quipped that age had finally forced him to reduce his working year, from 365 days to 364). Not only is the room cramped and barely furnished, but to the delight of various photographers over the years, Auerbach’s scraping technique has left the floor coated in layer upon layer of calcified paint. This is nothing, however, compared to the iconic lair of Francis Bacon – a disaster zone that resembled a trash-heap more closely than a studio, and captured perfectly Bacon’s persona as a chaotic, doomed madman.

Jorge Lewinski, “Frank Auerbach,” 1965. © The Lewinski Archive at Chatsworth.

studiohero — Perry Ogden, “Francis Bacon’s 7 Reece Mews studio, London, 1998.”

The fact is, of course, that studios are often highly utilitarian spaces – clean, carefully organised, with most consideration going to practical questions such as storage and lighting. Of course some artists are messy, but their clutter is not qualitatively different to that which exists in many workspaces. And yet, even the apparently humdrum reality of a studio can provide a mystifying effect. Journalists and visitors often dwell precisely on the most ordinary, relatable aspects of an artist’s working life, thereby implicitly reinforcing the idea that an artist is something other than ordinary. In one feature on “Secrets of the Studio,” for instance, we learn that Grayson Perry likes to “collapse in an armchair and listen to the Archers,” while George Shaw “pretty much work[s] office hours.”

This paradox was observed by Roland Barthes in his wonderful essay “The Writer on Holiday.” After noting the tendency of the press to dwell on such domestic aspects of a writer’s life as their holidays, diet, and the colour of their pyjamas, Barthes concludes:

Far from the details of his daily life bringing nearer to me the nature of his inspiration and making it clearer, it is the whole mythical singularity of his condition which the writer emphasises by such confidences. For I cannot but ascribe to some superhumanity the existence of beings vast enough to wear blue pyjamas at the very moment when they manifest themselves as universal conscience […].

Sometimes artists themselves appear to use this trick. Wolfgang Tillmans’ photograph Studio still life, c, 2014 shows a very ordinary desk spread with several computers, a keyboard, cellotape, post-it notes, and so on. There is just a suggestion of bohemia conveyed by the beer bottle, cigarette packs and ashtray. It is tempting to interpret this image, especially when shown alongside Tillmans’ other works, as a subtle piece of self-glorification – a gesture of humility that makes the artist seem all the more remarkable for being a real human being.

33386240175_6f52aa7ccc_b — Wolfgang Tillmans, “Studio still life, c, 2014.”

* * *

We shouldn’t be too cynical, though. The various romantic tropes that surround artists are not always and entirely tools of mystification, and nor do they show, as Barthes suggested, “the glamorous status bourgeois society liberally grants its spiritual representatives” in order to render them harmless. Such “myths” also offer a way of pointing towards, and navigating around, a deeper reality of which we are aware: that artistic production, at least in its modern form, is a very personal thing. This is why we will always have the sense, when seeing or entering a studio, that we are intruders in a place of esoteric ritual.

As I said, the beauty of a studio lies in its particularity. Does this mean, then, that one cannot appreciate a studio without becoming familiar with it? Not entirely. I was recently lent a copy of the architect MJ Long’s book Artists’ Studios, in which she chronicles the numerous spaces she designed for artists during her career. These include some of the most colourful and, indeed, most widely mythologised studios out there. But as an architect, Long is uniquely well placed to tell us the specific practical and personal considerations behind them. As such, she is able to bring out their genuinely poetic aspects without falling into cliché.

That poetry is captured, I think, in some notes left by Long’s husband and partner, Sandy Wilson, to encourage her to write her book. He briefly summarises a few of their studio projects, and the artists who commissioned them, as follows:

Kitaj, scholar-artist worked surrounded by books and the works of his friends. In his studio books lie open on the floor at the foot of each easel like paving stones in a Japanese garden.

Blake works in a sort of wonderland mirroring and embodying his magical mystery world of icons that feed into his imagination.

A dance photographer required a pure vacuum charged with light but no physical sense of place whatsoever.

Auerbach’s studio is the locked cell of the dedicated solitary.

Ben Johnson requires the clinical conditions of the operating theatre shared with meticulous operatives in a planned programme of execution.

Notes on “Why Liberalism Failed”

Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed was one of the most widely discussed political books last year. In a crowded field of authors addressing the future of liberalism, Deneen stood out like a lightning-rod for his withering, full-frontal attack on the core principles and assumptions of liberal philosophy. And yet, when I recently went back and read the many reviews of Why Liberalism Failed, I came out feeling slightly dissatisfied. Critics of the book seemed all too able to shrug off its most interesting claims, and to argue in stead on grounds more comfortable to them.

