Dagillac

Adriaen Brouwer

2011-05-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

ADRIAEN BROUWER. The Smokers. c. 1636.

Tobacco packaging papers

2011-05-15T15:40:00.000-07:00

19th century tobacco packaging papers from Amsterdam.

Covers

2011-05-15T15:34:00.000-07:00

Cover design by DAVID PELHAM.

Cover design by JOHN GOLDING.

Cover design by GERMANO FACETTI.

Colette Calascione

2011-05-15T15:21:00.000-07:00

COLETTE CALASCIONE. Abduction. 1997.

Konrad Witz

2010-06-13T20:35:00.000-07:00

KONRAD WITZ. St. Christopher. c. 1435.

A.J. Casson

2010-06-13T19:43:00.000-07:00

ALFRED JOSPEH CASSON. Untitled. c. 1966-1968.

Nothing Can Stop Goom

2010-06-13T19:37:00.000-07:00

JACK KIRBY. Tales of Suspense. 1961

His Name Was O’Neil

2010-06-12T14:55:00.000-07:00

Six-Gun Gorilla.

North by Northwest

2010-06-12T14:51:00.000-07:00

Via Le Cinéma du Journal.

2010-06-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

JEAN DE BOSSCHÈRE. Weird Islands. c. 1921.

Via BibliOdyssey.

Give me the Keys to your Themepark

2010-03-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

Abandoned amusement park, Japan.

Via: You Might Like This.

Temps perdu

2010-03-23T08:06:00.000-07:00

CYPRIEN GAILLARD. Still from Real Remnants of Fictive Wars V. 2004.

Via: Pruned.

PATRICK GRIFFIN. Last Call.

TAKUMA NAKAHIRA.

Dowton Seattle. 1978.

Las Vegas. 1961.

Dark Continent

2010-03-23T07:48:00.000-07:00

Congolese niombo funerary figure

Source: Africa & Omega.

Mangbetu, playing song on carved ivory horn. Okondo’s village, Congo Belge.

Source: Photographs from Lang-Chapin Congo Expedition (1909-1915).

Source: Photographs by Walther Dobbertin.

After the Earthquake

2010-02-28T16:51:00.000-08:00

Statue of Bernardo O'Higgins in Concepcion, Chile.

I Need One of These

2010-02-06T09:41:00.000-08:00

Via: Alright Darling.

Eyke Volkmer

2010-01-10T13:35:00.000-08:00

EYKE VOLKMER. Book covers for Goldmanns Weltraum Taschenbücher.

Rackstraw Downes

2010-01-08T16:43:00.000-08:00

RACKSTRAW DOWNES. Behind the Store at Prospect. 1979-80.

BOMB Magazine interview.

I never, in my life, was committed to jail when I had not tools secreted in my clothing or in some other perfectly safe place, which were sufficient to insure escape

2009-10-12T21:27:00.000-07:00

CHARLES MOSLEY. An Exact Representation of Maclaine, the highwayman. 1750.

"A few days after this affair, I secreted myself in a store on _______________, just before it was closed at night and was locked in. At a proper time I ascended to the second store, broke the desk, and found a roll of bills and a watch, and joined my friend who was near, on the outside, waiting for me. We returned to Symm's and on looking over our plunder found the bills were worthless, being on broken banks amounting in all to $600, the watch was valued at thirty dollars. -Early in June, 1825, I formed an acquaintance with William Ross, an Irishman, I think, who had but recently been discharged from this prison. He was a famous rogue, and was afterwards executed in Canada, together with two or three others of his associates for robbing a priest." - from Narrative of the life of James Allen, alias George Walton, alias Jonas Pierce, alias James H. York, alias Burley Grove, the highwayman. Being his death-bed confession, to the warden of the Massachusetts state prison. ("There is hardly a more curious treasure in the Athenæum Library than a little volume, bound in what seems a grayish leather, curious not only in itself, for it is the deathbed confession of a highwayman, but more curious by reason of its binding---in the skin of its author...[cont.]")

See also: anthropodermic bibliopegy.

Antipodean

2009-10-12T14:08:00.000-07:00

JOHN BRACK. The Bar. 1954.

