Quantitative Melencolia

Like you, I’m stuck indoors writing this. It’s sunny outside today. Yet, I’m only bathing in the light of the screen. It’s early summer in the year of the pandemic and I’m lying in bed with a cough that won’t give up. I’m staring at a dark sky, with a strange piercing light, and a bat-like figure flying from the horizon. I can’t help but think about the recent news reports about the bat as a carrier of the virus that has now spread into human circulation. The bat has torn open its own body, revealing its insides to us. But what is seen is neither intestines, nor any viral co-habitants. Instead, the inside of the bat unfolds as a sign reading “MELENCOLIA I”. It’s the title of the 1514 engraving by German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, found on the website of the Whitworth Art Gallery.

Sitting next to me in bed is my 6-year old child, who has contracted the same deep cough and a light fever. On the radio they are reporting statistics for the daily death toll. The rolling average in Sweden is now down to 50 deaths per day. I’m not exactly sure what to do with that information, but somehow it feels comforting to know. Following the statistics suggests some sort of control. For most of the morning my kid has been fully occupied with a Rubik’s cube, and now triumphantly looks up at me, having solved two full sides! It’s as though I’m being confronted with a geometric argument, and it strikes me that Rubik’s cube is a kind of three-dimensional rendering of the ancient “magic square”, which also appears in the image in front of me. Dürer’s square adds up to 34 in all directions: horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and in quadrants as well as other patterned combinations. But beyond this numeric elegance, there is also a hidden message: the date of May 17th, 1514 is encoded [1]. The day his mother died.

I remember historian of ideas Karin Johannisson writing that melancholy is about loss. And has always been. Its cultural expressions have varied greatly over the centuries, and so has its social standing. But loss is its constant. [2] Loss of love, loss of home, loss of a dear one, loss of normality, loss of a way of life, loss of meaning, loss of entitlement, loss of inspiration… It suggests that melancholy belongs to those who had something to lose.

Over the centuries Melencolia is said to have amassed more scholarship than any other print work throughout art history. And some suggest second only to Mona Lisa, of all artworks of any form.

While it is easy to imagine the layers of meaning and value gained by this constant flow of interpretation and reinterpretation, looking at the image today it seems equally evident how much meaning must be lost on us as contemporary viewers. The authoritative art historian Erwin Panofsky, who spent four decades working on this image, writes on the clenched fist of the melancholic angel central to the composition, that “she does not hold on to an object which does not exist, but to a problem which cannot be solved.” [3]

There is a concept in actuarial science that charts what happens to someone’s life expectancy when their spouse dies. Something like the average survival time of a broken heart. It’s said that this was the source of inspiration for David X. Li when he wrote the Gaussian copula function in 2000 as a means of predicting correlation between loan defaults. Something like the average contagiousness of going broke. It’s a geometrically beautiful argument that claims a solution to a problem which cannot be solved. This function has been singled out as one of the central causes behind the 2008 financial crisis. [4] While in operation, the Gaussian copula was a truly alchemical formula, enabling bankers to produce high-yield derivatives at seemingly no risk. When drawn, the function looks like a bell curve. A normal distribution, but in three dimensions.

But the unexpected – or unthinkable – per definition never strikes within the normal distribution. As a young adult Dürer was almost hit by a meteorite. In November 1492 he witnessed a 250-pound rock suddenly crashing into Earth a mere 30 miles away from him. A popular theory holds that the piercing light in the dark sky depicts this experience of a blazing star coming at you. [5]

I have found no literature supporting that the eight-sided object at the center of Melencolia would also refer to the landed meteorite, even if there is some visual similarity. Rather it has been read as a geometric argument of unknown intent. Not unlike the Gaussian copula, which displays its distribution over the unit cube, it has been suggested that "Dürer’s solid" was an attempt to resolve the ancient Delian problem of doubling the cube [6]. A problem which cannot be resolved with merely the compass and straightedge, the 16th century tools at hand.

Auction results over the past decade have varied considerably. From a quick google search I found realized prices varying from 85,000 to 337,000 GBP, within the same year. I was too cheap to pay Artnet 32.50 USD for a complete auction history. And, anyway, works in a museum are withdrawn from the market, so even if they could be considered a store of value, that value is essentially illiquid from a market perspective.

The impression in the Whitworth's collection was donated by the secretary of Baroness Burdett-Coutts, whose fortune emanated from the Coutts & Co bank.

When the Gaussian copula blew up in 2008, it was an end to a certain rhetoric of inevitability. An end to Margret Thatcher’s (in)famous slogan “There Is No Alternative” (TINA), only to be replaced by a new regime of “Whatever It Takes” (WIT), as coined by the director of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi. [7] If TINA speaks to cool self-confidence, WIT speaks to the desperation of saving a failing system in the face of unknown catastrophe. As such, the central bankers behind negative interest rates and quantitative easing are more in tune with a 16th or 17th century notion of melancholy (which includes a kind of manic hubris) than the contemporary diagnosis.

Quantitative Melencolia suggests a reflection on the museum and its “store of value” (the collection) seen in relation to central banks. It’s a proposal for a new kind of museological practice that mirrors the unconventional monetary policies that emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. With the introduction of quantitative easing, one could say that central banks went from acting as external overseers of financial and price stability, to becoming active market participants themselves. The work asks what it could mean for a museum to follow suit?

By now my child is utterly bored and frustrated with the Rubik’s cube, and is demanding my immediate assistance in a high-pitched voice. On the radio the reports on the daily death toll are followed by the economic desperation at hand and central bankers reiterating the promise of doing “whatever it takes”, launching a new round of quantitative easing at a scale that makes previous such rounds look humble. As I turn to the geometric problem of my child, I realize that the only way I know to solve a Rubik’s cube is to peel off the colored stickers on the outside of the cube and rearrange them. For a moment, the situation is getting so desperate that I’m seriously considering suggesting this unconventional measure, but I decide that the benefits are at best short term, and instead I’m able to divert my kids’ attention to the image of melancholy.

Quantitative Melencolia is a proposal by Goldin+Senneby, developed in dialogue with cultural economist Ismail Ertürk at the Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester. The remaking of the copper plate would be realized by graphic artist Gunnar Nehls, who has worked as an engraver of banknotes for the past three decades.