Consumed
Warrick Kemp (b 1968)
Consumed
Bronze - Edition of 6
Height: 43,5 cm
R28 000
‘The conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.’ Thorstein Bunde Veblen herewith defines our base need as nothing more than to attain and display a higher social status than others.
Victor Lebow, a 20th century economist and retail analyst, defines modern consumption, in the 1955 Spring issue of the Journal of Retailing, as follows:
‘Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns.’
Popular media and entertainment, directed at our base needs, are utilised to occupy the public consciousness. The aim is to keep us distracted from the reality of our world, as we become concerned with only the narrow desires of our addictive consumerism. Preoccupied with material needs to gain fulfilment and social status, we are inevitably left unsatisfied, continuously feeding at the trough of ‘conspicuous consumption’.