Poem Strip

2009-10-12T14:01:00.000-07:00

Poem Strip, by Dino Buzzati:

There's a certain street—via Saterna—in the middle of Milan that just doesn't show up on maps of the city. Orfi, a wildly successful young singer, lives there, and it's there that one night he sees his gorgeous girlfriend Eura disappear, “like a spirit,” through a little door in the high wall that surrounds a mysterious mansion across the way. Where has Eura gone? Orfi will have to venture with his guitar across the borders of life and death to find out.

Featuring the Ashen Princess, the Line Inspector, trainloads of Devils, Trudy, Valentina, and the Talking Jacket, Poem Strip—a pathbreaking graphic novel from the 1960s—is a dark and alluring investigation into mysteries of love, lust, sex, and death by Dino Buzzati, a master of the Italian avant-garde.

Images via A Journey Round my Skull. See also Dino Buzzati's Restless Nights.

David Pearson book cover design

2009-10-05T14:11:00.000-07:00

"Five years ago, Penguin Books launched the Great Ideas series, which excerpted world-changing works of philosophy and belle lettres packaged as pocket-sized paperbacks. The typographic covers, designed by David Pearson, then a recent graduate of Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London, were nothing short of dazzling, with lettering contemporaneous with the classic contents debossed on a pristine white background. The series helped to usher in a new era of Penguin design and brought new attention to British book design." - from Interview with David Pearson.

2009-10-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

LEANDRO CASTELAO. Imagine...internet. 2008.

The New Chronology

2009-10-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

ANATOLY FOMENKO. Work.

________

The New Chronology (Fomenko)

________

New Chronology of the World History Problems of traditional chronology

________

A.T.Fomenko, G.V.Nosovskij

NEW HYPOTHETICAL CHRONOLOGY AND CONCEPT OF THE ENGLISH HISTORY.

BRITISH EMPIRE AS A DIRECT SUCCESSOR OF BYZANTINE-ROMAN EMPIRE.

(SHORT SCHEME)

ABSTRACT

This article is devoted to the investigation of traditional version of English chronology and English history. It should be mentioned that this tradition was established only in 15-17th cc.(and especially by Scaliger and Petavius) as a result of attempts to construct the global chronology of Europe and Asia at that time.

The results of our investigation show that modern version of English history (which is in fact a slightly modernized version of 15-16th cc.), was artificially prolonged backward and became much more long as it was in reality. The real history of England, as it was reflected in written documents, was much more short. The same is true for other countries.

In correct version, ancient and medieval English events are to be transferred to the epoch which begins from 9-10th cc. Moreover, many of these events prove to be the reflections of certain events from real Byzantine-Roman history of 9-15th cc. Consequently, the Great Britain Empire is a direct successor of medieval Byzantine Empire.

This effect for English history corresponds to the similar "shortening effects" for traditional histories of other countries (Italy, Greece, Egypt, Russia etc.). Such effects were discovered earlier by the authors...[cont.]

The accepted traditional chronology of ancient and medieval world rests on quite a snaky basis. For example, between different versions of the dating of such important event as the foundation of Rome, there exists a divergence 500 years long (T.Mommsen). Moreover: "falsification of numbers was here (regarding Valerias Antias) carried out down even to contemporary history... He (Alexander Polyhistor)... took the first steps towards filling up the five hundred years, which were wanting to bring the destruction of Troy and the origin of Rome into the chronological connection (as a matter of fact, according to another version of chronology, different from today's, Troy had fallen immediately the foundation of Rome, and not 500 years before it)... with one of those lists of kings without achievements which are unhappily familiar to the Egyptian and Greek chronicles; for, to all appearance, it was he that launched into the world the kings Aventinus and Tiberinus and the Alban gens of the Silvii whom the following times accordingly did not neglect to furnish in detail with name, period of reigning, and, for the sake of greater definitiveness, also a portrait" (T.Mommsen).

It is not surprising that certain skeptical minds have made dramatic conclusions from above-mentioned difficulties...

Isaac Newton devoted many years to historical and chronological studies. He made up his own tables in accordance with a new chronology version. Some of the important events of Greek history were chronologically moved by him forwards through 300 years, and those of Egyptian even 1000 years.

But the first serious attempt to systematize the considerable critical material, and to analyze historical paradoxes and duplicates from the standpoint of natural science was carried out in the fundamental work "Christ" of the remarkable scientist with encyclopedic knowledge, expert in chemistry, physics, mathematics, history, revolutionary and public figure, russian honorary academician N.A.Morozov (1854-1946).

