The self-indulgence of short-term beneficiaries of supposed economic rationalism, oblivious to its long-term ravages, is the counterpart to military and civil oppression. In Counihan's 1968 screenprint Sunset Dance. The moral flabbiness of the cavorting bodies and diminution of heads symbolise what poet and artist William Blake (1757-1827) called "mind-forged manacles."

The contemporary relevance of such literary allusions is sometimes overt in the art-works themselves. --