Josep Maria Subirachs ... prints...

Story of the eye... short film... George Bataille

A short film On Georges Bataille's Story of the eye
by Johanna Di Dio & Gaël Guillouet.

*Guest Blog...

Maggie O'Sullivan

Maggie O'Sullivan was born in Lincolnshire to Irish parents. Poet, artist, editor, publisher, she has performed and published her work since the late 1970s.

Arshile Gorky, "Study for "Nighttime, Enigma and Nostalgia"

"Elegy" (after Arshile Gorky)

You measured things by weight.

You loved the feel & shape of apricots

the wave & sway of fields of grain

the strength & pressure of waterfalls

the flow & shimmer of rivers

the luxuriance of orange, amber & terracotta

on naked paper

the drift & wing, flutter & rustle

of birds & leaves.

You loved the surreal

the song

the edible

and, above all,

bread.

Your palette unfurls a flirtation

of glow & shadow,

a tenderness of breasts,

a poignant sweet incense of lemons

figs olives honey &

cherry trees in blossom.

The sanctuary holds all.

The bitter-red roses,

the scarlet-red crest of the cock,

the shivering silver sickness of poplar leaves

and the pallid hands, distorted, flat

as icons. [...]

Malevich

Malevich, "White on White" (1918)

white on white

white square on white ground

white ground on white square

groundlight on white

white on light

white nothing

nothing within nothing

within nothing nakendess

white nothing

naked

nothing revealing

nothing reveals nothing

yielding nothing

nothing yields nothing

* with many thanks to R O'B

Ex libris...Ismael Smith

Federico García Lorca...drawing and poem...

Song of the Barren Orange Tree

Woodcutter.

Cut my shadow from me.

Free me from the torment

of seeing myself without fruit.

Why was I born among mirrors?

The day walks in circles around me,

and the night copies me

in all its stars.

I want to live without seeing myself.

And I will dream that ants

and thistleburrs are my

leaves and my birds.

Woodcutter.

Cut my shadow from me.

Free me from the torment

of seeing myself without fruit.

Books ...Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz....

Modernly known as In honorem sanctae crucis, this work on the holy cross by Rabanus Maurus (a.k.a. Hrabanus Maurus) was completed by 814 and through the manuscript and early printing era it was known under the title of De Laudibus sancte Crucis. The New Westminster Dictionary of Church History says that “with this work Hrabanus paved the way to fill the theoretical gap left open by the previous debates in the East and West about the legitimacy of visual images.”

And visual this work certainly is: It contains 30 carmina figurata (2 unnumbered and 28 numbered) glorifying the holy cross and two xylographic illustrations. The cataloguer at the Pierpont Morgan Library writes that the “Illustrations (pattern or figure poems) are in red and black, sometimes complete woodcuts, sometimes woodcut with letterpress. Various poetic texts can be derived from the resulting configurations. Explanatory text and a transcript of the poem complements each illustration.” The archbishop's work ranks among the earliest examples of printed concrete poetry. And, because his poems are encrypted in a grid of 36 lines each containing 36 letters, this also is an early work in the field of cryptology.

Austin Osman Spare...drawing

Zos dancing with a Kia bird

"I believe what I will, and will what I want" AOS

Roland Topor (1938-1997) ...Naked woman staring at the moon, drawing, colour pencil and black ink on paper 1976

Naked woman staring at the moon

Ex libris...Louise Bourgeois

Ex Libris Louise Bourgeois

Amos NATTINI...

from The Divine Comedy