Consider the three famous eclipses of Thucydides - 5th century B.C.("History of the Peloponnesian War": Bks.ii, 27-28; iv,51-52; vii,18-19,50). They can be dated using modern methods. There are only two exact astronomical solutions: the first solution is August 2, 1133 A.D., March 20, 1140 A.D., and August 28, 1151 A.D., whereas the second is August 22, 1039 A.D., April 9, 1046 A.D., and September 15, 1057 A.D. This example is not unique.

In an interior town in Illinois

2008-10-02T19:04:00.000-07:00

Mystery Airship Sightings in the late 1800's:

Walking to the landing spot, Lagrone found a crew of five men, three of whom talked to him while the others collected water in rubber bags. The man informed Lagrone that their ship was ONE OF FIVE that had been flying around the country recently, that theirs was in fact the SAME ONE that had landed in Beaumont a few days before, that all the ships had been constructed in an interior town in Illinois which borders Iowa and that they were reluctant to say anything else because they had NOT YET TAKEN OUT ANY PATENTS. By May of that same year, the sightings ended....

Also:

"Nov 26, 1897 - Hiram S. Maxim, Superintendent of Construction of the Atlantic and Pacific Aerial Navigation Company, announces that the company now has in course of construction an airship in which it is expected to make the trip to the Klondike. "When everything necessary is on board," he says…" - from KLONDIKE AIRSHIP SCHEME.; Plans of the Atlantic, New York Times.

Off to the races

2008-09-29T21:26:00.000-07:00

Sardonic, c. 1902.

The op-ed pages are chockablock with chatter about tax proposals, but hardly anybody has noticed that one new proposal is already moving forward. While others talk, Steny Hoyer acts. What, you never heard of Steny from Prince George's County, Maryland? He who was proclaimed a ''rising star'' by the National Journal in 1990 and later went on to become Democratic Whip in the U.S. House of Representatives despite being occasionally sighted at equine race tracks? We mention the steed connection because his tax amendment happens to concern the selfsame species. Wildly unfair and guaranteed to raise little or no new revenue, it whooshed through the House like Epsom salts and is evidently gaining momentum in the Senate. Forget about Elvis. Benedict Arnold is alive in Maryland, and the tax on horse players is rising again. What, you never heard of this godawful impost? It works like this. Suppose a horse player bets at least $2 and ends up winning at odds of 299 to 1 or more. (The doubles, exactas, trifectas, and other ''exotic'' bets offering such payouts now account for something like 70% of betting volume.) Before he can collect, he must provide I.D. plus a Social Security number and accept an IRS W-2G form. In case you are wondering, the G stands for ''gambling.'' If any such longshot ticket is worth $1,000 or more, the race track must also deduct 20%. In the interest of full disclosure, it will now be mentioned that the present typist had a losing year overall in the turf account and yet managed to accumulate four W-2G in 1991. The Hoyer amendment would raise the federal withholding rate from 20% to 28%. There is no reason to believe that this hike will increase federal tax revenue. Because of the I.D. requirements at payoff windows, all the winnings involved get reported and whatever tax is owed is presumably paid. The principal effect of raising the withholding rate is to reduce the money available for rebetting -- the ''handle'' on which the racing industry depends...Turning aggrievedly to the fairness issue, why should there be any withholding at all? In most contexts, the IRS demands a bite only on income received. For the sake of argument, let us agree that a winning ticket is income (while noting in parentheses that most civilized countries, including even overtaxed Britain, do not tax gambling winnings). But that ticket surely does not represent net income. The U.S. tax code says you pay on your winnings less your losses, yet the withholding clearly applies only to your winnings. So the feds are endlessly in the position of withholding the income of net losers, a proposition that would be unthinkable if the victims in question were dentists or homebuilders, or any other constituency getting a little respect from the politicians.

- Daniel Seligman, "Still More Rain On The Pony Parade."

Alain de Benoist quotes I

2008-09-04T19:13:00.000-07:00

Certosa di San Martino, Naples, Campania, Italy

“All the degradation of the modern world,” wrote Péguy, “i.e., all lowering of standards, all debasement of values, comes from the modern world regarding as negotiable the values that the ancient and Christian worlds regarded as nonnegotiable.” Liberal ideology bears a major responsibility for this “degradation,” insofar as liberalism is based on an unrealistic anthropology entailing a series of erroneous conclusions.

