The Biblical account of St John’s vision of the seven headed Red Dragon and the seven headed Blue Beast rising from the sea has been interpreted variously. However, within early Christian tradition it was popularly seen as symbolising the partnership between evil earthly rulers and Satan’s servant (or the Antichrist) which would lead to the temporary stronghold of Satan over the world, before his final defeat in the ultimate battle of ‘good over evil,’ at the second coming of Christ.

‘The Beast of Revelation’ presents a universal context for interpreting this specifically Christian theme - transforming these Biblical monsters into what, for the artist, constitute the very real ‘demons’ of our own time. Here, the Red Dragon is depicted as the personification of a destructive, selfish and corrupt politics, perpetrated on the one hand by a secular world leadership obsessed by personal status and power, and sustained on the other hand, by the failings of an institutionalised religious leadership (the traditional guardians of moral conscience) which itself is too concerned with self preservation to intervene. Similarly, the Blue Beast personifies what the artist suggests are the ‘partners in crime’ of political corruption - excessive economic greed, unfettered technology, environmental exploitation and the manipulative power of the mass media. In this contemporary reinterpretation of Blake’s work, ‘Satan’s reign on earth’ is translated in terms of the tangible evils of this world which are ultimately rooted in this symbiotic relationship between political power and economic greed - evils which have manifest themselves throughout history in the horrors of war and the atrocity of slavery, in the gluttony that has made species extinct and laid waste to natural environments and in the moral and spiritual decline of an increasingly individualistic, consumer society controlled by market forces and political agendas.

 

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