The Banana Republic in Art
In the encyclopædic, historical poetry in the book Canto General (General Song, 1950), the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904–73) denounced foreign multinational corporate political dominance of Latin American countries with the four-stanza poem "La United Fruit Co."; the second-stanza excerpts read:
. . . The Fruit Company, Inc.
Reserved for itself the most succulent,
The central coast of my own land,
The delicate waist of America.
It rechristened its territories
As the "Banana Republics",
And over the sleeping dead,
Over the restless heroes
Who brought about the greatness,
The liberty and the flags,
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Famous quotes containing the words banana, republic and/or art:
“I never liked bananas much anyway. Two-thirds of the way down even one banana I am willing to concede defeat smilingly and give the rest to the nearest monkey.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble.”
—Willem De Kooning (b. 1904)