Part of the problem, perhaps, is that Deneen’s book is not all that well written. His argument is more often a barrage of polemical statements than a carefully constructed analysis. Still, the objective is clear enough. He is taking aim at the liberal doctrine of individual freedom, which prioritises the individual’s right to do, be, and choose as he or she wishes. This “voluntarist” notion of freedom, Deneen argues, has shown itself to be not just destructive, but in certain respects illusory. On that basis he claims we would be better off embracing the constraints of small-scale community life.

Most provocatively, Deneen claims that liberal societies, while claiming merely to create conditions in which individuals can exercise their freedom, in fact mould people to see themselves and to act in a particular way. Liberalism, he argues, grew out of a particular idea of human nature, which posited, above all, that people want to pursue their own ends. It imagined our natural and ideal condition as that of freely choosing individual actors without connection to any particular time, place, or social context. For Deneen, this is a dangerous distortion – human flourishing also requires things at odds with personal freedom, such as self-restraint, committed relationships, and membership of a stable and continuous community. But once our political, economic, and cultural institutions are dedicated to individual choice as the highest good, we ourselves are encouraged to value that freedom above all else. As Deneen writes:

Liberalism began with the explicit assertion that it merely describes our political, social, and private decision making. Yet… what it presented as a description of human voluntarism in fact had to displace a very different form of human self-understanding and experience. In effect, liberal theory sought to educate people to think differently about themselves and their relationships.

Liberal society, in other words, shapes us to behave more like the human beings imagined by its political and economic theories.

It’s worth reflecting for a moment on what is being argued here. Deneen is saying our awareness of ourselves as freely choosing agents is, in fact, a reflection of how we have been shaped by the society we inhabit. It is every bit as much of a social construct as, say, a view of the self that is defined by religious duties, or by membership of a particular community. Moreover, valuing choice is itself a kind of constraint: it makes us less likely to adopt decisions and patterns of life which might limit our ability to choose in the future – even if we are less happy as a result. Liberalism makes us unfree, in a sense, to do anything apart from maximise our freedom.

* * *

Reviewers of Why Liberalism Failed did offer some strong arguments in defence of liberalism, and against Deneen’s communitarian alternative. These tended to focus on material wealth, and on the various forms of suffering and oppression inherent to non-liberal ways of life. But they barely engaged with his claims that our reverence for individual choice amounts to a socially determined and self-defeating idea of freedom. Rather, they tended to take the freely choosing individual as a given, which often meant they failed to distinguish between the kind of freedom Deneen is criticizing – that which seeks to actively maximise choice – and simply being free from coercion.

Thus, writing in the New York Times, Jennifer Szalai didn’t see what Deneen was griping about. She pointed out that

nobody is truly stopping Deneen from doing what he prescribes: finding a community of like-minded folk, taking to the land, growing his own food, pulling his children out of public school. His problem is that he apparently wants everyone to do these things

Meanwhile, at National Review, David French argued that liberalism in the United States actually incentivises individuals to“embrace the most basic virtues of self-governance – complete your education, get married, and wait until after marriage to have children.”And how so? With the promise of greater “opportunities and autonomy.” Similarly Deidre McCloskey, in a nonetheless fascinating rebuttal of Why Liberalism Failed, jumped between condemnation of social hierarchy and celebration of the “spontaneous order” of the liberal market, without acknowledging that she seemed to be describing two systems which shape individuals to behave in certain ways.

So why does this matter? Because it matters, ultimately, what kind of creatures we are – which desires we can think of as authentic and intrinsic to our flourishing, and which ones stem largely from our environment. The desire, for instance, to be able to choose new leaders, new clothes, new identities, new sexual partners – do these reflect the unfolding of some innate longing for self-expression, or could we in another setting do just as well without them?

There is no hard and fast distinction here, of course; the desire for a sports car is no less real and, at bottom, no less natural than the desire for friendship. Yet there is a moral distinction between the two, and a system which places a high value on the freedom to fulfil one’s desires has to remain conscious of such distinctions. The reason is, firstly, because many kinds of freedom are in conflict with other personal and social goods, and secondly, because there may come a time when a different system offers more by way of prosperity and security. In both cases, it is important to be able to say what amounts to an essential form of freedom, and what does not.

* * *

Another common theme among Deneen’s critics was to question his motivation. His Catholicism, in particular, was widely implicated, with many reviewers insinuating that his promotion of close-knit community was a cover for a reactionary social and moral order. Here’s Hugo Drochon writing in The Guardian:

it’s clear that what he wants… is a return to “updated Benedictine forms” of Catholic monastic communities. Like many who share his worldview, Deneen believes that if people returned to such communities they would get back on a moral path that includes the rejection of gay marriage and premarital sex, two of Deneen’s pet peeves.

