Decomposition takes time — depends upon the size of the object. Retribution, too, not always immediate, but it is deliberate. Why else that phrase: revenge is a dish best served cold? Sufficient of the bird remaining to let it manipulate the surrounds. Getting its own back for its owners' neglect. Singing as it does so, Stairway to Heaven, that Led Zeppelin song. Using it as a template / timekeeper, to progress the couple's decay. First the smile wiped off their faces, so ferociously their features have come away as well. Then smoothed down, as if turned on a lathe. The final indignation still to come. Head & neck removed, to be featured as newel caps, put in place at the top of the staircase as the song comes to an end.
Tuesday, February 16, 2021
#458 The Sensational News
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
#457 Tous les Jours
Up here in the mountains it is an everyday thing to come across vestiges of earlier climbers &/or the oc- casional earlier painting. They may present as tracks in the earth or discarded equipment. Sometimes as ghosts or holograms. Stare at the latter for long enough & they sometimes become embarrassed, begin to speak. In a thin voice that still sparks echoes, this one says: "I was once the star of The Age of Enlightenment. Now the world has forgotten me. Am I not still beautiful?"
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
#456 La Marchande de Sable
Legerdemain & sympathetic magic are not confined only to my paintings. Sometimes I moonlight as the sandman, tell stories that throw sand into the listeners' eyes to foster dreams that render the invisible visible. Georgette is happy just to watch me work; but on occasion, when I wish to explain more fully what is beneath, behind, the current painting, I sprinkle sand into her eyes to make her sleep. She smiles at my explanations; & at the pipe I leave beside her to remind her where we've been.
Monday, December 21, 2020
#455 L'esprit et la forme (1928)
There is much to sing about here. The glass of water. The fish out of it but still swimming happily around. The pawn, token of a game she has just learnt but is much taken by. Which she has natural advant- ages in since she can float above it & read the play as easily as she can read the myst- eries of the sea floor.
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
#454 Décalcomanie
Which side has been taken & pressed upon the other one? Maybe with another artist it might be easy to determine — clean lines, symmetry, a space echoing what has been taken away from it — but Magritte rarely adheres to the strict guidelines for anything, & decalcomania is no except- ion. The curtain behind, in front of; the horizons evenly aligned but not the beach; one shoulder sloping more. En plein air the man blocks out the sea. The curtains ex- pose it as if he wasn't there.
Wednesday, December 02, 2020
Friday, November 27, 2020
#452 Le Grand Air
A drunk man's words are often the disturbing thoughts of a sober one.
The dialectical law of negation of the negation calls us to re-visit the historical context within which the Western myth of human rights is conceived.
Agendas enter the local context. Hollywood celebrities enter into prenuptial agreements. The ideal version of democracy is a fluid entity which we constantly construct, deconstruct, reconstruct.
A touch of the modern & it would not be at all acceptable.
Who is going to cook dinner tonight, wash plates, change the baby's nappies?
Sunday, November 22, 2020
#451 Representation II
The orchestra under the cypress tree kicks into life. A few bars; & then the scene we're watching on the small screen is replicated on a larger canvas that still permits the original viewing platform to be included in the corner, picture- within-picture style, framed by the only thing that might be a goal were it not for the pawn on top. Or maybe it was the other way around & downsizing has occurred. No spectators to see the "world game" shrunk to three a-side. The château now a simple manor house. A lone pianola.
Monday, November 09, 2020
#450 Le Sang du Monde
I have always found imaginary landscapes more real than the real. The paintings of Magritte & de Chirico, the novels of LeGuin & Delany & Ballard — I am comfortable in these even though I may occasionally find them disturbing. Perhaps it's because I live my life vicariously, or perhaps it's because I have never found, though I've lived in quite a few of them, a city that felt like home.
Wednesday, October 07, 2020
Three poems from Series Magritte at Youtube
via The Continental Review
Read by Miia Toivio & with graphics by Marko Niemi
Thursday, October 01, 2020
#449 L'Atlantide
The concealing shroud has shifted from the bedside of a sleeping Georgette & now resembles a bunch of damp towels as it rests on the tiles beside a bath that has no taps, no obvious out- let pipes. Rotate the painting, & stairs appear. & though the chapel at the top of them is set into solid rock, it means only that an exit is behind you. A- void the abyss which is al- ways here- or thereabouts. & beware the imminent arrival of a cascade of water falling from the upturned bath.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)