_____

Louis Dumont has shown Christianity’s role in Europe’s passage from a traditional holist society to a modern individualistic society. Right from the start, Christianity presented man as an individual who, prior to any other relationship, has an inner relationship to God and who thus seeks salvation through personal transcendence. In this relationship with God, man’s value as an individual is affirmed, and by comparison the world is necessarily degraded or devalued. Moreover, the individual is made equal to all other men, who also have individual souls. Egalitarianism and universalism are thus introduced on a higher plane: the absolute value the individual soul receives from its filial relationship with God is shared by all humanity.

Marcel Gauchet takes up the theme of a causal link between the emergence of a personal God and the birth of an inner man, whose fate in the beyond depends solely on his individual actions, and whose independence is already present in the possibility of an intimate relationship with God, i.e., of a relationship that involves God alone. “The more remote God becomes in his infinity,” Gauchet writes, “the more the relationship with him tends to become purely personal, to the point of excluding any institutional mediation. Raised to the absolute, the divine subject has no legitimate terrestrial counterpart other than intimate presence. Thus the original interiority leads directly to religious individuality.”

_____

“In order for modern individualism to be born,” writes Alain Renaut explicating the theses of Louis Dumont, it was necessary for the individualistic and universalist component of Christianity “to contaminate,” so to speak, modern life to such an extent that gradually the two orders were unified, the initial dualism was erased, and “life in the world was reconceived as being able to conform completely to the supreme value”: at the end of this process, “the otherworldly individual became the modern worldly individual.”

_____

In the modern sense of the term, individualism is the philosophy that regards the individual as the only reality and takes him as the principle of every evaluation.

_____

This primacy of the individual over the community is simultaneously descriptive, normative, methodological, and axiological.

_____

Liberals insist particularly on the idea that individual interests should never be sacrificed to the collective interest, the common good, or the public safety, concepts that they regard as inconsistent. From this idea it follows that only individuals have rights, while communities, being only collections of individuals, have none of their own.

_____

Such a conception by definition ignores commitments and attachments that owe nothing to rational calculation. It is a purely formal conception, that makes it impossible to understand what a real person is.

_____

But liberals do not wonder about the origin of the market either. Commercial exchange for them is indeed the “natural” model for all social relations. From this they deduced that the market itself is also a “natural” entity, establishing an order prior to any deliberation and decision. Being the form of exchange most in harmony with human nature, the market would be present at the dawn of humanity, in all societies. One finds here the tendency of every ideology to “naturalize” its presuppositions, i.e., to present itself, not for what it is, in fact a construction of the human spirit, but as a simple description, a simple transcription of the natural order. The state being correlatively rejected as an artifice, the idea of the “natural” regulation of the social by means of the market can then be imposed.

_____

“The superior rights of consumers,” writes Pierre Rosanvallon, “are to Smith what the General Will is to Rousseau.”

- Alain de Benoist, Critique of Liberal Ideology.

The Comic Almanack

2008-09-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

- GEORGE CRUIKSHANK, The Comic Almanack for 1853.

Japanese psychiatric medication advertisements

2008-09-01T21:34:00.000-07:00

Cercine® (Diazepam)

Emilace® (nemonapride)

Deliton® (clotiapine)

- from The Japanese Gallery of Psychiatric Art (Images from Japanese psychiatric medication advertisements : 1956-2003).

Revolvers

2008-09-01T21:25:00.000-07:00

1880's Colt SAA

Colt SAA .38-40

Keith No. 5 Bowen Custom

Smith & Wesson First Model .44 DA 1881

Smith & Wesson M&P .38 1905

Comedic Architecture

2008-05-26T22:47:00.000-07:00

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC).

From the British Museum II

2008-05-26T22:43:00.000-07:00

JOHN WELLS. Abstract drawing; three interlocking parabolas. 1969.

MAR JEAN KETTUNEN. Before Time. 1949.

From the British Museum.

From the British Museum

2008-05-26T22:16:00.001-07:00

JOHN SCOTT (after PHILIP REINAGLE). Otter Hunting. 1790-1828.

From the British Museum.

Henri Riviere

2008-04-26T10:15:00.000-07:00

HENRI RIVIERE. Thirty Six Views of the Eiffel Tower (a portfolio of lithographs). 1902.