Similarly, Deidre McCloskey:

We’re to go back to preliberal societies… with the church triumphant, closed corporate communities of lovely peasants and lords, hierarchies laid out in all directions, gays back in the closet, women in the kitchen, and so forth.

Such insinuations strike me as unjustified – these views do not actually appear in Why Liberalism Failed– but they are also understandable. For Deneen does not clarify the grounds of his argument. His critique of liberalism is made in the language of political philosophy, and seems to be consequentialist: liberalism has failed, because it has destroyed the conditions necessary for human flourishing. And yet whenever Deneen is more specific about just what has been lost, one hears the incipient voice of religious conservatism. In sexual matters, Deneen looks back to “courtship norms” and “mannered interaction between the sexes”; in education, to “comportment” and “the revealed word of God.”

I don’t doubt that Deneen’s religious beliefs colour his views, but nor do I think his entire case springs from some dastardly deontological commitment to Catholic moral teaching. Rather, I would argue that these outbursts point to a much more interesting tension in his argument.

My sense is that the underpinnings of Why Liberalism Failed come from virtue ethics – a philosophy whose stock has fallen somewhat since the Enlightenment, but which reigned supreme in antiquity and medieval Christendom. In Deneen’s case, what is important to grasp is Aristotle’s linking of three concepts: virtue, happiness, and the polis or community. The highest end of human life, says Aristotle, is happiness (or flourishing). And the only way to attain that happiness is through consistent action in accordance with virtue – in particular, through moderation and honest dealing. But note, virtues are not rules governing action; they are principles that one must possess at the level of character and, especially, of motivation. Also, it is not that virtue produces happiness as a consequence; the two are coterminous – to be virtuous is to be happy. Finally, the pursuit of virtue/happiness can only be successful in a community whose laws and customs are directed towards this same goal. For according to Aristotle:

to obtain a right training for goodness from an early age is a hard thing, unless one has been brought up under right laws. For a temperate and hardy way of life is not a pleasant thing to most people, especially when they are young.

The problem comes, though, when one has to provide a more detailed account of what the correct virtues are. For Aristotle, and for later Christian thinkers, this was provided by a natural teleology – a belief that human beings, as part of a divinely ordained natural order, have a purpose which is intrinsic to them. But this crutch is not really available in a modern philosophical discussion. And so more recent virtue ethicists, notably Alasdair MacIntyre, have shifted the emphasis away from a particular set of virtues with a particular purpose, and towards virtue and purpose as such. What matters for human flourishing, MacIntyre argued, is that individuals be part of a community or tradition which offers a deeply felt sense of what it is to lead a good life. Living under a shared purpose, as manifest in the social roles and duties of the polis, is ultimately more important than the purpose itself.

This seems to me roughly the vision of human flourishing sketched out in Why Liberalism Failed. Yet I’m not sure Deneen has fully reconciled himself to the relativism that is entailed by abandoning the moral framework of a natural teleology. This is a very real problem – for why should we not accept, say, the Manson family as an example of virtuous community? – but one which is difficult to resolve without overtly metaphysical concepts. And in fact, Deneen’s handling of human nature does strain in that direction, as when he looks forward to

the only real form of diversity, a variety of cultures that is multiple yet grounded in human truths that are transcultural and hence capable of being celebrated by many peoples.

So I would say that Deneen’s talk of “courtship norms” and “comportment” is similar to his suggestion that the good life might involve “cooking, planting, preserving, and composting.” Such specifics are needed to refine what is otherwise a dangerously vague picture of the good life.

Addressing the crisis of work

This article was first published by Arc Digital on December 10th 2018.

There are few ideals as central to the life of liberal democracies as that of stable and rewarding work. Political parties of every stripe make promises and boasts about job creation; even Donald Trump is not so eccentric that he does not brag about falling rates of unemployment. Preparing individuals for the job market is seen as the main purpose of education, and a major responsibility of parents too.

But all of this is starting to ring hollow. Today it is an open secret that, whatever the headline employment figures say, the future of work is beset by uncertainty.

Since the 1980s, the share of national income going to wages has declined in almost every advanced economy (the socially democratic Nordic countries are the exception). The decade since the financial crisis of 2007–8 has seen a stubborn rise in youth unemployment, and an increase in “alternative arrangements” characteristic of the gig economy: short-term contracts, freelancing and part-time work. Graduates struggle to find jobs to match their expectations. In many places the salaried middle-class is shrinking, leaving a workforce increasingly polarized between low- and high-earners.

Nor do we particularly enjoy our work. A 2013 Gallup survey found that in Western countries only a fifth of people say they are “engaged” at work, with the rest “not engaged” or “actively disengaged.”

