A few years ago, an apparently uncredited image began circulating online that depicted an updated version of Francisco Goya’s c. 1820–23 painting Saturn Devouring His Son, reimagining the scene in the off-putting advertising style often described as “Corporate Memphis”: flat primary colors; vague shapes; an unwavering commitment to visual sterility. The figure of Saturn, formerly a terrified and terrifying god, is now a blue-skinned, expressionless woman in a T-shirt; the half-eaten body of the son, once as grayish-pink and raw-edged as meat, is an abstract assemblage of green and orange parts. It has stuck in my mind not merely because it is amusingly grotesque, but because it is effective: What better illustration of our present age could there be than one which streamlines a taboo act like cannibalism into something that scans – paradoxically, perversely – as both aspirational and tedious?

George Orwell may have said that if we wanted to picture the future, we should picture a boot stamping onto a human face forever, but he did not specify how prettily the boot would end up being advertised to us, or just how many free refreshments the boot would provide for the break-rooms of our offices ...


— This text is printed in full our Spring 25 issue, Spike #83 – Food. Copies are selling like hot cakes in our online shop —