Chris Beetles Gallery

2008-04-26T09:47:00.000-07:00

POWYS EVANS (QUIZ). Sir Robert Blair [Late LCC Education Officer] Sailing Down The Stream Of Progress. 1926.

RUSKIN SPEAR. Portrait of Enoch Powell.

Chris Beetles Art Gallery: "The stock or inventory we carry is the biggest in the country and ranges from the late 18th century through the cream of the 19th and 20th century, to a small group of traditional contemporary gallery artists. In addition the gallery is acknowledged as showing the greatest stock of Illustrators and Cartoonists in the world, an affordable area of art with prices starting as low as £100. The Chris Beetles Gallery has done much to popularise this rapidly growing collectors area. The catalogues we produce for our annual Illustrators exhibition in November have become the definitive literature on the subject, bought by libraries and museums around the world."

The Secret Museum of Mankind

2008-04-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

"Ceremonial masks attain the acme of the grotesque in New Guinea."

The Secret Museum of Mankind: "Published in 1935, the Secret Museum is a mystery book. It has no author or credits, no copyright, no date, no page numbers, no index. Published by "Manhattan House" and sold by "Metro Publications", both of New York, its "Five Volumes in One" was pure hype: it had never been released in any other form.

Advertised as "World's Greatest Collection of Strange & Secret Photographs" and marketed mainly to overheated adolescents...it consists of nothing but photos and captions with no further exposition."

Tobacco Advertising Posters

2008-04-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

Wm. Cameron & Bro. British-American Tobacco Co. "Dying to save the Queen's colors." An episode in the Battle of Insandlwhana. Undated.

Dunlop Tobacco. The Derby. Undated.

MORE: Emergence of Advertising in America, 1850-1920. Tobacco Advertising (1872-1918).

Owl

2008-04-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

P. VAN DER BORCHT. Owl. 1588.

Illustration from Sancti Ephiphanii ad Pyhsiologum.

Painter, printmaker, mercenary

2008-04-19T23:10:00.000-07:00

URS GRAF. Schrecken des Kriegs. 1521.

Flayed

2008-04-19T22:56:00.000-07:00

JUAN VALVERDE DE AMUSCO. Anatomia del corpo humano. 1559.

Via the Dream Anatomy Gallery.

Lost in the jungle

2007-12-17T19:41:00.000-08:00

Castle at Tuloom.

Idol at Copan.

Broken idol at Copan.

From the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Thornton Willis

2007-11-10T22:25:00.000-08:00

THORNTON WILLIS. Alien. 2005.

THORNTON WILLIS. Pushpuller. 2006.

"To describe 21st Century spatial concepts (in painting) is to try and depict the basic interconnectedness of matter in which form only appears separate.
In fact, all form struggles to maintain itself in the dynamic flow of space and time. The essence of nature and of our own human existence is change, movement towards or way from one form to the next.

In my paintings the forms are locked in this flux. It is part of the dynamic of the work and meant to be so. In this work, figure and ground, positive and negative are all equal. There is a suggestion of volume in the form, which continues to interest me as I work towards depicting a kind of Biomorphic Cubism."

- Thornton Willis.

Duncan Hannah

2007-10-02T22:10:00.000-07:00

DUNCAN HANNAH. Nova Sleeping. 2005.

DUNCAN HANNAH. Love's Young Dream. 2005.

DUNCAN HANNAH. Death of a Ghost. 2007.

Frédéric Dagain

2007-07-12T22:41:00.000-07:00

FRÉDÉRIC DAGAIN. Divinités Mayas, peintures sur feuilles de tabac.

"Wander through the 11th arrondissement of Paris toward the dead celebrities of Pere Lachaise Cemetery, and there's a decent chance you'll stumble across a small gallery called "Le Musée du Fumeur." Unlike the hallowed halls of the Louvre or the Musée d'Orsay, there is no tyranny of expectation in this tiny, smoking-themed museum. No smiling Mona Lisa or reclining Olympia dictates where the random tourist should focus his attention. Thus left to meander, the drop-in visitor may well overlook the more earnest exhibits here — such as Egyptian sheeshas or Chinese opium pipes — and note the small, red-circle-and-slash signs reminding guests that, in no uncertain terms, smoking is strictly forbidden in the Museum of Smoking."

- Rolf Potts. Le Musée du Fumeur. The Smart Set.