The net result is an uptick of resentment, apathy, and despair. Various studies suggest that younger generations are less likely to identify with their career, or profess loyalty to their employer. In the United States, a worrying number of young men have dropped out of work altogether, with many apparently devoting their time to video games or taking prescription medication. And that’s without mentioning the ongoing automation revolution, which will exacerbate these trends. Robotics and artificial intelligence will likely wipe-out whole echelons of the current employment structure.

So what to do? Given the complexity of these problems — social, cultural, and economic — we should not expect any single, perfect solution. Yet it would be reckless to hope that, as the economy changes, it will reinvent a model of employment resembling what we have known in the past.

We should be thinking in broad terms about two related questions: in the short term, how could we reduce the strains of precarious or unfulfilling employment? And in the long term, what will we do if work grows increasingly scarce?

One answer involves a limited intervention by the state, aimed at revitalizing the habits of a free-market society — encouraging individuals to be independent, mobile, and entrepreneurial. American entrepreneur Andrew Yang proposes a Universal Basic Income (UBI) paid to all citizens, a policy he dubs “the freedom dividend.” Alternatively, Harvard economist Lawrence Katz suggests improving labor rights for part-time and contracted workers, while encouraging a middle-class “artisan economy” of creative entrepreneurs, whose greatest asset is their “personal flair.”

There are valid intuitions here about what many of us desire from work — namely, autonomy, and useful productivity. We want some control over how our labor is employed, and ideally to derive some personal fulfillment from its results. These values are captured in what political scientist Ian Shapiro has termed “the workmanship ideal”: the tendency, remarkably persistent in Western thought since the Enlightenment, to recognize “the sense of subjective satisfaction that attaches to the idea of making something that one can subsequently call one’s own.”

But if technology becomes as disruptive as many foresee, then independence may come at a steep price in terms of unpredictability and stress. For your labor — or, for that matter, your artisan products — to be worth anything in a constantly evolving market, you will need to dedicate huge amounts of time and energy to retraining. According to some upbeat advice from the World Economic Forum, individuals should now be aiming to “skill, reskill, and reskill again,” perhaps as often as every 2–3 years.

Is it time, then, for more radical solutions? There is a strand of thinking on the left which sees the demise of stable employment very differently. It argues that by harnessing technological efficiency in an egalitarian way, we could all work much less and still have the means to lead more fulfilling lives.

This “post-work” vision, as it is now called, has been gaining traction in the United Kingdom especially. Its advocates — a motley group of Marx-inspired journalists and academics — found an unexpected political platform in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, which has recently proposed cutting the working week to four days. It has also established a presence in mainstream progressive publications such as The Guardian and New Statesman.

To be sure, there is no coherent, long-term program here. Rather, there is a great deal of blind faith in the prospects of automation, common ownership and cultural revolution. Many in the post-work camp see liberation from employment, usually accompanied by UBI, as the first step in an ill-defined plan to transcend capitalism. Typical in that respect are Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek, authors of Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. This blueprint includes open borders and a pervasive propaganda network, and flirts with the possibility of “synthetic forms of biological reproduction” to enable “a newfound equality between the sexes.”

We don’t need to buy into any of this, though, to appreciate the appeal of enabling people to work less. Various thinkers, including Bertrand Russell and John Maynard Keynes, took this to be an obvious goal of technological development. And since employment does not provide many of us with the promised goods of autonomy, fulfillment, productive satisfaction and so on, why shouldn’t we make the time to pursue them elsewhere?

Now, one could say that even this proposition is based on an unrealistic view of human nature. Arguably the real value of work is not enjoyment or even wealth, but purpose: people need routine, structure, a reason to get up in the morning, otherwise they would be adrift in a sea of aimlessness. Or at least some of them would – for another thing employment currently provides is a relatively civilized way for ambitious individuals to compete for resources and social status. Nothing in human history suggests that, even in conditions of superabundance, that competition would stop.

According to this pessimistic view, freedom and fulfillment are secondary concerns. The real question is, in the absence of employment, what belief systems, political mechanisms, and social institutions would make work for all of those idle thumbs?

But the way things are headed, it looks like we are going to need to face that question anyway, in which case our work-centric culture is a profound obstacle to generating good solutions. With so much energy committed to long hours and career success (the former being increasingly necessary for the latter), there is no space for other sources of purpose, recognition, or indeed fulfilment to emerge in an organic way.

The same goes for the economic side of the problem. I am no supporter of UBI – a policy whose potential benefits are dwarfed by the implications of a society where every individual is a client of the state. But if we want to avoid that future, it would be better to explore other arrangements now than to cling to our current habits until we end up there by default. Thus, if for no other reason than to create room for such experiments, the idea of working less is worth rescuing from the margins of the debate.

