“Undoubtedly the most venerable and wide-spread of all the themes that haunt the popular imagination is the concept that the world has been turned upside down. As early as Egyptian times, dissatisfaction with the prevailing social and political conditions has been expressed in the form of a complaint that saw the normal order of things inverted — the fact that the times are out of joint gains expression in the disjointedness of familiar things: Curtius traces the origins of the theme in Western Europe back to the classical tradition of the “adynata” or “impossibilia” the listing, largely for humorous effect, but also as a serious commentary on a given situation, of various impossible things — impossible because they invert the natural order…” (William A. Coupe.)
Original painting, Expand-O, 2021, oil on canvas, 51 x 43 inches.
