Welcome to the fourth issue of The Groove, and the last of four email entries exploring the Seven Deadly Sins in art, culture, creativity, and business. If you missed the first one on Lust, you can read it here, the second one on Gluttony and Greed here and the third on Sloth and Envy here.

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Love,

Maria

THE GROOVE ISSUE 4 - FROM CARAVAGGIO TO BEYONCÉ: HOW TO USE THE ENORMOUS POWER OF ANGER AND PRIDE FOR CREATIVE BREAKTHROUGHS

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1612-1613, oil on canvas. — Artemisia Gentileschi, *Judith Beheading Holofernes*, 1612-1613, oil on canvas.

We live in a time when people are angry. Maybe it is the free speech that most Western countries enjoy, maybe it is the open expression of one’s feelings that has been encouraged for the past decades, maybe it is the fact that we are waging constant battles: civil rights, diseases, gender equality, economic fairness. Maybe we live too polarized because for too long we tried to be diplomatic? Maybe people are angry because they were holding things inside for too long? Whatever the scenario or circumstances, anger can mobilize people and resources for change. Good and bad.

In painting, anger has been expressed since the Middle Ages. Between 1303 to 1306, the incredible Florentine, late Middle Ages artist, Giotto di Bondone painted a fresco inside the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua where he placed each sin close to the virtues that would cure them. Wrath is represented by a woman trying to tear off her clothes, which he made in contraposition to Temperance, a smiling, calm, and composed person who is in command of her feelings.

In 1611, during the Baroque, after being raped by a guy who tricked her into thinking they were to be married, the phenomenal Artemisia Gentileschi painted one of the most raw and all-over-spellbinding paintings of all time, Judith Slaying Holofernes, and in her composition she showed plenty of fury, revenge, and blood. And what about Francisco Goya’s Pinturas Negras, particularly Saturn Devouring His Son, from 1819, where the Spanish master painted Saturn with a crazy face eating the dismembered body of one of his children? That is some wrath.

Beyoncé’s cover of Lemonade, 2016 — Beyoncé’s cover of *Lemonade*, 2016

Watching others blow up in wrath seems to be among America’s favorite pastimes. In 1987, Geraldo Rivera began hosting a syndicated daytime talk show. After a year, numbers were lagging. What did he do? He invited Black and Jewish activists, skinheads and white supremacists all at the same time. A brawl ensued, the set was trashed, Geraldo got hit in the face with a chair, his nose fractured. The episode was a hit and the numbers for the show started to increase after it aired.

But anger also fuels a lot of creativity since it is such a dense emotion with so many different faces: violence, ire, vengeance, and impatience. We wouldn’t have Beyonce’s 2016 Lemonade had it not been for how furious she was at Jay Z’s cheating. Lemonade has been considered by almost every music critic as Beyonce’s best album. It debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and sold 2.5 million copies worldwide in the first nine months since its release. It also won two Grammy’s and eight VMAs. In 2019, the Associated Press named Lemonade, the number 1 album of the decade.

Argentinian indie black comedy Relatos Salvajes (Wild Tales) directed by Damian Szifron and produced by Pedro Almodovar, is a series of six standalone shorts united by a common theme of vengeance, wrath, and violence where the characters hurt each other physically, mentally, and verbally to the point that they don’t mind losing their own lives as long as they can get revenge. Released in 2014, Wild Tales was Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and after having a production budget of $4 million, it grossed $27 million in box office worldwide.

I’ve heard about this business called “Rage Rooms” where people go and torn things up and let all their steam out. There are also thousands of anger management programs all over the world that generate millions of dollars in revenues for those who run and administer them.

Caravaggio, Narcissus, 1594-96, oil on canvas — Caravaggio, *Narcissus*, 1594-96, oil on canvas

But it is Pride that is considered the mother of all sins, and where every other sin originates. The Ancient Greeks explained Pride as dangerously corrupt selfishness: putting one’s desires, needs, and whims before the welfare of other people. Narcissism, feelings of superiority, vanity, taking credit for others’ work or failing to acknowledge the accomplishments of others, also fall into what’s considered pride. Oh boy. In this social media and reality TV world, the “me first” culture is pretty much a nest of pride multiplied to the nth degree.

In Dante’s Inferno, pride was “love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one’s neighbor”. According to Dante, building the Tower of Babel was an act of pride: the people of Shinar, a united human race, decide to build a tower tall enough to reach heaven and be like God. But God confounds their speech so that they no longer can understand each other and scatters them around the world.

In 1553, Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted three versions of The Tower of Babel and got inspiration on its shape by the architecture of the Roman Colosseum. According to Bruegel, Rome and Babylon shared lots of parallels, as both cities thought of themselves as “eternal” and “invincible.”

Frank Cadogan Cowper, Vanity, 1907, oil on wood panel — Frank Cadogan Cowper, *Vanity*, 1907, oil on wood panel

Caravaggio, who by the way, was known for being an angry man prone to outbursts of rage, channeled his intensity through his paintings, becoming one of the most influential, innovative and admired artists of all time. In 1597, he painted Narcissus using his intense chiaroscuro (tenebrism) technique, showing the handsome young man looking at his reflection on the pond, falling in love with himself time-and-again. There is so much darkness surrounding Narcissus, one feels that whatever he is doing may not end up well. According to Ovid, Narcissus dies of his own passion, unable to tear himself away from himself. Any resemblance with real life is pure coincidence.

Movies also love to portray narcissists as main characters since they are enormous sources of creative material. Three I can think of right now (although there are thousands): The Devil Wears Prada (around a narcissistic boss editor masterfully played by Meryl Streep); Gone Girl (about a narcissistic wife phenomenally portrayed by Rosamund Pike); The Social Network (about a selfish, self-regarding, prickly and defensive billionaire millennial brilliantly played by Jesse Eisenberg).

If vanity is also considered pride, then we are all going to burn in hell. The global makeup business is worth about $80 billion and skincare is close to $183 billion. In the United States, cosmetic procedures have been on the rise over the past 5 years and in 2019 alone, more than one million plastic surgeries were performed. If you consider that Botox can be administered by anyone, even in nail salons and dentists’ offices, then you know that the business of vanity is real. Allergan, the company that produces Botox and holds the original patent for the poisonous-yet-magical compound, has a market cap of $63 billion. In 2019, revenues from Botox alone were $671.7 million. And that doesn’t count all the other companies that manufacture similar products like Dysport and Xeomin. The global botulism toxin market is well above $4 billion in 2020 and expected to reach $7.5 billion in 2025.

Bruce Nauman, Virtues and Vices at the Kunst Museum in Bern in 2010

Humans seem to have moved on a long time ago past the Seven Deadly Sins. When contemporary artist Bruce Nauman did his Virtues and Vices series he admitted that neither him nor his team could remember all the sins. Nauman’s exploration started in 1983 with seven limestone slabs inscribed with the seven sins and at the same time with Plato’s cardinal virtues, so the words cancel each other becoming illegible. In the following years he also used the words to manufacture monumental multicolor neon words corresponding to the sins and its counterpart virtues. He placed them side-by-side outdoors in buildings, blinking, turning on and off at different times, and adding an air of levity to the whole thing.

At the end of the day, people are blinded by their own intentions and actions, so who are we to judge what’s a sin and what’s a virtue? Either way, it is all ripe for creativity and profit. Can you think about what aspects of anger or vanity can be turned into lucrative sales, innovative offerings, or thought-provoking art?