More to the point, there needs to be a proper debate. Given how deeply rooted our current ideas about employment are, politicians will continue appealing to them. We shouldn’t accept such sedatives. Addressing this problem will likely be a messy and imperfect process however we go about it, and the sooner we acknowledge that the better.

Notes on “The Bowl of Milk”

I normally can’t stand hearing about the working habits of famous artists. Whether by sheer talent or some fiendish work ethic, they tend to be hyper-productive in a way that I could never be. Thankfully, there are counter-examples – like the painter Pierre Bonnard. As you can read in the first room of the Bonnard exhibition now at Tate Modern, he often took years to finish a painting, putting it to one side before coming back to it and reworking it multiple times. He was known to continue tinkering with his paintings when he came across them hanging on the wall of somebody’s house. At the very end of his life, no longer able to paint, he instructed his nephew to change a section of his final work Almond Tree in Blossom (1947).

Maybe this is wishful thinking, but I find things that have been agonised over to acquire a special kind of depth. In many ways Bonnard is not my kind of painter, but his work rewards close attention. There is hardly an inch of his canvases where you do not find different tones layered over each other – layers not only of paint, but of time and effort – creating a luminous sea of brushstrokes which almost swarms in front of your eyes. And this belaboured quality is all the more intriguing given the transience of his subject matter: gardens bursting with euphoric colour, interiors drenched in vibrant light, domestic scenes that capture the briefest of moments during the day.

Nowhere is this tension more pronounced than in The Bowl of Milk (1919). Pictured is a room with a window overlooking the sea, and two tables ranged with items of crockery and a vase of flowers. In the foreground stands a woman wearing a long gown and holding a bowl, presumably for the cat which approaches in the shadows at her feet. Yet there is something nauseating, almost nightmarish about this image. Everything swims with indeterminacy, vanishing from our grasp. So pallid is the light pouring through the window that at first I assumed it was night outside. The objects and figures crowding the room shimmer as though on the point of dissolving into air. The woman’s face is a vague, eyeless mask. The painting is composed so that if you focus on one particular passage, everything else recedes into a shapeless soup in the periphery of your vision. It is a moment of such vivid intensity that one is forced to realise it has been conjured from the depths of fantasy.

* * *

The woman in The Bowl of Milk is almost certainly Marthe de Méligny, formerly Maria Boursin, Bonnard’s lifelong model and spouse. They met in Paris in 1893, where de Méligny was employed manufacturing artificial flowers for funerals. Some five years later, Bonnard began to exhibit paintings that revealed their intimate domestic life together. These would continue throughout his career, with de Méligny portrayed in various bedrooms, bathrooms and hallways, usually alone, usually nude, and often in front of a mirror.

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947). "Nu dans le bain". Huile sur toile, 1936. Paris, musée d'Art moderne. — Pierre Bonnard “Nude in the Bath” (1936). Oil paint on canvas. Paris, musée d’Art moderne.

It was not an uncomplicated relationship: Bonnard is thought to have had affairs, and when the couple eventually married in 1925 de Méligny revealed she had lied about her name and age (she had broken off contact with her family before moving to Paris). They were somewhat isolated. De Méligny is described as having a silent and unnerving presence, and later developed a respiratory disease which forced them to spend periods on the Atlantic coast. Yet Bonnard’s withdrawal from the Parisian art scene, where he had been prominent during his twenties, allowed him to develop his exhaustive, time-leaden painting process, and to forge his own style. The paintings of de Méligny seem to relish the freedom enabled by familiarity and seclusion. One of the gems of the current Tate exhibition are a series of nude photographs that the couple took of one another in their garden in the years 1899-1901. In each of these unmistakeably Edenic pictures, we see a bright-skinned body occupying a patch of sunlight, securely framed by shadowy thickets of grass and leaves.

pierre-bonnard-1900-1901-jardin-de-montval-marthe-bonnard-rmn1

The female figure in The Bowl of Milk is far from familiar: she is a flicker of memory, a robed phantasm. But like other portrayals of de Méligny, this painting revels in the erotics of space, whereby the proximity and secrecy of the domestic setting are charged with the presence of a human subject – an effect only heightened by our voyeuristic discomfort at gaining access to this private world. There is no nudity, but a disturbing excess of sensual energy in the gleaming white plates, the crimson anemones, the rich shadows and the luxurious stride of the cat. To describe these details as sexual is to lessen their true impact: they are demonic, signalling the capacity of imagination to terrorise us with our own senses.

* * *

In 1912 Bonnard bought a painting by Henri Matisse, The Open Window at Collioure (1905). Matisse would soon emerge as one of the leading figures of modern painting, but the two were also friends, maintaining a lively correspondence over several decades. And one can see what inspired Bonnard to make this purchase: doors and windows appear continually in his own work, allowing interior space to be animated by the vitality of the outside world.

