Thursday, December 30, 2010

Austin Osman Spare ... Satyr... Happy Birthday!



Austin Osman Spare ~ 30 Dec 1886 –15 May 1956

O Give Thanks Unto!
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O Give Thanks Unto scanned from a set of postcards from recent "Fallen Visionary" exhibition 2010



The Psychology of Believing.

If the "supreme belief" remains unknown, believing is fruitless. If "the truth" has not yet been ascertained, the study of knowledge is unproductive. Even if "they" were known their study is useless. We are not the object by the perception, but by becoming it. Closing the gateways of sense is no help. Verily I will make common-sense the foundation of my teaching. Otherwise, how can I convey my meaning to the deaf, vision to the blind, and my emotion to the dead? In a labyrinth of metaphor and words, intuition is lost, therefore without their effort must be learned the truth about one's self from him who alone knows the truth . . . . yourself. 

from The Book of Pleasure (self-love) ~
The Psychology of Ecstasy

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Ex libris... Chester Dodge... Satyr





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Publilius Optatianus Porphyrius 1595...poem...Carmina Figurata





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Sometime around the end of the first quarter of the fourth century C.E., a former resident of the imperial city of Rome then living in exile in Achaea began a written campaign for his recall to the capitol. The campaign coincided with the Vicennalia, or twentieth anniverary, of the reign of the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, an event celebrated in July 325 in Nicomedia and again in the summer of 326 at Rome itself. The writing campaign took advantage of this event and consisted of a series of panegyric poems addressed to Constantine in commemoration of both the Vicennalia and Constantine’s earlier defeat of Licinius in 324. The series, included in what is now known collectively as the Carmina or Carmina Figurata, is of an unusual and innovative sort: the poems contain supplementary text “hidden” within the main body of the individual poems and intended to be “discovered” by the reader. These versus intexti poems were apparently intended to dazzle Constantine with their technical virtuosity and thereby inspire the hoped-for recall of their creator, Publilius Optatianus Porphyrius. The campaign was ultimately successful, and the intriguing larger body of work created by Optatianus remains captivating even today, both for its simple visual appeal and for its display of remarkable technical skill.... continued

related previous POST



Leonard BASKIN(1922-2000) Portrait of Matthias Grunewald...print





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Previous BASKIN



Sunday, December 26, 2010

Wladd Muta.... Graphic Works...Magicka AnUra-Flora



Les pétales des fleurs de grenouilles, “AnUra-Flora“,
se développent dans un tout premier temps
à partir des tissus pulmonaires du batracien (fig.1.).
L'amorce de la mutation utilise
les traces génétiques fantômes
des branchies du stade larvaire (têtards).
Le pétale se constitue ensuite
exclusivement sur une base
de tissu épithélial humide (muqueuse) respiratoire.
L'étalement des tissus s'accompagne,
progressivement et en s’amplifiant,
d'une hybridation du tramage cellulaire
VÉGÉTALE & ANIMALE.
Même une fois aboutie, l‘AnUra-Flora
gardera toujours
cette singularité cellulaire hybride.
La fleur se déploie tout autour d’un cœur ;
celle-ci n’a pas de tige (fig.3.).


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Pour parvenir de façon simple à la transmutation,
lorsque l’on ne maîtrise pas
les techniques avancées des Arts-Humides,
il faut avoir au préalable
introduit un fragment de pétale d’AnUra-Flora
à l’intérieur de l’œuf, d’une grenouille commune,
le jour même de la ponte.
Le fragment doit être en contact avec le noyau,
si le contact ne se fait pas
le transposon génétique ne peut se constituer.
Il est conseillé de contaminer un grand nombre d’œufs,
car moins de 1% d'entre eux arriveront à l’âge adulte.

