The smile of collusion

A quote from Jean Baudrillard under one of my early paintings. How eloquently he puts my thoughts into words.

"This false distance is present everywhere: in spy films, in Godard, in modern advertising, which uses it continually as a cultural allusion. It is not really clear in the end whether this 'cool' smile is the smile of humour or that of commercial complicity. This is also the case with pop, and its smile ultimately encapsulates all its ambiguity: it is not the smile of critical distance, but the smile of collusion"

— Jean Baudrillard (The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures)