Bundled atomic intercontinental missiles are placed in front of the image background, frontally oriented towards the viewer, parallel to graphic endless loops. The gloomy and desaturated colors create a cold, desolate pictorial mood. In the background, a backdrop of destruction is suggested in the form of ruined urban structures.
‘Composition Q With Nuclear Intercontinental Missiles’ from the third series of paintings ‘Infinite Rebirth of Madness’ / 2022 / Digital painting / Exposure on Fuji Crystal Pearl Metallic Ultra HD photo paper / Limited edition: 3 + 1 AP / 13,287 Pixel (H) ∙ 23,622 Pixel (W) / 44.3″ (H) ∙ 78.8″ (W) / Numbered and signed by hand.

The present work is protected by copyright in all its parts.
© 2022 by Heinz Hermann Maria Hoppe.
All rights reserved.

‘Infinite Rebirth of Madness’ /// Third Series of Paintings : : :

‘Quadrature of Violence’ : : :
Digital Paintings

The nuclear weapons, aligned diagonally, look ready to launch.
‘Composition R With Nuclear Intercontinental Missiles’ from the third series of paintings ‘Infinite Rebirth of Madness’ / 2022 / Digital painting / Exposure on Fuji Crystal Pearl Metallic Ultra HD photo paper / Limited edition: 3 + 1 AP / 13,287 Pixel (H) ∙ 23,622 Pixel (W) / 44.3″ (H) ∙ 78.8″ (W) / Numbered and signed by hand.
The nukes are crisscrossing their missile trajectories.
‘Composition S With Nuclear Intercontinental Missiles’ from the third series of paintings ‘Infinite Rebirth of Madness’ / 2022 / Digital painting / Exposure on Fuji Crystal Pearl Metallic Ultra HD photo paper / Limited edition: 3 + 1 AP / 13,287 Pixel (H) ∙ 23,622 Pixel (W) / 44.3″ (H) ∙ 78.8″ (W) / Numbered and signed by hand.
The weapons are lined up vertically next to each other in masses. In the foreground, a black infinity loop shapes the image.
‘Composition T With Nuclear Intercontinental Missiles’ from the third series of paintings ‘Infinite Rebirth of Madness’ / 2022 / Digital painting / Exposure on Fuji Crystal Pearl Metallic Ultra HD photo paper / Limited edition: 3 + 1 AP / 13,287 Pixel (H) ∙ 23,622 Pixel (W) / 44.3″ (H) ∙ 78.8″ (W) / Numbered and signed by hand.
The rockets in the flyby cast striking shadows on the ground.
‘Composition U With Nuclear Intercontinental Missiles’ from the third series of paintings ‘Infinite Rebirth of Madness’ / 2022 / Digital painting / Exposure on Fuji Crystal Pearl Metallic Ultra HD photo paper / Limited edition: 3 + 1 AP / 13,287 Pixel (H) ∙ 23,622 Pixel (W) / 44.3″ (H) ∙ 78.8″ (W) / Numbered and signed by hand.
The rockets fly in the direction of the viewer.
‘Composition V With Nuclear Intercontinental Missiles’ from the third series of paintings ‘Infinite Rebirth of Madness’ / 2022 / Digital painting / Exposure on Fuji Crystal Pearl Metallic Ultra HD photo paper / Limited edition: 3 + 1 AP / 13,287 Pixel (H) ∙ 23,622 Pixel (W) / 44.3″ (H) ∙ 78.8″ (W) / Numbered and signed by hand.
Two groups of different types of long-range nuclear weapons stand side by side. The implied time tunnel in the form of infinity loops hovers above the warheads.
‘Composition W With Nuclear Intercontinental Missiles’ from the third series of paintings ‘Infinite Rebirth of Madness’ / 2022 / Digital painting / Exposure on Fuji Crystal Pearl Metallic Ultra HD photo paper / Limited edition: 3 + 1 AP / 13,287 Pixel (H) ∙ 23,622 Pixel (W) / 44.3″ (H) ∙ 78.8″ (W) / Numbered and signed by hand.
The nuclear weapons are aligned against each other.
‘Composition X With Nuclear Intercontinental Missiles’ from the third series of paintings ‘Infinite Rebirth of Madness’ / 2022 / Digital painting / Exposure on Fuji Crystal Pearl Metallic Ultra HD photo paper / Limited edition: 3 + 1 AP / 13,287 Pixel (H) ∙ 23,622 Pixel (W) / 44.3″ (H) ∙ 78.8″ (W) / Numbered and signed by hand.

Comment
Author: Heinz Hermann Maria Hoppe

Old people who survived the Second World War are again piling up canned goods in damp cellars. Playing children have their legs ripped off again. Wounded fathers are again pressing cartridges into empty magazines, crouched in putrid trenches. Blood young soldiers let themselves be recruited again to bleed out. Fear again makes mothers despondent, fear for the family and for the raping hordes.

The typical steps toward escalation are age-old. Threats are always answered with counter-threats and first strikes with second strikes. For millennia, nations have whipped themselves up spirals of violence and down into self-dug valleys of hell. They find no answer to an almost childlike question: ‘Why are there still wars?’ Why do death, destruction and extinction prevail over all common sense, even in times when humanity as a whole faces formidable threats and urgently needs to cooperate – in the fight against superhuman ‘enemies’: hot times, water scarcity, species extinction and world hunger?

Are we putting too much money into military technology and too little commitment into peace research? Why are there still no means of action against the cementing of the power of individual, bloodsucking despots, against their theft of freedom, against persecution, against torture and against the arrest of entire population groups?

War seems to be a perpetual motion machine. The slaughter in the trenches is followed, at some point, by peace treaties or armistices. But war comes again, eventually, on new fronts, with new alliances. The vicious circle of the writhing and enriching Leviathan closes again and again. What sword could cut it?

Can a ‘sword’ ever do this? The pacifist transformation of ‘swords into plowshares’ has not yet achieved it. The ‘pen’, supposedly ‘stronger than the sword’, has also still not brought lasting peace.

The only thing that still separates us from the ‘Third World War’ is the fear of nuclear retaliation, i.e. armed force after all. The bomb as a ‘tool for peace’, can that work in the end? Don’t we need completely different ‘decay ponds’ against annihilation. So far we have not come up with anything better. We continue to rely on mistrust and fear, insight and reason have again moved into the far distance.

So is the ‘turn of the times’ nothing other than one of the eternally recurring troughs in the ups and downs of war histories? Is war today nothing other than the “continuation of politics by other means”, as Carl von Clausewitz defined it; only that today ‘the sword’ hovers over our heads in the form of autonomously circling combat drones, limited, nuclear battlefields are calculated and hypersonic weapons are the last cry in the three great arsenals?

Is humanity, until it utters its truly last cry, trapped in the endless loop of wars?
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