Monday, April 30, 2012

ERNST BARLACH (1870-1938) ... illustrations...woodcuts...a happy Walpurgisnacht!



illustrations from

Goethes Walpurgisnacht

 

Terrible enchanted forms,
Dragon-women, men-wolf swarms!
Wilder yet the sounds are growing!
See, the archfiend comes, all-glowing!
From the ground
Hellish vapours rise around! 

from  THE FIRST WALPURGIS-NIGHT.

 

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 more illustrations here 



Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Indian Gouache... dancing girls




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This painting, which represents a mixture of Mughal and Rajput styles, depicts two Indian girls dancing. It is attributable to the twelfth century AH / eighteenth CE.



Monday, April 16, 2012

Cecil Collins... The fool...1944



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In his essay The Vision of the Fool (1947), Collins wrote that the Fool was the  "‘Saint, the artist, the poet’. 

 
"'The saint, the artist, and the poet are all one in the Fool, in him they live, in him the poetic imagination of life lives."
“The Fool is the poetic imagination of life, as inexplicable as the essence of life itself. This poetic life, born in all human beings, lives in them while they are children, but it is killed in them when they grow up by the abstract mechanization of contemporary society.”




Friday, April 13, 2012

Rosaleen Norton ... drawing & poem excerpt







...My home is the house of winds,
With great songs of Space ringing wild in my ears
Whose shouting heart leaps to their tune.
I mock at the shapes, plodding thickly, through lamplight:
stupid and cruel - or kind -
They are alien, Other, I'm touched with uneasiness...
Fear of these human.... and glide away sidelong:
Yet joying in fear, in my stealthy aloofness,
To know they are They and I'm I.
Towers of old cities are spiralling over me, Night-conjured,
rising from Time
And I hear, through the seething of luminous silence -
Secretive, vibrant, the sound of the Solitude -
Calling of others like me
Quietly they come, flitting softly as secrets; light-footed,
velvety, swift...
With eyes gleaming green, lambent flame of the Opal.
Kindred... we signal our quick recognition.
I am I ... but I know we are we
Panther of silence; god of Night; Lord of the wild inhuman
stars:
You are my own; teeming soul of solitude.
Here is no loneliness, secret Master -
You, Dark Spirit are with me.

from Pan's Daughter by Nevill Drury

previous Rosaleen Norton



Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Dolorosa... watercolour artworks in print... Blood from Heaven ...2012



I have the pleasure of having 3 watercolours drawings in the first book published by Aeon Sophia Press a limited edition of 500, a novel written by a ranking priestess of TEMPLUM BABALONIS; E.J. Alvey. more here.



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Sunday, April 8, 2012

Ex Libris... Hermann Bauer ... 1920s





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Rosa Mundi a poem...excerpts...H.D. Carr (Aleister Crowley) & Auguste Rodin... 1905







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Limited edition, 488 copies printed with a full page watercolor drawing by Auguste Rodin signed in the plate.




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pencil and wash design by Auguste Rodin




1. ROSE of the World!
Red glory of the secret heart of Love!
Red flame, rose-red, most subtly curled
Into its own infinite flower, all flowers above!
Its flower in its own perfumed passion,
Its faint sweet passion, folded and furled
In flower fashion;
And my deep spirit taking its pure part
Of that voluptuous heart
Of hidden happiness!

2. Arise, strong bow of the young child Eros!
(While the maddening moonlight, the memoried caress
Stolen of the scented rose
Stirs me and bids each racing pulse ache, ache!)
Bend into an agony of art
Whose cry is ever rapture, and whose tears
For their own purity's undivided sake
Are molten dew, as, on the lotus leaves
Sliver-coiled in the Sun
Into green girdled spheres
Purer than all a maiden's dream enweaves,
Lies the unutterable beauty of
The Waters. Yea, arise, divinest dove
Of the Idalian, on your crimson wings
And soft grey plumes, bear me to yon cool shrine
Of that most softly-spoken one,
Mine Aphrodite! Touch the imperfect strings,
Oh thou, immortal, throned above the moon!
Inspire a holy tune
Lighter and lovelier than flowers and wine
Offered in gracious gardens unto Pan
By any soul of man!
...

