Living Room Extravaganza - Let Them Eat Steak
Post-painting
Circa 2026
Civilisation has always possessed an extraordinary talent for celebrating itself while standing on the edge of its own destruction.
In Let Them Eat Steak, the bourgeoisie gather for one final banquet, an obscene theatre of privilege in which laughter becomes an act of defiance against reality. Champagne flows, steaks are carved, and glasses of Bordeaux are raised beneath a Parisian sky poisoned by smoke. Beyond the manicured hedges, the city burns. Riot police advance through the wreckage, cars become barricades, and the Eiffel Tower stands as a fading monument to a civilisation devouring itself.
Yet nobody at the table appears particularly concerned. The feast must continue.
A solitary singer performs into the abyss, her voice an elegant accompaniment to the machinery of social collapse. The diners laugh not because they are happy, but because laughter has become the final language of power. Their indifference is more disturbing than the violence beyond them. Here, decadence is no longer a symptom of decline; it is the very architecture of survival.
The post-painting itself refuses the comfort of a coherent image. Photographic fragments collide with expressive brushwork, digital corruption and violent smears of pigment. Faces dissolve, bodies fracture, and the distinction between documentary reality and painterly invention collapses. The surface appears wounded by the very spectacle it depicts, as though the image can no longer contain the contradictions of its own existence.
Let Them Eat Steak is not simply a satire of wealth, nor a moral sermon on inequality. It is a portrait of a society that has perfected the art of looking away. The revolution is no longer approaching the gates; it has arrived, and the guests have mistaken its flames for atmospheric lighting.
The great tragedy is not that the world is burning. It is that those who have inherited it are still arguing over how their steak should be cooked.
