Ink brush, white gouache

40.9 x 30.7 inches. Private collection Private collection

The main character of the novel "1984" Winston Smith has to endure permanent state sonication... and even create propaganda and falsification of history for the ruling party in the "Ministry of Truth" (Minitrue). At one point, he invents "Comrade Ogilvy" for an article in the Oceanian Times.

That model comrade, according to Winston, was throughout his life a picture of selfless patriotism, an exemplary subject of the first order, iron-willed even as a child, having rejected all toys except a drum, a toy submachine gun, and a miniature helicopter. Taking his principles dead serious, he dutifully denounced his parents, touched neither cigarettes nor alcohol, and lived spartanly and abstemiously throughout. Topics of conversation other than the principles of Engsoc (English Socialism) were strange to him. Comrade Ogilvy had just managed to invent a new, murderously efficient hand grenade, when he unfortunately died a hero's death at the age of 23 in a cinematic dogfight. According to Winston, the "Big Brother" himself said that it was hardly possible to view this end without feelings of envy.

Winston dictates such free, "airy" inventions to a device, whereupon they are automatically written down. Then they are archived, printed, and the invention finally becomes a fact in the collective memory. Comrade Ogilvy is now a fixed part of Oceania's historiography and an integral part of it, much like Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.