George Condo alludes to the pandemic as a species of “microbiological warfare” created to get someone re-elected. Then he gets down to art:

As to what I’m doing as an artist, I’m just exploring the psychological impact of… how fear, anxiety, panic — how do you put that into some kind of poetic language that maintains your identity and integrity as an artist?

It is true that we often respond to invincible enemies — drugs, terror, microbes — by declaring “war” on them. I hope Condo’s hope-filled desideratum for a post-Covid world is less delusional:

I think the idea of things being homemade, like the way we have to cook every night… and how to make yourself happy with your own two hands, I think that’s where we’re headed. I’m hoping that, post-Covid, people don’t forget that… I hope people don’t just go back to being money-grabbing and horrible.

(M. H. Miller, “Two Exhibitions Respond to Art in the Age of Anxiety and Distance,” NYTimes, 4-24-20)

(c)heers 2020 JMN