•-Open-Window-Collioure-1905-by-Henri-Matisse-•-Henri-Matisse-painted-Open-Window-Collioure-in-t — Henri Matisse, “The Open Window at Collioure” (1905). Oil paint on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington

Pierre Bonnard L'atelier au mimosa 1939-46 Musée National d'Art Moderne - Centre Pompidou (Paris, France) — Pierre Bonnard, “The Studio with Mimosas” (1939-46). Oil paint on canvas. Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou, Paris.

More revealing, though, are the differences we can glean from The Open Window at Collioure. Matisse’s painting, with its flat blocks of garish colour, is straining towards abstraction. As a formal device, the window merely facilitates a jigsaw of squares and rectangles. Such spatial deconstruction and pictorial simplification were intrinsic to the general direction of modernism at this time. This, however, was the direction from which the patient and meticulous Bonnard had partly stepped aside. For he remained under the influence of impressionist painting, which emphasised the subtlety and fluidity of light and colour as a means of capturing the immediacy of sensory experience. Thus, as Juliette Rizzi notes, Bonnard’s use of “framing devices such as doors, mirrors, and horizontal and vertical lines” allow him a compromise of sorts. They do not simplify his paintings so much as provide an angular scaffolding around which he can weave his nebulous imagery.

The window and its slanted rectangles of light are crucial to the strange drama of The Bowl of Milk. Formally, this element occupies the very centre of the composition, holding it in place. But it is also a source of ambiguity. The window is seemingly a portal to another world, flooding the room with uncanny energy. The woman appears stiff, frozen at the edge of a spotlight. It’s as though the scene has been illuminated just briefly – before being buried in darkness again.

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Dette skjer ofte hvis du har brutt bonusvilkårene, for eksempel ved å spille på spill som ikke er tillatt med bonus (f.eks. bordspill eller progressive jackpotter). Les alltid vilkårene nøye.

Kan jeg sette inn med Paysafecard og ta ut med bankoverføring?

Nei, uttaksmetoden må som regel samsvare med innskuddsmetoden. Hvis du setter inn med Paysafecard, må du velge en annen metode for uttak, for eksempel bankoverføring – men vær klar over at krav om matching kan gjelde.

Med denne guiden er du godt rustet til å starte din reise hos Casino Days. Husk å alltid spille ansvarlig, og bruk gjerne verktøyene som casinoet tilbyr for å sette grenser. Lykke til!

Beep Beep Casino Leitfaden: Boni, mobiler Zugang und Auszahlungen

Dieser praktische Leitfaden zu Beep Beep Casino konzentriert sich auf das, was wirklich zählt: Boni, mobiler Zugang und pünktliche Auszahlungen. Egal, ob Sie ein Neuling oder ein erfahrener Spieler sind – hier erfahren Sie, wie Sie das Beste aus Ihrer Zeit herausholen.

Quick Checklist

Registrierung abgeschlossen und E-Mail bestätigt
Erster Bonus ausgewählt und aktiviert
Mobiles Gerät für den Zugriff optimiert (Browser oder PWA)
Zahlungsmethode für Ein- und Auszahlungen eingerichtet
Bonusbedingungen genau gelesen – insbesondere Umsatzanforderungen

Account Setup

Besuchen Sie die Startseite und klicken Sie auf „Registrieren“. Geben Sie Ihre E-Mail-Adresse, ein sicheres Passwort und Ihre persönlichen Daten ein.
Bestätigen Sie Ihre E-Mail über den Link, den Sie zugesandt bekommen.
Loggen Sie sich ein und navigieren Sie zum Kassenbereich. Wählen Sie eine Zahlungsmethode – gängig sind Kreditkarten, E-Wallets und Banküberweisungen.
Tätigen Sie Ihre erste Einzahlung. Achten Sie auf eventuelle Mindesteinzahlungsbeträge, um den Willkommensbonus zu erhalten.
Gehen Sie zu „Mein Konto“ und schließen Sie die KYC-Überprüfung ab: Laden Sie einen gültigen Ausweis und einen Adressnachweis hoch. Dies beschleunigt spätere Auszahlungen.

Bonus Strategy

Der Willkommensbonus ist oft der lukrativste, aber auch der mit den strengsten Bedingungen. Typisch ist ein 100% Match bis zu einem bestimmten Betrag, plus Freispiele. Um den wahren Wert zu berechnen, müssen Sie den Umsatzanforderungsfaktor (Wagering Requirement, WR) berücksichtigen.

