member of:Observers of the Interdependence of Domestic Objects and Their Influence on Everyday Life


This group has been active for a long time and has already made some remarkable assertions which render life simpler from the practical point of view. For example, I move a pot of green color five centimeters to the right, I push in the thumbtack beside the comb and if Mr. A (another adherent like me) at this moment puts his volume about bee-keeping beside a pattern for cutting out vests, I am sure to meet on the sidewalk of the avenida Madero a woman who intrigues me and whose origin and address I never could have known...
--Remedios Varo


(Slideshow is of Artwork by Remedios Varo)
By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
--Franz Kafka

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Artistic Precursors to the Lobotomy



Extraction of the Stone of Madness, by Hieronymous Bosch


Something for you to chew on...


Extraction of the Stone of Madness (detail), by Hieronymous Bosch



The lobotomy, as an actual surgical procedure, wasn't performed (legally) until 1935. The above painting was created by Hieronymous Bosch in the late 1400s, and the one below in the late 1500s.


A Surgeon Extracting the Stone of Folly, by Pieter Huys


As usual, artists are far ahead of the crowd...

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Thinking




The boy is studying painting. He has a book that tells him “how to” and a table with toy soldiers which serve as his models, and he practices in a strictly geometrical garden (loosely based on the one at Versailles). Suddenly, a fairy-tale book which he had previously discarded begins to create something of its own: sleeping beauty wakes herself up and begins to pull herself out of the pages. Surprised and excited, he jumps up, knocking his rule-book and paintbrush to the ground and tipping over the red paint bucket, and the splashes from it begin to form birds which fly away.
Imagination always works better than logic :))

This drawing was created as a companion for the lovely Vesna’s poem of the same name:

Thinking

God
isn’t he just a kid
who found a box of paint
as he was running through Space?

He painted himself some friends to play
and then some toys and playgrounds.

He makes mistakes.
He makes masterpieces.

He spills the paint;
the red especially
makes the big mess.

And sometimes
he erases things and shakes the World
and makes us all afraid.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

It Shouldn't Be Hard




The belly dancer is trying very hard to be in control, but it's a tangle of wild rhythms...
Drawing by Zoe
Poem by Vesna:


It shouldn't be hard

How to get
The perfect beat
The ultimate sound

The one
that calls you
The one
that calms you
The one
that makes you
wild
The one
that makes you
reborn

It shouldn't be hard
But it is
There are so many ways
To touch with your palm
The ancient drum