I Come To Bury History, Not To Paint It

André Bauchant (1873-1958) - Cleopatra's Barge, 1939


'History is the science of what never happens twice.'

Paul Valéry

Two Deaths And Only One Life

Piero do Cosimo (1462-1521) - The Death of Procris, c. 1500


'If I was strange, and strange were my figures,
Such strangeness is a source both of grace and art;
And whoever adds strangeness here and there to his style,
Gives life, force and spirit to his paintings.'

(Piero di Cosimo's epitaph.)

I Shot Frida Kahlo

Yasumasa Morimura (b. 1951) - An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo (Collar of Thorns), 2001

"Transcendental guarantees of truth are dead; in the agonal struggle of language games there is no commensurability; there are no criteria of truth transcending local discourses, but only the endless struggle of local narratives vying with one another for legitimation."

From Situating the Self by Selya Benhabib

The Brotherhood Of Men And Cabbages

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-93) - Vertumnus, c. 1590-1


'[Arcimboldo] imposes a system of substitution (an apple comes to stand for a cheek, as in a coded message...), and, in the same way, a system of transposition (the whole figure is somehow drawn back toward the detail). However, and this is Arcimboldo's peculiarity, what is remarkable about the composite heads is that the picture hesitates between coding and decoding: even when we have displaced the screen of substitution and of transposition in order to perceive the head composed as an effect, our eyes retain the tracery of the first meanings which have served to produce this effect.'

From 'Arcimboldo or Magician and Rhétoriqueur' (in The Responsibility of Forms) by Roland Barthes

A Blondie Joke

Ricky Swallow - iMan Prototypes, 2005

'I don't mind if my skull ends up on a shelf as long as it's got my name on it.'

Debbie Harry

The Oblivion Seeker

Mark Rothko - Chapel, 1971

'If my doctor told me I only had six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.'

Isaac Isamov

Black Hole Son

Charles Burns - Black Hole, 2005

"The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night."

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Doorway Of Gradiva

Jerry N. Uelsmann (b. 1934) - Untitled, 1976

'We conceived the idea of a repository, an ageless place located anywhere outside the world of reason. In that space would be stored those manmade objects that have lost their utilitarian purpose, or have not yet found it, or have markedly deviated from it and that therefore conceal some internal secret lock. Those objects could then emerge in an elective way and continuously from the river of the ever-thickening sand that blurs adult vision, restoring to it the transparency that children enjoy. They would alternate with highly singular natural objects, primarily those whose structure corresponds to a most unfathomable necessity, those whose very appearance is enough to cast a new light on the problem of that necessity. Both categories of objects could exert a rather mysterious attraction, arouse ideas of possession, and especially help to reveal to each individual his own desire, or at least as an intercessor between that desire and its true or often unknown object.'

André Breton - Gradiva

Back - And Very Black

Charles Burns - Tears (date unknown)

I took a long break from this blog, thinking I no longer needed it. Things have changed.

Why Being Bad Can Feel So Good

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep, 1989 - Paula Rego (b. 1935)


'I've needed an impulse from within, a lot of emotional energy to do this stuff, and a kind of desire. It's a very aggressive thing . . . It's not an aggression like you're hitting it; it's a sensual aggression, if you like.'

Paula Rego

'Marina Warner, who senses Goya's influence and a 'post-Freudian mordancy', says: 'They're beyond morality; she's more interested in the power of feeling than in good conduct. She sees sexuality everywhere'. For Rego, 'there is adulthood in childhood; children have uncommonly strong desires and fears; they're very aware of their own bodies and sexual feelings. We only put a name to it later'. She is sometimes compared to Balthus . . . [Yet] for Warner, 'Balthus is voyeuristic, looking at little girls who are unaware of their sexuality. But Paula's are in possession of their own feelings, which we are invited to feel too.''

From Secret Histories by Maya Jaggi


'The remarkable thing about the sex taboo is that it is fully seen in transgression. It is inculcated partly through education but never resolutely formulated. Education proceeds as much by silence as by muffled warnings. The taboo is discovered directly by a furtive and at first partial exploration of the forbidden territory. At first nothing could be more mysterious. We are admitted into the knowledge of a pleasure in which the notion of pleasure is mingled with mystery, suggestive of the taboo that fashions that pleasure at the same time as it condemns it. The revelation through transgression has certainly not remained constant throughout the ages. Fifty years ago the irony of sex education was more obvious still. But everywhere - and doubtless from the earliest times - our sexual activity is sworn to secrecy, and everywhere, though to a variable degree, it appears contrary to our dignity so that the essence of eroticism is to be found in the inextricable confusion of sexual pleasure and taboo. In human terms the taboo never makes an appearance without suggesting sexual pleasure, nor does the pleasure without evoking the taboo. The basis is a natural urge and in childhood the natural urge acts alone.'