Bonusart	Maximalbetrag	Umsatzanforderung (WR)
Einzahlungsbonus	bis zu 500 €	35x (Bonus + Einzahlung)
Freispiele	bis zu 200 Freispiele	40x (Gewinn aus Freispielen)

Berechnungsbeispiel: Sie zahlen 100 € ein und aktivieren den 100% Bonus (100 € Bonusguthaben). Das WR beträgt 35x (Bonus + Einzahlung) = 35 × (100 € + 100 €) = 7.000 € müssen umgesetzt werden, bevor eine Auszahlung möglich ist. Angenommen, Sie spielen einen Slot mit einem RTP von 96% – der theoretische Verlust beträgt 4%. Auf 7.000 € Umsatz entspricht das einem erwarteten Verlust von 280 €. Da Ihr Startkapital 200 € beträgt, ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit, einen Gewinn zu erzielen, gering. Planen Sie Ihr Budget entsprechend und nutzen Sie Boni mit niedrigeren WR.

Mobile & Browser Access

Die Plattform ist vollständig für mobile Geräte optimiert. Sie müssen keine App installieren – öffnen Sie einfach den Browser auf Ihrem Smartphone oder Tablet und loggen Sie sich ein. Für einen schnelleren Zugriff können Sie die Seite als Progressive Web App (PWA) zum Startbildschirm hinzufügen. Gehen Sie dazu im Browser-Menü auf „Zum Startbildschirm“ oder „Installieren“. Die PWA bietet Push-Benachrichtigungen und flüssiges Gameplay, ähnlich einer nativen App.

Pro Tips

Das VIP-Programm belohnt regelmäßige Spieler mit Punkten, die Sie durch Echtgeld-Einsätze sammeln. Pro eingesetzte 10 € erhalten Sie etwa 1 Punkt. Die gesammelten Punkte können gegen Bonusguthaben, Freispiele oder sogar physische Preise eingetauscht werden. Es gibt mehrere Stufen: Bronze, Silber, Gold und Platin. Mit jeder Stufe steigen die Vorteile – höhere Auszahlungslimits, persönliche Account Manager und schnellere Bearbeitungszeiten. Tipp: Konzentrieren Sie sich auf Spiele mit dem höchsten Beitrag zum Treueprogramm (Slots zählen oft voll, Tischspiele weniger).

Players Ask

Wie lange dauert eine Auszahlung?

E-Wallet-Auszahlungen werden in der Regel innerhalb von 24 Stunden bearbeitet, Banküberweisungen können 3–5 Werktage dauern. KYC-Verifizierung muss abgeschlossen sein.

Kann ich den Bonus ablehnen?

Ja, bei der Einzahlung können Sie wählen, ob Sie den Bonus aktivieren möchten. Wenn Sie ablehnen, ist Ihr Guthaben sofort umsetzbar und auszahlbar.

Welche Spiele tragen am meisten zum Umsatz bei?

Slots zählen zu 100%, während Tischspiele wie Blackjack oder Roulette oft nur 10–20% beitragen. Prüfen Sie die Bonusbedingungen für eine vollständige Liste.

Gibt es ein Mindestalter?

Ja, Sie müssen mindestens 18 Jahre alt sein. Bei der Registrierung müssen Sie Ihr Geburtsdatum angeben und ggf. einen Ausweis vorlegen.

Fazit

Mit diesem Leitfaden sind Sie bestens vorbereitet, um das Casino optimal zu nutzen. Denken Sie daran: Verantwortungsvolles Spielen steht an erster Stelle. Setzen Sie sich Limits und genießen Sie das Erlebnis.

Parimatch kazino ceļvedis: Reģistrācija, bonusi un padomi

Daudziem spēlētājiem ir jautājumi par Parimatch casino pirms viņi iemaksā savu pirmo eiro — šeit ir godīgas atbildes.

Quick Checklist

Pārliecinieties, ka esat 18+ un atrodaties atļautā jurisdikcijā.
Sagatavojiet derīgu e-pasta adresi un tālruņa numuru.
Izvēlieties spēcīgu paroli un ieslēdziet divfaktoru autentifikāciju (2FA).
Iepazīstieties ar bonusu noteikumiem, īpaši ar likmju prasībām un minimālajām iemaksām.
Izpētiet pieejamās maksājumu metodes un to apstrādes laikus.

Creating Your Account

Atveriet kazino mājaslapu un noklikšķiniet uz “Reģistrēties”.
Aizpildiet reģistrācijas veidlapu: vārds, uzvārds, dzimšanas datums, e-pasts, tālrunis, adrese.
Izveidojiet lietotājvārdu un paroli.
Apstipriniet savu e-pastu, izmantojot saiti, kas nosūtīta jūsu e-pastā.
Pabeidziet KYC (Know Your Customer) pārbaudi, iesniedzot ID kopiju un maksājuma metodes pierādījumu.