La voie royale des Arts-Humides
passe, bien entendu, par le fruit
et produit des résultats significativement plus puissants (fig.3.),
mais le maniement du fruit (œuf issu de la fleur)
est d’une complexité sans nom
et très peu ne parviennent au moindre résultat.
La fleur créée par introduction du fragment,
peut vivre jusqu’à trois années,
le triple par le fruit. 
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La mutation florale à proprement parler
a lieu au terme de la vie normale de l’animal
(soit une dizaine d’année)
– lune rousse, constellation de la grenouille –
bien sûr celle-ci ne peut s’opérer si le batracien
meurt prématurément, par accident ou maladie.
Il faut donc en prendre grand soin
si l’on espère un jour lui faire atteindre
l’état d’AnUra-Flora.


Avant la mutation,
l’individu grenouille ne présente aucune particularité,
en tout parfaitement semblable
à une grenouille commune.


L'événement transmutatoire en lui-même
est extrêmement bref
et peut se réaliser sur un laps de temps
n’excédant pas les 3 heures.
Assister au spectacle de la transformation
est un enchantement,
c'est un évènement d’une grande beauté.
Le déploiement des tissus couleurs de braises
se fait dans le crépitement
d'un feu humide et cristallin,
danse végétale d'une grâce inouïe (fig.2.). 

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Les usages de l’AnUra-Flora sont multiples
(par contact, contemplation, ingestion ou masque).
Entre autres choses :
stimulation des rêves lucides
et mémorisation des rêves en général,
“cœur de combustions“
dans un grand nombre d’opérations
impliquant l’eau et la lune,
mise en condition psychique
pour la création d’“Ikebana d’organes vivants“,
et souvent même, simple décoration

Previous post



Victor Brown.... bookplate for Lily Yeats





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from Poems by WB Yeats, Cuala Press 1935


"There's nothing but our own red blood
Can make a right Rose Tree..."
wb yeats



The Angel of Death ... in micrography...





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This illustration is found in a book entitled Nisyonot be-Ketav Ivri (Experiments in Hebrew Script)
a magnificent example of micrography, tiny Hebrew script marking out the shape of a figure, in this case a classic portrayal of the Angel of Death. In this particular example the script is in Hebrew yet the language is German. The many signed names would indicate that this was done in Central Europe, probably in a school of the German Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement, around the middle of the 19th century.



Monday, December 20, 2010

Eric William Ravilious(1903-1942)... Woodcut




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Doctor Faustus Conjuring Mephistophilis 1929



Ravilious was a prolific British illustrator and worked predominantly with wood engravings. The subject for this work relates to the 16th century medical practitioner, Dr. Johannes Faust who, legend has it, sold his soul to Mephistopheles, an evil spirit.



Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Suniti Namjoshi ....Building Babel..The Black Piglet





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from Building Babel by Suniti Namjoshi

Every retelling of a myth is a reworking of it. Every hearing or reading of a myth is a recreation of it. It is only when we engage with a myth that it resonates, becomes charged and recharged with meaning...



Suniti Namjoshi ...poem excerpts







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Theres sunshine in the garden
there are flowers in the hall
at your gate a lovesick beast
is breaking down the wall...
from poem ~ Courtship


Why did you make a hole in the sky,
Breaking the backdrop of placid blue days?
The black crow are flapping wildly in my head
While the blue air has closed about your absence.

from poem ~ In Three Tenses



Suniti Namjoshi




Thursday, December 9, 2010

Hans Bellmer...print.... undated





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"At the source of the most intensely black and scandalous works...we believe there exists this sort of passage from passion to action, a secret need for equilibrium, the urge to create an imaginary evil from which we may take pleasure within the excesses of intellectual passion, in order to cure ourselves of the real evil we're suffering"

from Scandal with a Secret Face - an Essay by Nora Mitrani 1950

previous Bellmer



Horst Haack ... print... Genderles Being 1969





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Horst Haack was born in 1940 in Neubrandenburg. He lived in Lübeck from 1945 to 1959 before moving to West Berlin to study painting at the Berlin Academy of Art. Painting "light"! As of 1967, he lived and worked for 12 years on the island of Ibiza (Spain). From there, in 1979 he moved to Paris where he started in 1981 "Chronographie Terrestre (Work in Progress)", without at the time realizing this was his future life's work. It is a painted, drawn and panel-mounted diary that he has continued to work on ever since. At present he lives in Darmstadt (Germany) and Paris.



