Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Austin Osman Spare... Satyr c1920


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"By turning my head involuntary... I can always see my alter ego, familiars or the gang of elementals that partly constitute my being." AOS


from Austin Osman Spare, Fallen Visionary, Refractions published by Jerusalem Press


Alfred Kubin... Der Asket (the ascetic) ...1910




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"When I ventured back into the world of the living, I discovered that my god only held half-sway. In everything, both great and small, he had to share with an adversary who wanted life. The forces of repulsion and attraction, the twin poles of the earth with their currents, the alternation of the seasons, day and night, black and white - these are battles..."

from The Other Side  A.Kubin


Thursday, September 13, 2012

Enrico Baj ... illustration from The Book of Imaginary Beings by J L Borges 1973



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"Let us move now from the zoo of reality to the zoo of mythology, that zoological garden
whose fauna is comprised not of lions but of sphinxes and gryphons and centaurs.
The population of this second zoo should by all rights exceed that of the first,
since a monster is nothing but a combination of elements taken from real creatures, and the
 combinatory possibilities border on the infinite...
Readers browsing through our own anthology will see that the zoology attributable to
dreams is in fact considerably more modest than that attributable to God. We do not know what the dragon means, just as we do not know the meaning of the universe, but there is something in the image of the dragon that is congenial to man's imagination, and thus the dragon arises in many latitudes and ages. It is, one might say, a necessary monster." 

from The Book of Imaginary Beings (Borges, 1954)