Conspiracy, works of art, curves and arcs, global finance and international terrorism.
Sounds like a screenplay for a new, modern-outlandish James Bond movie.
But if you’ve never heard of Mark Lombardi, you are in for a fascinating ride of intrigue. Imagine just going to the museum to relax and experience some “art” with the family, suddenly you’re immersed into mind-boggling theory of world inter-corruption.
The “narrative structures,” as Lombardi called them, were based on information he gleaned from public documents. While some saw beauty in the curves and arrows of his schematic drawings, to Lombardi, they were clues to activity in the shadows. They depicted the curious connections between the Saudis and the Bushes, the network of financial exchanges by entities from London to Riyadh, and a covert peasant uprising in Latin America. Newsweek called him “an investigative reporter whose medium just happened to be the schematic drawing.”
Much of Lombardi’s practice was research-based, with the information he sourced written down on index cards; some 40,000 were thought to be part of his personal archive at one point.
From the early 1990s, Lombardi began researching the many scandals of his time–six years before his death, he rolled out the link-analysis pencil diagrams of crime and conspiracy networks that he would become best known for.
“Lombardi is more than a conceptualist or political artist,” argued Jerry Saltz of “The Village Voice” after Lombardi’s death. “He’s a sorcerer whose drawings are crypto-mystical talismans or visual exorcisms meant to immobilize enemies, tap secret knowledge, summon power and expose demons.” But demons dislike exposure. One way or another, they will take their toll.
Patricia Goldstone has written the first comprehensive biography of the conceptual artist with “Interlock: Art, Conspiracy, and the Shadow Worlds of Mark Lombardi” (Counterpoint Press, 2015), choc full of details from those who were closest to him: family, friends, colleagues, and past loves. Goldstone weaves US historical records into the course of the artist’s life, citing scandals, political intrigue, and economic turbulence along the way.
She and many another enthusiast help us understand the seriousness, you might say the integrity in his work.
Important things to keep in mind:
*Lombardi’s sketch-representations, demonstrating the links between financial institutions, businesses, nation states, and intelligence agencies really builds on the “interlock” sketching once used by prosecutors who build anti-trust cases. He simply expanded the reach of tried-and-true methods used in the past by lawyers and forensic accountants.
*After deciding to make this his life’s work, he disappeared into the bowels of libraries for some ten years, filling thousands of cards with notes, before actually producing his first sketches for public viewing.
*He felt relatively safe from harm, noting that he only “reprossesing and rearranging” information already in the public domain,” and that those original sources were “still walking around.”
*In all those senses Lombardi was the photographic negative, the opposite, of sensationalist “conspiracy nuts.” Those scandal-flashers research something for twenty minutes on dubious sites on the internet before offering their great “expose.” Lombardi emerged from his library studies, probably pale from lack of sunlight, after thousands and thousands of hours.
For some real depth, read Goldstone’s book. Or, investing a little less time, watch her twenty-nine minute interview on YouTube.