Liste Paquets

2007-07-11T22:47:00.000-07:00

Liste Paquets: les paquets par marque.

The Confidence Man

2007-06-09T23:08:00.000-07:00

The Confidence Man, Evergreen Paperback, cover design by Roy Kuhlman.

Urban Idyll

2007-06-04T19:45:00.000-07:00

A long and broad watermelon, fresh and red and ripe

2007-06-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

Gloze the unpleasant consequences of age

2007-05-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

They plotted out their life with truism and humour
Between the jealous heaven and the callous sea.
And Pindar sang the garland of wild olive
And Alcibiades lived from hand to mouth
Double-crossing Athens, Persia, Sparta,
And many died in the city of plague, and many of drouth
In Sicilian quarries, and many by the spear and arrow
And many more who told their lies too late
Caught in the eternal factions and reactions
Of the city-state.
And free speech shivered on the pikes of Macedonia
And later on the swords of Rome
And Athens became a mere university city
And the goddess born of the foam
Became the kept hetæra, heroine of Menander,
And the philosopher narrowed his focus, confined
His efforts to putting his own soul in order
And keeping a quiet mind.
And for a thousand years they went on talking,
Making such apt remarks,
A race no longer of heroes but of professors
And crooked business men and secretaries and clerks,
Who turned out dapper little elegiac verses
On the ironies of fate, the transience of all
Affections, carefully shunning an over-statement
But working the dying fall.
The Glory that was Greece: put it in a syllabus, grade it
Page by page
To train the mind or even to point a moral
For the present age:
Models of logic and lucidity, dignity, sanity,
The golden mean between opposing ills
Though there were exceptions of course but
only exceptions
The bloody Bacchanals on the Thracian hills.
So the humanist in his room with Jacobean panels
Chewing his pipe and looking on a lazy quad
Chops the Ancient World to turn a sermon
To the greater glory of God.
But I can do nothing so useful or so simple;
These dead are dead
And when I should remember the paragons of Hellas
I think instead
Of the crooks, the adventurers, the opportunists,
The careless athletes and the fancy boys,
The hair-splitters, the pedants, the hard-boiled sceptics
And the Agora and the noise
Of the demagogues and the quacks; and the women pouring
Libations over graves
And the trimmers at Delphi and the dummies at Sparta
and lastly
I think of the slaves.
And how one can imagine oneself among them
I do not know;
It was all so unimaginably different
And all so long ago.

- Louis MacNeice, Autumn Journal.

Louis MacNeice

Curiosities of Literature

2007-05-21T20:50:00.000-07:00

“If we possessed the secret history of the literary life of GEORGE STEEVENS, it would display an unparalleled series of arch deception, and malicious ingenuity. He has been happily characterised by Mr. Gifford, as “the Puck of Commentators!” STEEVENS is a creature so spotted over with literary forgeries and adulterations, that any remarkable one about the time he flourished may be attributed to him. They were the habits of a depraved mind, and there was a darkness in his character many shades deeper than belonged to Puck; even in the playfulness of his invention, there was usually a turn of personal malignity, and the real object was not so much to raise a laugh, as to “grin horribly a ghastly smile,” on the individual. It is more than rumoured, that he carried his ingenious malignity into the privacies of domestic life; and it is to be regretted, that Mr. Nichols, who might have furnished much secret history of this extraordinary literary forger, has, from delicacy, mutilated his collective vigour.” - from On Puck the Commentator, in Isaac D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature.

Literary Encounters

2007-05-21T20:39:00.000-07:00

“One evening after a long after-dinner conversation, [John Cowper] Powys looked at his watch, and said he would have to go at once or miss his train. [Theodore] Dreiser helped him on with his overcoat, and Powys, on his way to the door said - “I’ll appear before you right here later this evening. You’ll see me.”"Are you going to turn yourself into a ghost, or do you have a key to the door?” Dreiser laughed, for he did not believe that Powys meant to be taken seriously.”I don’t know,” said Powys, “I may return as a spirit or in some other astral form.”Dreiser said there had been no discussion during the evening of ghosts, spirits, or visions...He gave no further thought to Powys’ promise to reappear, but he sat up reading for about two hours, all alone. Then he looked up from his book and saw Powys standing in the doorway...Dreiser rose at once and strode toward whatever it was, saying “Well, you’ve kept your word, John, you’re here. Come on in and tell me how you did it.” The apparition did not reply, and it vanished when Dreiser was within three feet from it.As soon as he had recovered somewhat from his astonishment, Dreiser picked up the phone and called Powys’ home in the country. Powys came to the phone and Dreiser recognized his voice. When he heard the story, Powys said: “I told you I’d be there; you oughtn’t to be astonished.” Dreiser told me he was never able to get any explanation from Powys, who refused to discuss the matter from any standpoint.” - Trance, Art, and Creativity, J.C. Gowan.

