Onto Every Cheek Some Tears Must Fall

Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) - Girl Crying, 1964

Sam Taylor-Wood (b. 1967) - Crying Men Series (Tim Roth), 2002-2004

Tears unshed are far more bitter than those that flow.

Victor Hugo

Musique Du Jour: Cry Me A River, Combustible Edison

After We've Smoked Another Silence

Nan Goldin (b. 1953) - Nan and Brian in Bed, NYC, 1983

To love another person you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.

Quentin Crisp

Musique Du Jour: Drive You Home, Garbage

Madness Became Him (Redux)

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)

God is just another artist, like me.

Salvador Dalí

Musique Du Jour: Soy Caminante, El Camarón de la Isla (and Salvador Dalí Interview, 1963)

Arresting The Unfurling Of Sensation

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906):

Midday at L'Estaque, c. 1876-1879

Chestnut Trees at the Jas de Bouffan in Winter, c. 1885-1886

Dovecote at Bellevue, 1889-1890

The Bibémus Quarry, c. 1895

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from Bibémus, c. 1897

Château Noir, 1900-1904

[It] is Cézanne's genius that when the overall picture is seen globally, perspectival distortions are no longer visible in their own right but rather contribute, as they do in normal vision, to the impression of emerging order, an object in the act of appearing, organising itself before our very eyes.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Musique Du Jour: Preludes, Claude Debussy

Sex Is Not The Enemy (Redux)

Patty Chang (b. 1972) - Doll, 2001

I don't know the question, but sex is definitely the answer.

Woody Allen

Musique Du Jour: (1) Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?, The Revolting Cocks, (2) I'm Ready, The Twilight Singers (Low Fidelity Allstars Remix), (3) Big Dumb Sex, Soundgarden, (4) Throw Me On The Bed, Machine Gun Fellatio, (5) Fuckin', Hot One, (6) Too Drunk To Fuck, Nouvelle Vague

Take Your Soul For A Spin

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) - Whirling Dervishes, c. 1895

Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.

The ultimate most holy form of theory is action.

Every perfect traveller always creates the country where he travels.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Musique Du Jour: Ya Rayah, Rachid Taha

The Other Black Orpheus

Bo Diddley (1928-2008)

I opened the door for a lot of people, and they just ran through and left me holding the knob.

I was out to destroy the audience. I wanted to destroy 'em, just make the toughest dude in the crowd pat his foot. I'd find a groove to get 'em by watching feet, and once I got one guy moving, I'd start working on the dude sitting next to him.

I thank you in advance for the great round of applause I'm about to get.

Bo Diddley

Musique Du Jour: Ten tracks by Bo Diddley

Six Images In Search Of An Exhibition XIII

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

Picture in Remembrance of Johann Emanuel Bremer, 1817

Griefswald in Moonlight, c. 1817

Northern Sea in the Moonlight, 1823

Swans in the Reeds by Dawn's Early Light, c. 1832

Evening Landscape with Two Men, c. 1830-35

The Nets, c. 1830-35

Art stands as the mediator between nature and humanity. The original is too great and too sublime for the multitude to grasp.

Caspar David Friedrich

Musique Du Jour: String Quartet in C sharp minor, Op.131 - Adagio, Beethoven

The Paris Papers: Part Four

Vale, Yves Saint-Laurent (1936-2008)

Raoul Dufy (1887-1953) - The Eiffel Tower, 1935


Leaving there and proceeding for three days toward the east, you reach Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theatre, a golden cock that crows each morning on a tower. All these beauties will already be familiar to the visitor, who has seen them also in other cities. But the special quality of this city for the man who arrives there on a September evening, when the days are growing shorter and the multicoloured lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls and from a terrace a woman's voice cries ooh!, is that he feels envy toward those who now believe they have once before lived an evening identical to this and think they were happy, that time.

Italo Calvino ('Cities & Memory', Invisible Cities)

Musique Du Jour: La Vie en Rose, Grace Jones

The (Dis)enchantments Of Love

Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) - Untitled (under the skin, thin skin, skin deep, thick skin, skin tight, skinned alive), 2003

1. Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.

2. Discredited by modern opinion, love's sentimentality must be assumed by the amorous subject as a powerful transgression which leaves him alone and exposed; by a reversal of values, then, it is this sentimentality which today constitutes love's obscenity.

Roland Barthes

Musique Du Jour: I've Got You Under My Skin, The Sun Spots and This Is Not A Love Song, Nouvelle Vague

Addendum XI

Cruel, But Not To Be Kind

Olivia de Havilland (Catherine Soper) and Montgomery Clift (Morris Townsend) in The Heiress, 1949 (d. William Wyler)

Art Is Creation's Unfinished Business

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906): How To Remake A Mountain In 12 Easy Steps

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from the Chemin de Valcros, 1878-1879

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from Montbriand, c. 1882

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from Montbriand, 1882-1885

Montagne Sainte-Victoire, c. 1885-1890

Montagne Sainte-Victoire, near Gardanne, c. 1887

Montagne Sainte-Victoire, c. 1887

Montagne Sainte-Victoire, 1888-1890

Montagne Sainte-Victoire, c. 1890-1895

Montagne Sainte-Victoire above the Route du Tholonet, 1896-1898

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from Les Lauves, 1902-06

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from Château Noir, 1904

Montagne Sainte-Victoire Seen from Château Noir, 1904

I remain in the grip of sense-perceptions and, in spite of my age, riveted to painting.

Paul Cézanne (Aix, 27th June, 1904)

Musique Du Jour: Itaipu, Philip Glass

Replay VII

A Freudian Photo Finish (Redux)

Man Ray (1890-1976) - La Marquise Casati, 1922


The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.

Walter Benjamin

Musique Du Jour: I Put A Spell On You, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Nina Simone, Marilyn Manson, Clearance Clearwater Revival, Joe Cocker and Pete Townsend

Six Images In Search Of A Censor

Untitled (If Bill Henson's Images Are "Kiddie Porn", So Are These)

Correggio - Danaë, 1530

Bronzino - Venus, Cupid and Time (1545)

Alessandro Allori - Venus and Cupid

Caravaggio - Amor Vincit Omnia, c. 1601-2

Caesar van Everdingen - Bacchus with Nymphs and Cupid, c. 1660

Claude-Augustin Cayot - Cupid and Psyche, 1706

Would You Like To Leave A Message?

Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) - Untitled (Question), 1991


Direct address has been a consistent tactic in my work, regardless of the medium that I'm working in. I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty. I want people to be drawn into the space of the work. And a lot of people are like me in that they have relatively short attention spans. So I shoot for the window of opportunity.

Barbara Kruger

Musique Du Jour: America is Waiting, Brian Eno and David Byrne