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Each month, we invite élite art critic Braithwaite Merriweather to appraise the box art of the latest game releases. In between his time spent wandering the corridors of culture, Merriweather writes on a freelance basis for various publications, including Snitters and Nuneaton à la Carte. If you are unaware of his prowess, rest assured; he’s on a crusade to educate the unwashed. Put simply, he’s a man that needs no introduction.
Friends, I’ve had the indignation of having to suffer a plumber. There are some things in life outside of our control. Death can be defied. Taxes can be evaded. But household heating systems cannot be controlled, and when disaster strikes our lives are tossed into a tempest of tradesmen and time spent interminably waiting. As I type this, I can see the back of him: the ill-fitting fleece (why are they always blue?), the black cargo trousers and boring boots. What's he doing with his head jammed into the boiler cupboard? To take my mind off him and the furious frustration of my helpless situation, I look, as ever, to art.
Rage 2
Never has a piece of game box art arrived so ruthlessly in time to match my mood. The front cover for Rage 2 is true to its name, as well it should be. I feel as though on any other day my eyes would have run smack into this cacophony of colour and recoiled in quesy disgust. Today, it feels as though the world belongs in these screaming shades of pink and irradiated yellow. None of the figures in the frame interest me – not the armoured jarheads or the wayward freaks at the top – save for the screaming woman. Hers seems a righteous fury, and I can imagine her in the very same pose as she watches a plumber fumble around to fix her central heating.
Moreover – and to my great delight – once the initial feelings of anger subside I feel a rushing sense of relief. This work, it is clear, is one whose temper has been tested by history; it is unafraid to call upon a rich lineage of angry women. The blue-mohawked, war-painted lady is descended from a long line: from Judith Beheading Holofernes (ca. 1620), by Artemisia Gentileschi, and leaping forward to Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind (1896), by Jean Léon Gérôme. If the subjects of these glorious works had access to warpaint and hair gel – to say nothing of pump-action shotguns – then I’m sure they would have relished the opportunity to adorn their crusades with further style.
A Plague Tale: Innocence
Oh, rats. He’s poked his head out and asked for a ‘cuppa.’ I wonder, would it be best if I simply dove to my death from my living room window (I live on the upper floor of a maisonette, and I suspect the fall would kill, or at least seriously injure me)? Anything but suffering further indignation. Alas, I must bite down and bear it – I think I have some lapsang souchong somewhere in the back of the cupboard. Looking to item number two of this month’s crop, I can see what looks like a pair of street urchins, grubby-faced and desperate, surrounded by a wreath of rats.
Despite the initial wave of underwhelmment, I find myself oddly drawn to this work (rather like my relationship with Twiglets, despite their obvious problems). It is a joy to see the work of Van Gogh reflected in any box art, but to see the influence of Two Rats – one of his lesser-discussed works – is a real thrill. And there is just the faintest whisp of George Bellows in here – specifically his painting River Rats, which, although it in fact depicts humans, captures the scurrying nature of these lowly creatures. They remind me of this plumber, scratching around in the cupboard doing lord knows what.
Team Sonic Racing
As my father used to say – whenever he would discuss me and my two siblings – ‘two out of three ‘ain’t bad.’ And though I’ve often wondered which of my siblings, the architect or the ‘investment banker,' he considers on a par with me, and thus which is the odd one out (and quite why my father, who was a plumber by trade, had such demanding standards), no such wondering is necessary here. This egregious mess of a work is a vacuum where thought should be. It looks as if a salary man piled his plate high with woodland creatures, spreadsheets, and a tab of acid, and then vomited this mess out. There are some works that simply make one despair, and this makes those works seem distantly appealing.
It’s all the more frustrating for the possibilities it represents. Given its garish colours and chaotic composition, you might think it belongs in the camp of surrealism. If it were to embrace that, we could have something akin to Munch, or Picasso. Consider this: the blue hedgehog at the heart of the image is presented with human features – teeth, eyes, and nails, for instance – and we are invited to consider the possibilities of a new space. It may be nightmarish, dangerous even, but safety is the death of art! Let it never be said that critics are failed artists; I simply offer up my artistic talents so that others could take up the opportunity. Should they be brave enough, of course.