Calculating Your Bonus

Pieņemsim, ka jūs izmantojat pirmās iemaksas bonusu 100% apmērā līdz 200 € ar likmju prasību 35x (bonuss + iemaksa). Jūs iemaksājat 100 €. Bonuss ir 100 €, tātad kopējā summa ir 200 €. Likmju prasība: 200 € × 35 = 7000 €. Tas nozīmē, ka jums jāizspēlē (veic derības) par 7000 €, pirms varat izņemt laimestu. Ja spēles RTP ir 96%, sagaidāmais zaudējums uz 7000 € ir 7000 × (1 – 0,96) = 280 €. Tādējādi, lai izpildītu prasības, jums būs nepieciešams aptuveni 280 € no jūsu bonusa/iemaksas, atstājot 20 € potenciālo laimestu, bet tas ir atkarīgs no spēles izvēles.

Deposits & Withdrawals

Depozīti parasti tiek apstrādāti uzreiz, bet izņemšanas laiki atšķiras. Svarīgi ir pārbaudīt minimālās un maksimālās summas.

Maksāšanas metode	Minimālā iemaksa	Izņemšanas laiks	Maksa
Visa/Mastercard	10 €	1-3 darba dienas	Bez maksas
Skrill	10 €	24 stundas	Bez maksas
Neteller	10 €	24 stundas	Bez maksas
Bankas pārskaitījums	20 €	3-5 darba dienas	Var būt
Kriptovalūtas (BTC, ETH)	20 €	1 stunda	Mazas tīkla maksas

Security Overview

Kazino izmanto SSL šifrēšanu, lai aizsargātu datus. Divfaktoru autentifikācija (2FA) ir pieejama un ieteicama. Licence tiek nodrošināta no Curacao. Ņemiet vērā, ka laimesti no šāda veida licencēm var būt apliekami ar iedzīvotāju ienākuma nodokli jūsu valstī — ieteicams konsultēties ar nodokļu speciālistu.

When Things Go Wrong

Brīdinājums: Ja rodas problēmas, nekrītiet panikā. Vispirms sazinieties ar atbalsta dienestu.

Bonusa nav piešķirts — pārbaudiet, vai ievadījāt bonusa kodu un vai izpildījāt minimālo iemaksas prasību.
Aizmirsu paroli — izmantojiet “Aizmirsu paroli” opciju, lai atiestatītu.
Izņemšana kavējas — pārbaudiet KYC statusu; bieži vien nepieciešams papildu dokuments.
Konts bloķēts — tas var notikt aizdomīgas darbības dēļ; sazinieties ar atbalstu, lai atbloķētu.
Spēle nepielādējas — iztīriet pārlūka kešatmiņu vai mēģiniet ar citu ierīci.

Need to Know

Kāda ir minimālā iemaksa?

Minimālā iemaksa ir 10 €, bet atkarībā no maksājumu metodes tā var atšķirties.

Vai ir iespējams spēlēt uz mobīlās ierīces?

Jā, platforma ir mobīli optimizēta, un var izmantot progresīvo tīmekļa lietotni (PWA) no pārlūkprogrammas.

Kāda ir likmju prasība bonusa izmantošanai?

Parasti tā ir 35x (iemaksa + bonuss), bet precīzus nosacījumus skatiet bonusa noteikumos.

Vai ir kādi ierobežojumi laimestu izmaksai?

Jā, maksimālā izmaksas summa var būt ierobežota atkarībā no bonusa veida — piemēram, 10x no bonusa summas.

Kā sazināties ar atbalstu?

Varat izmantot tiešsaistes tērzēšanu vai e-pastu. Atbalsts ir pieejams 24/7.

Vai ir depozīta limits?

Jā, ikdienas, iknedēļas un ikmēneša limitus var iestatīt konta iestatījumos atbildīgas spēles nodrošināšanai.

Kādas valūtas tiek pieņemtas?

Tiek pieņemtas EUR, USD, kriptovalūtas (BTC, ETH).

Cik ilgi ilgst KYC pārbaude?

Parasti līdz 48 stundām, bet var aizņemt ilgāk, ja dokumenti ir neskaidri.

Insider Advice

VIP programma ietver vairākus līmeņus (bronza, sudrabs, zelts, platīns, dimants). Punkti tiek uzkrāti, veicot derības — par katriem 10 € tiek iegūts 1 punkts. Jo augstāks līmenis, jo labāki bonusu piedāvājumi, ātrāki izmaksu termiņi un personīgie kontu pārvaldnieki. Tipiskas VIP balvas ietver bezmaksas griezienus, naudas bonusus un uzaicinājumus uz pasākumiem.

Noslēdzot — šis kazino piedāvā stabilu spēļu pieredzi ar daudziem bonusiem. Pirms spēlēšanas vienmēr pārbaudiet noteikumus un spēlējiet atbildīgi.