Monday, December 6, 2010

Secret Games.. the Prose and Art of J Karl Bogartte... part 1




The WONDERful prose of J K Bogartte...excerpts...

Secret Games is Book II in the ongoing series of prose poems exploring the sense of the marvelous mating of science and erotic metamorphosis as a form of landscape in which the real becomes imaginary, and forces itself into visible nature.....


In that place where life and death pass by unnoticed, the Messengers without their shadows light up the fabric of unauthorized expectations, like vague recollections of thoughts that were never yours, or another form of magic, or perfidious logic, when it multiplies your body out of the space that occupies your body, out of the circle of your ageless metamorphosis within a further space more paradoxical than the others, when you follow the births and funerals of a consciousness that resembles the sea, like a fire-propagating game of chance...

~~~

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The Paradoxical Game of Night
~~~

The pure fruit of an emergency landing, is a last ditch effort, a glowing hunger strung up by its ankles from the rafters, and impersonating the sputtering compass when it loses all sense of direction, kneels and licks your precious feet... then dashes off, exhilarated and beside itself. There is humor in the word: “precious.” The fruit is a night-light for the children who walk in their sleep––and therefore, the night is a narcissistic diversion... an act of irony that makes for intimate conversation between total strangers, when hidden meanings are always appreciated... when no one is present.



Reality is the amorous disruption of the wedding night, its fables and narratives in the black glass of the zookeepers’ promiscuous twin, the leopard’s robe of ingenious escapes, and the promenade of wonders...



Love is subversion of the senses, the negative light of magnetic sensations that cover you with the black dust of wings in the continuous vessel that reproduces your presence, and overflows. A singular plurality out of which are coaxed the drops of poison, of light, or words, a language of dew in the early morning, the dangerous clairvoyance of the body that swims in the bright water of its own two-way mirror. The psychosomatic eggs of an open window. Black honey, a pure black stone with a faithless heart of fire. Illusive and impeccable intervention.



 When the laws of nature intercede on her behalf, footprints are sent scurrying in every direction, and when the coordinates mimic the exact measurements needed to trigger the alchemical vessels that seduce the weather, that whir and hum like simian lanterns held up to warn of impending dangers and invisible locks, she enters the forest from behind, where the spirits speak only Spanish and the nights are without equal. It is necessary to harness these wonders. The minerals of distraction, molecules of light.



Her flesh of poppies reflects the sun while her shadow impersonates the moon. The history of perversions is the gold of science. She is an endlessly bathing light.



Amethyst of exchanging blood that ravages equality in the mother tongue, when the moon is a cat’s cradle in the sea of consciousness, of civil war in the telepathy of rebellious spirits, lovers in the fields of lunacy...



She was conscious of the purity of revenge, and he, the color of Central Asia at noon, always knew the mirror of her arousal. Together they avoided detection. Together, they were distant treasures.....


Art WORKS - photomorphoses




Friday, December 3, 2010

Jean Gabriel Daragnes (French, 1886-1950)...Woodcuts...Satyr



two scans from a favourite book "The Modern Woodcut" by Herbert Furst
on  one of my favourite obsessions... Le Satyre


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Here illustrating Paul Claudel's "Protee"


Daragnes also illustrated Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol" Gerard de Nerval's "Main Enchantee" and Poe's "Raven" to name a few
.
..let there be darkness as I await my portion in which will be created from my soul the drop ready to fall in its greatest heaviness. Let me offer a libation to you in the shadows, like the mountain spring that offers drink to the Ocean in its little shell!
Paul Claudel





Wednesday, December 1, 2010