Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Quentin Crisp... How to Have a Life-Style...

a few scans and excerpt from a favourite book and treasured memories...



° Quentin Crisp °
(25 December 1908 – 21 November 1999), born Denis Charles Pratt, was an English writer and raconteur


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... I am not hiding in the shadow of Mr Socrates and merely reiterating that the purpose of education is self-knowledge. This is but 'O' level stuff; at 'A' level, the stylist's level, we must learn self-projection.

....
What we need is not massive grants for the visual arts but encouragement to learn singing, dancing and a whole syllabus of self-glorifying techniques. Painting is only a rebus of self-expression. Why not learn expression itself?

...
We do not need the perfectly designed chair; we want a capacity for relaxing even on a bed of nails. We ought not to waste time constructing a 'with-it' telephone kiosk; we should rather cultivate such perfect diction that we can communicate against all odds. We shall find we already have a golden city when we have all become divine beings.

...
All we need to do is to esteem the freedom to reject as highly as the licence to accept; to reform ourselves instead of other people; to be aware of the quality of our experience instead of its quantity; to live for living's sake - with style...



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" I have always lived my life in the profession of being."


Saturday, November 21, 2009

Austin Osman Spare... Self Portrait....



¥ Austin Osman Spare ¥

'Self as Hitler'









In 1936 an official at the German Embassy in London bought a self-portrait by Spare because it bore a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler. The Fuhrer saw it and agreed and proceeded to invite Spare to Berlin to paint his portrait. Spare refused, replying
"Only from negations can I wholesomely conceive you. For I know of no courage sufficient to stomach your aspirations and ultimates. If you are superman, let me be for ever animal".



















Luis Falero (1851-1896)...Twin Stars, oil on canvas, 1881







Twin Stars 1881

Edmé Bouchardon (French, Chaumont 1698 - 1762 Paris)...





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Le Vent Orient



Friday, November 20, 2009

Ebenezer Sibly..book plates




Ebenezer Sibly



Ebenezer Sibly (1751-1799) was an English physician, astrologer and prolific writer on the occult



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A View of Man in his Primeval State as invested With power by his Creator to rule Govern gross Elements



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A View of Man in his Primeval State as invested With power by his Creator to rule & Govern gross Elements



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The Lapsed State of Man when contaminated by Lucifer,  under the Dominion of Sidereal Elementary Influx


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The Lapsed State of Man when contaminated by Lucifer, under the Dominion of  Sidereal Elementary Influx


"We are all  truly influenced by the stars. Indeed how can anyone seriously believe that they were
created only to twinkle in the night?"



Saturday, November 7, 2009

Devour the fire...Harry Crosby 2 Poems... illustration Alastair...



± RED SKELETONS, 1927 ±


TEMPLE DE LA DOULEUR

My soul has suffered breaking on the wheel,
Flogging with lead, and felt the twinging ache
Of barbéd hooks and jagged points of steel,
Peine forte et dure, slow burning at the stake,
Blinding and branding, stripping on the rack,
The canque and kourbash and the torquéd screw,
The boot and branks, red scourging on the back,
The gallows and the gibbet. All for you.


These tortures are as nothing to the pain
That I have suffered when you gaze at me
With cold disdainful eyes. You do not deign
To smile or talk or even set me free-
Yet once you let me hold your perfumed hand
And danced with me a stately saraband.

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SALOME

Proud panoply of fans and frankincense,
Gold blare of trumpets, flowered robes of state,
Unnumbered symbols of magnificence,
To lead Salome through the palace gate,
Where loud the prophet of the Lord blasphemes
The red abominations of her race
And chides her for her flesh-entangled dreams
and turns his back upon her painted face.


Thus do we turn from some red-shadowed lust
That through the broken forests of the brain
Weaves silently with tentacles out-thrust,
Groping in darkness, but for one in vain,
For like a sliding sun the soul has fled
Leaving a princess and a vultured head.

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¤ SUN-TESTAMENT ¤

Histoire d'O... Leonor Fini... part 1...