Thomas Bernhard

2007-04-15T11:48:00.000-07:00

"I write only of interior landscapes, and the majority of people don’t see those: they see almost nothing that is “inside.” Because they always think that if something is internal, it’s obscure, and therefore they don’t see anything. I think I’ve never described a landscape in a book. I treat only concepts, by which I mean talking always of mountains or a city or roads, but how these appear—no, I have never described a landscape." - Thomas Bernhard

Spaghetti Western

2007-03-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

JAMES POWDITCH. Once Upon A Time In The West II. 2003.

Screencap of Col. Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) from For a Few Dollars More.

Tomas Sanchez

2007-02-21T21:45:00.000-08:00

TOMAS SANCHEZ. From the Cave of the Heart. 2005.

Albert Pinkham Ryder

2007-02-10T00:43:00.000-08:00

ALBERT PINKHAM RYDER. The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse). c. 1896-1908.

James Siena

2007-02-05T15:34:00.000-08:00

JAMES SIENA. One, one... 2005.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

2007-02-05T15:14:00.000-08:00

RALPH EUGENE MEATYARD. Untitled [Georgetown Street]. ca. 1955

Propertius: The Elegies

2006-12-25T20:13:00.000-08:00

BERLIN PAINTER. Terracotta amphora. ca. 490 B.C.

Our quarrel by lamplight last night was sweet to me, and all those insults from your furious tongue, when frenzied with drinking you pushed the table back, and threw full glasses over me, with an angry hand. Truly bold, attack my hair, you, and mark my face with your lovely nails, threaten to scorch my eyes with a flame beneath them, rip my clothes and bare my chest!

You give me certain signs of love: no woman is in pain unless out of deep passion. That woman who hurls abuse with raving mouth, she rolls around before mighty Venus’s feet, she packs guards round her in a crowd, or follows in the middle of the road like a stricken Maenad, or demented dreams keep terrifying the frightened girl, or a girl pictured in a painting moves her to misery.

I’m a true augur of the soul’s torments: I’ve learnt these are always the signs of certain love. There is no constant faithfulness that won’t turn to quarrelling: let cold women fall to my enemies. Let my friends see the wounds in my bitten neck: let the bruises show my girl has been with me.

I want to suffer with love, or hear about suffering: I’d rather see your tears or else my own, whenever your eyebrows send me hidden messages, or you write with your fingers words that can’t be spoken. I hate those sighs that never shatter sleep: I would always wish to turn pale for an angry girl.

The passion was dearer to Paris when he could cut his way through Greek ranks to bring pleasure to his daughter of Tyndareus. While the Danaans conquered, while savage Hector held them, he fought a nobler war in Helen’s lap. I’ll always be fighting with you, or with a rival for you: you at peace will never please me.

- Propertius: The Elegies, Book III.8:1-34 His mistress’s fury.

Bruges

2006-12-25T19:54:00.000-08:00

"The Belgian writer Georges Rodenbach (1855-98) is identified above all with the city of Bruges. It emerged early on as a subject in his poetry, and in his most famous book, the short novel Bruges-la-Morte (1892), a particular idea of the place - silent, melancholy, lost in time - found its most intense and influential expression. It led to something of a cult of Bruges in the Parisian circles that Rodenbach was by then inhabiting. Bruges became a destination, treasured for its antiquity and decay, and Rodenbach's novel, illustrated as it was with numerous photographs of the city's churches, houses and canals, sold very well there. In the following years other Belgian artists explored the richly desolate atmosphere of the city, and Fernand Khnopff, in particular, made a number of mesmerising paintings which combine photographic precision with a mood of lonely Symbolist contemplation."

- Alan Hollinghurst, Bruges of sighs.

FERNAND KHNOPFF. Memories of Bruges Entry to The Beguinge. 1904.

