no prayer for dead gods

there i was in late middle age cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners,



a nation swamped by unchecked plagues



and superstition and illiteracy



and hypnotic TV, with virtually no health services for the poor.



Where to go? What to do?



Words: from Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut (1990)
Images: Jacob Whibley

Apocalypse Expressionism

I will occasionally use this blog to comment on art, not only to post gorgeous imagery alongside heartbreaking texts.



image source: Trash & Treasure




Images: Yet to be Titled / The Leaf and the Wind, both 2011 by Landon Metz


I've been on notice of a recent surge of neo-Abstract Expressionism. It manifests in fine art, design, fashion, home decor.




Kline-esq / de Kooning-esq Pillows by Wary Meyers




ffixxed less world silk scarf from POUR PORTER / Scarf by Unknown (help?)


Shirt by Paul Cowan at Contemporary Standard / Tote by Unknown (help?)


Do these artists execute their works under the same maniacal influences of raw spirit that their predecessors channeled? Are they influenced by certain MOMA retrospectives? The 20-something year swing around of all trends? Or is this the work of a generationally loud last gasp of lost soul? A wisply leak into the ozone-depleted ether of something beautiful and prevalent enough to quiet the darkness that envelopes the current zeitgeist?




"It Tastes Like Ashes" by Bert Huyghe


Abstract expressionism has always (in my aspect) shared a root of with the marrow of true humanity. It is not often representation of figural form, but there is human being all over it. In color, shape, stroke, texture, sensation. Abstraction is hard, but expression is as natural as pre-30s rain, as easy and fulfilling as taking a shit. It may have pushed boundaries for the art world, but what it did for the artist was release, release, release. All anger, frustration, joy, ecstasy, pulsating desire, envy, insanity.



"fucking hack" by Mitchel Spider


I'll speak now of WE, my generation, of (young) artists and makers. Collectively, we worry in those tiny black boxes hidden deep inside our minds, that population explosion means we probably won't have kids or grandkids; at least not comfortably, not without fighting a few more wars to weed out the less rich and armed. Or not without staging a worldwide guillotine-style rebellion and reorganization that completely sets the world right just so it can fall apart again. (these pipe dreams keep our heads bowed upon the whiskey fumed planks while our asses are glued to timber bar stools). The not-so-terribly-distant wasteland to which we are steered--however unwillingly-- eradicates the notion of gallery/museum based presentation of artwork. In fact, it makes all preservation obsolete. WE don't hope to become names in an already corpulent lexicon of Art History, we just want to ease the terror sting of that burning Apocalypse on the horizon.



"Untitled" by Thomas Jessome, 2011


NOTE: I would like to thank the tumblr RainbowGradientCatBoom where a lot of the images/inspiration came to me from.

Prophecies of Earthly Hungers

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.






But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:






To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.







To know the pain of too much tenderness.







To be wounded by your own understanding of love;






And to bleed willingly and joyfully.







Words: Kahlil Gibran on Love, from The Prophet
Images: Megan Diddie

Blow-Up

It'll never be known how this has to be told,






in the first person or in the second,






using the third person plural or continually inventing modes that will serve for nothing.






If one might say: I will see the moon rose,






or: we hurt me at the back of my eyes,






and especially you the blond woman that was the clouds that race before my your his our yours their faces.






What the hell.







Words: opening lines of Julio Cortazar's Blow Up
Images: Yago Hortal

These problems are not at all hard to solve.

Only one month till our eyes get megadosed with neon flash happynassss.

Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

Gossamer Beynor high-heels out of school.



The sun hums down through the cotton flowers of her dress into the bell of her heart




and buzzes in the honey there and couches and kisses, lazy-loving and boozed, in her red-berried breast.




Eyes run from the trees and windows of the street,



streaming 'Gossamer,' naked past the Sailors Arms,



the only woman on the Dai-Adamed earth.



Sinbad Sailors places on her thighs still dewdamp from the first mangrowing cock-crow garden his reverent goat-bearded hands.


Words: from Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
Images: Fredrik Akum

I Hit My Head

"Take up now a handful of good earth.



Do you find in it at seed,



and perhaps a worm?



If your hand were spacious and enduring enough,



the seed might become a forest,



and the worm a flock of angels.



And forget not that the years which turn seeds to forest,



and worms to angels



belong to this Now.



all of the years,



this very Now."

Words: from The Garden of the Prophet by Kahil Gibran
Images: Hernan Paganini

there is no greater pleasure than in having what is a great pleasure

Inside there was only an enormous



transparent block



with infinite internal needles in which the light of the sunset was broken up into colored stars.



Disconcerted,



knowing that the children were waiting for an imediate explanation,



Jose Arcadio Buendia ventured a murmur:



"It's the largest diamond in the world."



"No," the gypsy countered. "It's ice."


Words: from One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Images: Jeremy Miranda