Round the galleries

I admire J.G. Ballard, who died last year, but much of his writing leaves me cold — as if abandoned in one of the lunar jungles or deserts that Max Ernst’s paintings so often depict.

I admire J.G. Ballard, who died last year, but much of his writing leaves me cold — as if abandoned in one of the lunar jungles or deserts that Max Ernst’s paintings so often depict. It’s a deep chill of the psyche, a numbing of the human warmth that makes life bearable, and Ballard rightly identified it as taking over our culture. He wasn’t really a science fiction writer so much as a social commentator, dissecting our present dystopia — a remarkable and original voice, unafraid to describe the dark psychopathology of the human race, however ominous his predictions. At Gagosian Gallery (6-24 Britannia Street, WC1, until 1 April) is an exhibition entitled Crash, in homage to his famous novel (and the film based on it), an evocation of the Ballardian.