The Square is a poignant criticism of the art world and in a broader sense what makes us human. It highlights the discrepancy between what we claim to be our beliefs and how we behave in our day to day lives. The protagonist, Christian, head curator of a white cube gallery in Stockholm, claims enthusiasm over the most recent work being displayed ‘the Square’, which aims to create a radical space of trust and caring, an example of the currently popular relational aesthetics. At the same time, however, we see his morals tested and fall short again and again, as a neglectful parent, lover that forgets the name of the woman he sleeps with, climaxing when he pushes a little boy down the stairs and shuts him out of his home. In an interview, he seems unable to explain the meaning of the exhibition, resorting to art world jargon such as ‘exhibition/ non-exhibition’. Ruben Östlund draws attention the often absurd way in which contemporary art operates with an anticlimactic scene of a cleaner accidentally vacuuming over a piece of dirt in one of the artefacts which is a pile of dirt in the exhibition, followed by the frantic attempts by the curators to replace the same piece of dirt. Similarly, we are subjected to an excruciatingly long performance by a man behaving like a wild animal, attacking the guests at a black tie dinner. This perhaps suggests that civil society is but a thin veneer over a more animal reality.
Giulia's Art Kingdom 