He Painted Horses, Didn't He?: Part One

George Stubbs (1724-1806) - Lion Devouring a Horse, 1763

The Prism Of Nostalgia

Thomas Cole - Rainy Season in the Tropics (1866)


'There is nothing dead in nature.'

Seneca

Shooting Candles Of The Night

Joseph Wright of Derby - Firework Display at the Castel Sant' Angelo in Rome (1779)


'The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.'

Gaston Bachelard

Pantomimes Of Sin And Sorrow

Kara Walker (b. 1969) - Excavated from the Black Heart of a Negress, 2002 (detail)


'I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would either giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful. I wanted to create something that looks like you. It looks like a cartoon character, it’s a shadow, it’s a piece of paper, but it’s out of scale. It refers to your shadow, to some extent to purity, to the mirror.'

Kara Walker

My Green Heaven

'Absinthe is the aphrodisiac of the self. The green fairy who lives in the absinthe wants your soul. But you are safe with me.'

Dracula (Gary Oldman), Dracula, d. Francis Ford Coppola, 1992

Métrotextual

Arts et Métiers (Paris Métro)

'Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.'

Jules Verne

The DIY Dictator

'A revolution is an idea that has found its bayonets.'

Napoleon Bonaparte

Porcelain Pompadours

'One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel.'

Madame de Pompadour (Sophia Myles), 'The Girl in the Fireplace', Doctor Who (2006)

The Artificial Moon

Mike & Doug Starn (b. 1961) - Attracted to Light 1, 1998-01




Mike & Doug Starn (b. 1961) - Attracted to Light B, 1998-01

Mike & Doug Starn (b. 1961) - Attracted to Light D, 1998-01

The Garden Of Shadows

Mike & Doug Starn (b. 1961) - Structure of Thought No 2, 2001

Mike & Doug Starn (b. 1961) - Structure of Thought No 3, 2001

Mike & Doug Starn (b. 1961) - Structure of Thought No 4, 2001

Photosapien: Part Five - Thomas Ruff (b. 1958)

Thomas Ruff - Porträt (R. Huber), 1988

Thomas Ruff - Porträt (P. Stadtbaeumer), 1988

Photosapien: Part Four - Thomas Ruff (b. 1958)

Thomas Ruff - Stern 01h 32m/-30° , 1992

Thomas Ruff - Stern 17h 51m/-22, 1990

Photosapien: Part Three - Thomas Ruff (b. 1958)

Thomas Ruff - Nacht 10 III, 1993

Thomas Ruff - Nacht 14 I, 1993

Photosapien: Part Two - Thomas Ruff (b. 1958)

Thomas Ruff - Nudes ru05, 2000

Thomas Ruff - Nudes lac15, 2000

Photosapien: Part One - Thomas Ruff (b. 1958)

Thomas Ruff - Substrat 10 II, 2003

Thomas Ruff - Substrat 5 III, 2002

The Hunter Has Two Faces

George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) - Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845


'When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.'

George Bernard Shaw

Summoning The Softeness Of Stone

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) - The Rape of Prosperina (detail), 1621-22


'He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most.'

Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh

A Trio With Brio

Futurama


'Oh my God. This is just like that drug trip I saw in that movie while I was on that drug trip.'

Fry (Billy West)

They Thrive By Night

Peggy Cummins and John Dall in Gun Crazy (aka Deadly Is The Female) - d. Joseph H. Lewis, 1950


'People living deeply have no fear of death.'

Anaïs Nin

Call Me Damien

Damien Hirst - Death Explained, 2007


'Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.'

From Moby Dick by Herman Melville

The Philosopher of Fightin', Fuckin' 'n' Fartin'

'Pain or damage don't end the world. Or despair or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man...and give some back.'

Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), Deadwood

Möbius Strips Of Dreams And Desires

Eraserhead, d. David Lynch (1977)


'Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there's humour in struggling and ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd. But I don't just find humour in unhappiness - I find it extremely heroic the way people forge on despite the despair they often feel. Like the character in Eraserhead - he's totally confused, yet he struggles to figure things out and do what's best. Isn't that fantastic?'

David Lynch

Dittomania

Sherrie Levine - Fountain (after Marcel Duchamp: A.P), 1991

'Since the early 1980s, Sherrie Levine has made a career out of re-using - or appropriating - famous works of art, often by making new versions of them and placing them in different contexts. Throughout her career, Levine has created art based on works by prominent male artists from the early 20th century in order to underscore the relative absence of women in the art world at that time. Her sources have included Walker Evans' photographs and Constantin Brancusi's sculptures. Levine's piece, entitled Fountain (after Marcel Duchamp: A. P.), is inspired by Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917).

