Brave New World stands as one of the most prophetic novels written on the development of Western society. The author, Aldous Huxley, sets it in a London of the future, where drugs and technology are used to ensure the population’s complacency. The state controls the people without their knowledge or permission. By forcing specific ideals and values onto certain classes of people, a cycle of perpetual indoctrination occurs; it is applied even before birth. In fact, no one is “born” in the traditional sense. A genetic modification process called “decanting” is implemented in place of human sexual procreation. In this way, one embryo produces up to ninety-six identical twins to be divided into social castes. State propaganda is broadcast as they sleep, distinctly curated depending on caste status, while Pavlovian conditioning is enforced during the day. Since the state controls birth, there is no need for family or monogamy. Everyone belongs to everyone else. Mother is a shameful word and orgies are plentiful. The worship of technology and consumerism creates a society oppressed by their own desires. Brave New World sees all emotion outside of happiness eliminated scientifically; love, hate, jealousy, desire are all nonexistent. But without the full spectrum of emotion, what is happiness if not simply a synthetic state? These watercolors explore the translation of Huxley's future to modern times.
All pieces are done in watercolor on 22"x30" Arches 300lb cold-pressed paper.
[hypnopaedia]
“Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child’s mind. And not the child’s mind only. The adult’s mind too- all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides - made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions... Suggestions from the State.”
[the feelies]
“Going to the Feelies this evening, Henry?” enquired the Assistant Predestinator. “I hear the new one at the Alhambra is first-rate. There’s a love scene on a bearskin rug; they say it’s marvellous. Every hair of the bear reproduced. The most amazing tactual effects.”
[john, the savage]
"In the end John was forced to give in. Linda got her soma. Thenceforward she remained in her little room on the thirty-seventh floor of Bernard's apartment house, in bed, with the radio and television always on, and the patchouli tap just dripping, and the soma tablets within reach of her hand - there she remained; and yet wasn't there at all, was all the time away, infinitely far away, on holiday; on holiday in some other world, where the music of the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colours, a sliding, palpitating labyrinth, that led (by what beautifully inevitable windings) to a bright centre of absolute conviction; where the dancing images of the television box were the performers in some indescribably delicious all-singing feely; where the dripping patchouli was more than scent - was the sun, was a million saxophones, was Popé making love, only much more so, incomparably more, and without end."
[orgy porgy]
“Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun,
Kiss the girls and make them One.
Boys at one with girls at peace;
Orgy-porgy gives release.”
[thank ford]
“‘And I've got plenty more,’ Mustapha Mond continued, resuming his seat. ‘A whole collection of pornographic old books. God in the safe and Ford on the shelves.’ He pointed with a laugh to his avowed library–to the shelves of books, the rack full of reading-machine bobbins and sound-track rolls.”
[soma]
"And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears-that's what soma is."