Graham Nickson

2006-12-11T22:20:00.000-08:00

GRAHAM NICKSON. Metamorphoses: Dark Inlet. 1982-2000

DY: What are the elements of a painting that you return to, what are the aspects that take ten years or more to get right? Is it color? Is it composition?

GN: No, it’s image. Basically, that’s the thing that keeps us all going. And I think this is true of a lot of the people I admire, whether it’s Titian or Cézanne, Guston or Piero della Francesca. I have a strong belief that there’s an image that somehow has the ability to embody a range of experiences, a range of levels of meaning that come together into this one path of thought. It’s that image that I’m looking for. That image is not an illustration, it’s not a narrative. That image has to go through a whole process in order to take on this extraordinary responsibility of revealing these elements and levels of understanding.

- A conversation with Graham Nickson, by David Yezzi. The New Criterion, Volume 25, December 2006.

Yasuo Hayashi

2006-12-05T21:44:00.000-08:00

YASUO HAYASHI. Sound-C. 1995

Suzuki Osamu

2006-12-05T21:37:00.000-08:00

SUZUKI OSAMU. Untitled.

"Japanese ceramics can be classified into at least three categories, those being Tea related wares, Mingei or folk styles, and purely sculptural forms. The latter is the newest member and can trace its roots to 1948; that's when Sodeisha was formed.

Sodeisha, alongside its antithesis the Mingei Movement, is one of the most influential ceramic groups ever formed in Japan. Three young Kyoto ceramists, Yagi Kazuo (1918-1979), Yamada Hikaru (b.1924), and Suzuki Osamu (b.1926) were the force behind Sodeisha and it was their visions that have set the course for ceramic non-functional forms in Japan ever since."

- Robert Yellin

Robert Walser

2006-12-04T22:33:00.000-08:00

Die Bilder zeigen Robert Walser am Weihnachtstag 1956

"There are the tracks of the rabbit. I think they said at the table that today is Christmas. I do not know. But let us desist, lest quite by accident we be so unlucky as to put these things in order." - Guy Davenport, A Field of Snow on a Slope of the Rosenberg.

Out of luck

2006-11-13T23:13:00.000-08:00

Decaying dice (from the collection of Ricky Jay)

Out there among the chemical tanks

2006-11-13T23:05:00.000-08:00

Subterranean Cities

They rented rooms in a low house by tracks
in the industrial area,
where freighters from Greece and Liberia
lay together under cranes, and the stacks
of so many chthonian factories
blew out into the sky the stink and boom
of manufacturing inside rooms
as big as subterranean cities.
Not far beyond the backyard of their home
the blue refinery fires burned,
and men went back and forth in trucks to earn
a kind of living in the outer zone.
They stayed out there among the chemical tanks,
thinking of cadmium and other things.

- John Foy

Athanasius Kircher, p.2

2006-11-13T22:57:00.000-08:00

Kircher's Projector

Magnetica

Kircher's Camera Obscura

Athanasius Kircher

2006-11-13T22:24:00.000-08:00

Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher - Arithmologia, 1665.

Dragon Kite

Athanasius Kircher Project

Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society

John Ruskin

2006-10-18T01:58:00.000-07:00

John Ruskin, The Aiguille Blaitière.

F is for Fake

2006-10-17T21:26:00.000-07:00

Scene from Orson Welles' "F is for Fake".

Lucky Strike

2006-10-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

Stuart Davis "Lucky Strike", 1921.

Rovin

2006-10-16T01:48:00.000-07:00

Rovin. French poster of monkey on motorbike smoking cigar

Henry Wessel

2006-10-15T20:12:00.000-07:00

Henry Wessel Night Walk LA #23

Smoking (misc.)

2006-10-15T14:06:00.000-07:00

Fosforos el mono (smoking chimp/monkey)

Novelta Cigaretten

Modiano Cigarette Papers

Rossli Cigars by Herbet Leupin (Horse)

Andre Kertesz

2006-10-15T14:04:00.000-07:00

Kertesz Watchmaker's Shop

Kertesz Marionettes from the Experimental Puppeteer Geza Blattner

Steinberg 1

2006-10-15T13:59:00.000-07:00

Man drawing cat

Countryside

2006-10-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

Grandville

2006-10-15T01:34:00.000-07:00

[fromLuca Novelli Manifesto]