Matchless, serene, in sacred amplitudes
Of its own royal rapture, deaf and blind
To aught but its own mastery of song
And light, shown ever as silence and deep night
Secret as death and final. Let me long
Never again for aught! This great delight
Involves me, weaves me in its pattern of bliss,
Seals me with its own kiss,
Draws me to thee with every dream that glows,
Poet, each word! Maiden, each burden of snows
Extending beyond sunset, beyond dawn!
O Rose, inviolate, utterly withdrawn
In the truth: -- for this is truth: Love knows!
Ah! Rose of the World! Rose! Rose!


excerpts from Rosa Mundi by H. D. Carr (Aleister Crowley)



Saturday, April 7, 2012

Hendrick Hondius... POST FUNERA VITA: AFTER BURIAL, LIFE..1690



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Monograms of deceased artists on pyramids: AD (Albrecht Dürer) L (Lucas van Leyden)  MVH (Maarten van Heemskerk) AG (Heinrich Aldegrever) HS (Hans Schäufelein)


POST FUNERA VITA
Pallida Mors omnes petit.  huic parere necesse est.
     Non Color hic ullus, non juvat ullus Honos.
Qui bene vixerunt, horum est POST FUNERA VITA :
     Qui bene pinxerunt vivere Morte puta.
Ad vivum pictis tabulas nova vita paratur.
     Post mortem ut possit vivere quisque parent.

Translation:

Pale death1 attacks all.  We have to obey it.  No colour or honour is of any help here.  For those who have lived well, there is life after burial. [As for] those who have painted well, consider that they live in death.  A new life is set out in lifelike paintings2: let each set out to be able to live after death.

1.     “pallida mors”: the phrase is from Horace, Odes 1.4.13.
2.    Reading "tabulis" for "tabula".
 
click HERE for closer details of image



Friday, April 6, 2012

Ex Libris... Michel Fingesten ... 1937



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 this is saved from a while back from journey around my skull one of my  favourite graphic art blogs now 

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Thomas Wright ...bookplate... Eye of Providence 1750



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Eye of Providence from ~ An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe 1750


“Here we may observe that as the human mind in its imeterial state, has a power of creating both imaginary matter & space so as in a moment to pass from one object to another though at an indefinite distance, so the immortal soul may also with the like facility pass from our state of existence to an other neither of which powers at present appear to be subject to our known ideas of either mater time or space.”  Thomas Wright

This passage seems to be inspired by Robert Fludd’s translation of an ancient hermetic text:
“…command thy soul, what thou pleasest, and it will fly sooner than thou commandest…nothing
will hinder her (not) the wheeling about of the starry orbs, nor yet the bodies of the other stars,
but piercing all these, it passeth quite through…”





Jan Svankmajer... Collages... Prodopis 1973



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Monday, April 2, 2012

Max Ernst ... Happy Birthday! ...





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Absolument ou le Vide a l'Envers 1950
 


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At Eye LevelParamyths 1949



Sunday, April 1, 2012

Hans Sebald Beham... Fortuna...1541



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When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least.
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

 
Sonnet 29 –William Shakespeare
 

previous
 Hans Sebald Behan



Franz von Bayros... Venus...c1900



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c 1900
....

These spirits she persuades not, nor deceives,
But none beside escape, so well she weaves
Her unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor gods
Who live secure in their unseen abodes.
She won the soul of him whose fierce delight
Is thunder--first in glory and in might.
And, as she willed, his mighty mind deceiving,
With mortal limbs his deathless limbs inweaving,
Concealed him from his spouse and sister fair,
Whom to wise Saturn ancient Rhea bare.
but in return,
In Venus Jove did soft desire awaken,
That by her own enchantments overtaken,
She might, no more from human union free,
Burn for a nursling of mortality.
For once amid the assembled Deities,
The laughter-loving Venus from her eyes

from

Homer's Hymn To Venus