From Erotism: Death and Sensuality by Georges Bataille

The Week in Review

Films:

Bullit, 1968 - d. Peter Yates
Cool Hand Luke, 1967 - d. Stuart Rosenberg
Death Wish, 1974 - d. Michael Winner
Death Wish 2, 1982 - d. Michael Winner
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, 1972 - d. Luis Buñuel
Easy Rider, 1969 - d. Dennis Hopper
The French Connection, 1971 - d. William Friedkin
Midnight Cowboy, 1969 - d. John Schlesinger
Patton, 1970 - d. Franklin J. Schaffner
Red River, 1948 - d. Howard Hawks
Three Colours: Red, 1994 - d. Krzysztof Kieslowski
The Wild Bunch, 1969 - d. Sam Peckinpah

Books:

The Monk - Matthew Gregory Lewis
The Story of the Eye - Georges Bataille
Story of O - Pauline Réage (Anne Desclos)
Venus in Furs - Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch

How To Introduce A Four Star Twat In Twelve Easy Steps

Patton, 1970 - d. Franklin J. Schaffner


'Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country . . . Americans, traditionally, love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle . . . Americans love a winner, and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. Now, I don't give a hoot in hell for a man who loses and laughs. That's why Americans have never lost - and will never lose - a war. Because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.'

Gen. George S. Patton Jnr. (George C. Scott) - Patton (1970), d. Franklin J. Schaffner

I've Got That Floating Feeling

The Kiss, 1907-08 - Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)


'Love is metaphysical gravity.'

R. Buckminster Fuller

Twilight In The West

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969 - d. George Roy Hill


BUTCH CASSIDY: What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful!
BANK GUARD: Kept gettin' robbed.
BUTCH CASSIDY: Small price to pay for beauty!

Buñuel De Jour

Brothel Customer (Iska Kahn) and "Belle de Jour" (Catherine Deneuve) - Belle de jour, d. Luis Buñuel (1900-1983), 1967


'[Extreme] seductiveness is probably at the boundary of horror.'

Georges Bataille

Gun/Man

Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) - Dirty Harry, 1971 (d. Don Siegel)


'I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.'

Clarence Darrow

The Devil We Know

Faust (1994) - d. Jan Svankmajer (b. 1934)


'In proposing a new etiquette for seeing, Surrealism often harks back to Romantic and occultist cosmologies which posit a latent harmony beneath the discontinuities of the world's surface. Always eager to startle and often to mystify, Surrealism typically postulates bewilderment as a precondition of insight. Its approach to creativity tends to grapple with jagged elements of disparity, of prolixity, of sheer unprocessed excess, in the hope of eliciting a more thrilling - because delayed - vision of equilibrium and clarity. A Surrealist typically distrusts any revelation which lacks a complementary aura of enigma: the naked truth cannot be embraced without its veils.'

From Thinking Through Things: The Presence of Objects in the Early Films of Jan Svankmajer by Roger Cardinal

A Conference Of Organs

Tony Oursler (b. 1957) - Station, 2002


'We are all haunted houses.'

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

The Week in Review

Films:

Dirty Harry, 1971 - d. Don Siegel
Magnum Force, 1973 - d. Ted Post
The Enforcer, 1976 - d. James Fargo

Television:

The Mighty Boosh: Series 1 and 2

Books:

My Last Sigh - Luis Buñuel
Diary of a Genius - Salvador Dalí

Ghostly Machines

Man Ray (1890-1976) - Indestructible Object, 1923


'Dreams have no titles.'

Man Ray

The Beauty of Butchery

Hans Bellmer (1902-1975) - La Poupée, 1935


'One must do violence to the object of one's desire; when it surrenders, the pleasure is greater.'

Marquis de Sade

All That Is Solid Melts Into Art

Urs Lüthi (b. 1947) - Hope, Despair and Reason, Desire, both 1989


'There is a theory which states that if ever for any reason anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another that states that this has already happened.'

Douglas Adams