A few scans from a favourite possesion...

Histoire d'O

The Story of O


(1975)

Pauline Reage (Pseudonym for Dominque Aury)
illustrated by Leonor
Fini


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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

AND ALL IN ARMOUR ON HER BED SHE LIES by Paul Holman.... & new drawing






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Dolorosa 09


AND ALL IN ARMOUR ON HER BED SHE LIES ...


Her drawings show how she thinks we see her, but it is not the predicament in which she finds herself in the course of each implied adventure, shackled to the steam engine or discharging ectoplasm in some darkened room, by which she is defined, but the quality of distance she brings to these situations,amused and just a little haughty.

This detachment causes her to appear most distinct from her sister - the unicorn might be prettier, but does not gleam so, though both are made up the same -
yet, even in her more recent elegance, the twin we follow may allow
herself to be weirdly exposed, to look not composed but engaging: a
controlled goofiness in a moment that she chose to treat as if
unobserved, as if all eyes were not upon her.

Girl as landscape, girl as costume: how she permeates, sharp faced and quizzical, still unmistakable in the demon mask.

from
Tara Morgana
Paul Holman


RIP Alda Merini...



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Winged woman, stop your rancor:
the life that you bear of mystery
smells bad above the cushion
and moribund passes away.
Just so every proud tree oozes
love, behind your dark manures
that you spread of seed and of lust,
and pays at least for the seduction
of violated souls. Even so cantata
of the devil, you are an enemy of God
and then sullenly your lust
coagulates over the souls of heroes,
and you are young. You harm
all who see the path
of your peace and no one penalizes
you for the altar of your greatness
which makes offers to gods. As if you
were a goddess dressed in lust,
you call the gold into your arms
as I call the sons of the night.


¤¤¤


I do not need money.

I have need of feelings
of words, words chosen wisely
of flowers called thoughts,
of roses called presences
of dreams inhabiting the trees,
of songs that make statues dance,
of stars that murmur to the ear of lovers.
I need poetry
this spell which burns the weight of words
that arouses emotions and gives new colors.

Love do not damn me to my fate
Hold me open all the seasons
let my great and warm decline
not fall asleep along drives
put in passive all the passions
sleep on the pillow tenderly
where grow provident ambitions
of love and universal passion
take my everything and do not hurt me.
Alda Merini



Sunday, November 1, 2009

La Portentosa Vida de la Muerte (The Astounding Life of Death)...Joaquin Bolaños.



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†The Astounding Life of Death†

La Portentosa Vida de la Muerte (The Astounding Life of Death) is an 18th Century Mexican book written by Joaquin Bolaños. In it, Bolaños recounts the many adventures of Death, from her beginnings in the Garden of Eden, where she is said to have been born from Adam’s Sin (Death’s father) and Eve’s Guilt (her mother; see image 1 above), to her dramatic destruction in Judgment Day (image 8), with copious quotations from the Bible and the Church Fathers to back up his facts. The protagonist of the story is referred to as “The Empress of the Sepulchers, The Avenger, and The Very Lady of All Humanity”. Muerte (death) is a female noun in Spanish; this fact allows Bolaños to create a female heroine, a very peculiar one.

Bolaños develops his central character thoroughly, in a lively and humoristic way, reflecting–and contributing to shape–the ambiguous relationship that Mexican culture has with death, marked by eroticism, morbid attraction, sadness and joy. Bolaños’s Death is irreverent, passionate and adventurous, and the book is a very early example of an American character-based novel, with a tongue-in-cheek tone and not lacking social criticism. It was criticized by Mexico’s Colonial literary critics as a piece of bad taste; nevertheless, it has been reevaluated by later scholars as a remarkable testimony of its time.

In the book –which is considered by many scholars to be one of the first Mexican novels–Death suffers, she falls in love, gets married several times (though her marriages were never consummated, as her husbands--all doctors--died upon entering the nuptial bed), and becomes angry when men forget about her continuous presence. The 1792 edition was accompanied by a series of illustrations (shown above)


Salvador Olguin


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