When Levine's Fountain is compared with Duchamp's sculpture, it is apparent that it is not an exact copy. Most notably, Duchamp's piece was an actual urinal, turned upside-down and unaltered except for his signature. He believed he could transform such mass-produced, everyday objects into artworks merely by proclaiming them so, and called them "readymades." In contrast, Levine's sculpture is a contemporary urinal cast in the sculptor's traditional precious metal, bronze. Polished to a brilliant shine, this piece is no longer a common, store-bought item; it has been transformed by the artist into a unique object.'

Walker Art Centre

'I try to make art which celebrates doubt and uncertainty. Which provokes answers but doesn't give them. Which withholds absolute meaning by incorporating parasite meanings. Which suspends meaning while perpetually dispatching you toward interpretation, urging you beyond dogmatism, beyond doctrine, beyond ideology, beyond authority.'

Sherrie Levine

Ming-Zhu has tagged me with a so-called Thinking Blogger Award, "in most part for the wonderful, bold career/life choices he's been engaging with recently". This is flattering, not least because not everyone has deemed to call my recent career/life choices wonderful or bold. As for the Award itself, here's the lowdown:

The origin of this award is The Thinking Blog.

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (you have a choice of a silver version or a gold one).

I would in turn award (read: tag) Austin's Disposable Words, for the remarkable photographs; Edward's Wino sapien, for its flights into the olfactory; Ed's Tomato, for being the nexus between mainstream food writing and amateur food blogging; Sarah's Prima la musica, poi le parole, for its passion; and Voltaire's Monkey, for its pseudonymed blogger and his Benjamin-esque approach to our cultural history.

Meanwhile, Ming is taking a break from blogging, with good reason. Ming's not only one of my favourite bloggers, but one of my favourite people, too, and my thoughts are with her.

Matt Clayfield, Esoteric Rabbit

The Velvet Muse: Part Three

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) - A Vision of Fiammetta, 1878

The Velvet Muse: Part Two

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) - La Ghirlandata, 1873

The Velvet Muse: Part One

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) - Venus Verticordia, 1864

If You Haven't Failed, You're Not Trying Hard Enough

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) - Samuel Beckett, 1964


'Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.'

Samuel Beckett

The Argument For Artifice

Inez Van Lamsweerde (b. 1963) and Vinoodh Matadin (?) - Kirsten, 1997


'Art is not a mirror held up to nature, but a hammer with which to shape it.'

Bertolt Brecht

One Man's Delinquent Is Another Man's Deity

Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) - Jean Genet (1910-86), 1955


'[At his trial in 1943] Genet faced life imprisonment as punishment for his recidivism, but Jean Cocteau, who had discovered Genet and arranged to publish his first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers, submitted a statement read in court: 'He is Rimbaud, one cannot condemn Rimbaud.' He suggested that the judge might go down in history as a philistine if he made the wrong decision. Not for a moment did Cocteau argue that Genet was innocent, simply that he was a genius. His testimony got Genet off scot-free.'

Edmund White

Leprosy Of The Soul

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - The Chasseur in the Forest, 1813


'Let us frankly admit it - for us, the landscape is a stranger and one is frightfully alone among the trees that bloom and the brooks that flow past us. Being alone with a dead person, one feels far and away not so abandoned as being alone with trees. For as mysterious as death may seem, even more mysterious is a life that is not our life, that does not participate in our life and, without giving any notice to us, celebrates its own festivities, which we observe with a certain embarrassment, like guests who have arrived by accident and speak another language.'

Rainer Maria Rilke

Primitive Piety: Part Seven

Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts - Parisian Book of Hours, 1405-10

Primitive Piety: Part Six

Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts - Vision of the Throne of the Lord (The Paris Apocalypse), c. 1400

Primitive Piety: Part Five

Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts - Legend of Saint Ladislas (from the Anjou Legendarium) - c. 1330s

Primitive Piety: Part Four

Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts - Libro del Biadaiolo, 1325-50

Primitive Piety: Part Three

Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts - Weingarten Missal, c. 1216

Primitive Piety: Part Two

Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts - Ingeborg Psalter, c. 1195

Primitive Piety: Part One

Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts - St. Albans Psalter, 1120s

A Body Of Truth: Part Four (Robert Mapplethorpe)

Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) - Man in Polyester Suit, 1980