This article is based on this Dutch article of Martijn Benders
Thierry and Nick cut into the steak
An effective song lyric is often a piece of cake to write. All you need is a strong image. In this case, it’s the friends Nick and Thierry, who are cutting into a delicious steak together.
Why it works so well is hard to explain. Because it looks so cozy? Something biblical, with people being created from ribs? I don’t know. I also don’t know what the pedagogical effect of this song will be on children.
So I am a true artist; I have no clue what I’m doing. I create something in a few strokes, and you can make of it what you will. That’s how the dynamics work.
Is this Great Art? I think so. If this were hanging in a museum, I’d be satisfied with my visit. I’d remember that day as the day I saw Nick and Thierry cutting steak in a museum.
But maybe people prefer to hang other things in such places. That’s not up to me. I don’t know who makes those decisions. Let’s analyze my painting instead. For Thierry, the red and blue pills from The Matrix lie disguised as berries. And next to them, on the left side, large, dry currants, as a counterpoint to the juicy steak on the right. Juicy on the right, large dry currants on the left. And then those Matrix pills, disguised as berries. This is a genius painting.
A man has a rib cage. There’s no need to beat around the bush. What we have here is nothing less than a masterpiece—a play between juiciness and dryness, between the meat of life and the desiccation of the soul. Thierry, standing just before those pills disguised as innocent berries—a direct reference to the choice moment in The Matrix: the choice between the red and the blue, the real and the imagined, the bitter truth and the sweet illusion. But here, you see, they’re reduced to something seemingly banal, almost childlike: berries. We don’t even notice that we are making a choice, so subtle is the deception. And that, friends, is the essence of Great Art: you only see it when you realize it.
And then, on the left side, lie the Large Dry Currants. They are almost laughable in their austerity, a contrast so grand it becomes genius. The juicy steak on the right, a symbol of abundance, of life, of meat that blooms and glows. And on the left? Dry currants, wrinkled, tough, squeezed of their essence. They lie there as an ironic counterpoint, a memento mori to the excess on the other side. Life is juicy, but death—or perhaps the spiritual life—is dry, rough, and devoid of sensual stimulus.
The right wants to waste, wants infinity, throwing money as if it were the source of eternal youth. Just look at that juicy steak, red and tender, as if each cut brings you closer to immortality. Wastefulness as the ultimate sign of life: gluttony, abundance, an alchemy of meat and fat that lets reality escape in juicy drops.
The left, on the other hand, the Large Dry Currants, is the opposing force. They want to shrivel, to restrict, to keep everything in check. A life of austerity, of currants that were once grapes but are now nothing more than dried-up memories of fertility. The right shouts: “Let go, give everything!” The left whispers: “Hold on, hold in.” It is a dialogue of opposites, a struggle between unleashed energy and tightly controlled frugality.
But as you say: let’s not get carried away by this duality. Because above it, the rib cage hovers. That primal form of the flesh, a sort of raw geometry that holds everything together, keeps us all together. The rib cage hovers above the scene as the silent referee between these extremes—a reminder that no matter what you choose, you cannot escape your corporeality. This painting doesn’t just shout; it also whispers, subtly and inescapably: “Look at your own flesh, your own rib cage. That is all you have, and in that lies everything.”
The brilliance of this painting is that it’s not just about what we see, but about what we think we see. It doesn’t tell us everything but forces us to look, to understand the juiciness of life in relation to the dryness of existence. To realize that the choice pills always come disguised—sometimes as berries, sometimes as something we don’t even recognize. Life is a work of art where the contrasts hide the greatest truths. And this painting, this depiction of meat and ribs, of wastefulness and shriveling, shows us that the truth lies in that elusive space between them.
Is this painting genius? Absolutely. It challenges us to confront our own duality, to look, to choose, and to live with the awareness that no matter how dry the currants are, they were once part of something juicy.
If this were hanging in a museum, my day couldn’t get any better.
Martijn Benders, 18-10-2024