THE PLEASURE OF HATRED

Just received a notice about a group art exhibition opening tonight at Lisa Cooley, a gallery in New York's Lower East Side. It has one of the most auspicious names I have seen for some time: "On the Pleasure of Hatred: love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust; Hatred alone is immortal". The show takes its title and premise from William Hazlitt ("The Plain Speaker", 1823), perhaps the greatest essayist in English letters:

Nature seems (the more we look into it) made up of antipathies: without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action. Life would turn to a stagnant pool, were it not ruffled by the jarring interests, the unruly passions, of men. The white streak in our own fortunes is brightened (or just rendered visible) by making all around it as dark as possible; so the rainbow paints its form upon the cloud. Is it pride? Is it envy? Is it the force of contrast? Is it weakness or malice? But so it is, that there is a secret affinity, a hankering after evil in the human mind, and that it takes a perverse, but a fortunate delight in mischief, since it is a never-failing source of satisfaction. Pure good soon grows insipid, wants variety and spirit. Pain is a bittersweet, which never surfeits. Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust: hatred alone is immortal.

Evil as an antidote to what's insipid--what a satisfying jumble. He then goes on to write that it "is not the quality so much as the quantity of excitement that we are anxious about: we cannot bear a state of indifference and ennui: the mind seems to abhor a vacuum as much as ever matter was supposed to do."

This may be the finest explanation of the whims of the blogosphere. Clearly it was only a matter of time before we invented this dark and speedy conveyor belt of malice mixed with pride.

As for the show, curated by David Hunt, it features work by Josh Faught, Simone Leigh, Nicholas Lobo, Shana Lutker, Mike Quinn and Dario Robleto.

~ EMILY BOBROW

Picture credit: "Sinew of Purpose" by Dario Robleto (2008)