Saturday, July 30, 2011

Oskar Kokoschka... The Dreaming youths... 1907/08



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Renowned as an Expressionist painter, the Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) began his career in the decorative arts, studying book illustration, printmaking and typography alongside life drawing at Vienna’s School of Applied Arts between 1904 and 1908. The Dreaming Youths, begun in November 1907 and printed the following June, was Kokoschka’s first major graphic series, produced at the age of 21 while he was still a student. It started as a commission for a children’s picture-book, but Kokoschka set aside his brief after the first illustration, adding verses to create a complex ‘picture-poem’ exploring the desires and anxieties of adolescent sexuality. He described it as ‘a kind of record, in words and pictures, of my own state of mind at the time’, in particular of his love for Lilith Lang, the sister of a fellow student, who appears with him in the final image, The Girl Li and I. He wrote later that ‘the book was my first love-letter’, although his relationship with Lilith had ended by the time it appeared.

 The Dreaming Youths was one of Kokoschka’s most significant early statements, and the frank, erotic metaphor and personal mythology introduced here would become central to his later artistic productions, both visual and literary.

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The girl Li and I 




Toyen (Marie Cerminova) ... Erotica & essay...



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"Toyen's entire oeuvre aims at nothing less than the correction of the exterior world in terms of a desire that feeds upon and grows from its own satisfaction. "
Benjamin Peret 1953


interesting essay on Toyen here >

previous toyen



Thursday, July 28, 2011

František Kobliha (1877 - 1962)... woodcuts..




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A fallen star 1925

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Girl in grain 1920

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Reflection 1928

more wonders here > ČESKÝ SYMBOLISMUS



Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972)... lithograph



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from the series Order and Chaos - Compass rose ~ 1955
This special edition of lithographs where intended to be presented to the members of the Masonic Order in Holland, the Knights of Templar.



Saturday, July 23, 2011

The Story of the Eye ...Andre Masson..book cover



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Cover sketch for George Bataille's Story of the Eye - first edition 1928 - André Masson



"And it struck me that death was the sole outcome of my erection, and if Simone and I were killed, then the universe of our unbearable personal vision was certain to be replaced by the pure stars, fully unrelated to any external gazes and realizing in a cold state, without human delays or detours, something that strikes me as the goal of my sexual licentiousness: a geometric incandescence (among other things, the coinciding point of life and death, being and nothingness), perfectly fulgurating..."


 George Bataille's Story of the Eye


 previous post > George Bataille



Leonor Fini (1907-1996)... erotica...c.1970




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