One More Verse From The Ballad Of Jack The Dripper

Fig. 1. Jackson Pollock - Lavender Mist, No. 1, 1950


'Once the secondary elaboration of style has covered the wild form-play of art, never again can the human eye see its full effects, neither this generation, nor future generations.'

Anton Ehrenzweig

A Bridge Of Flesh Between The Mind And Its Others

Fig. 1. Hannes Schüpbach - Toccata (video still), 2002


'The artist ... has never lost his original function and establishes the unity of the ultimate by reducing all phenomena to the terms of the sensual. For sensuality is the one basic human quality necessary for the appreciation of all truth.'

Marl Rothko

It's Hard To Be Lean Without Also Being A Little Mean

Fig. 1. Alberto Giacometti - Le Chat, 1951


'Things would have been fine if my body and I had got on well together. But the fact is that we were an odd couple. When the child is unhappy, he doesn't asks himself questions. If he suffers bodily as a result of needs and sickness, his unjustifiable state justifies his existence. His right to live is based on hunger, on the constant danger of death. As for me, I was neither rich enough to think I was predestined nor poor enough to feel my desires as demands … Breathing, digesting, defecating unconcernedly, I lived because I had begun to live. I was unaware of the violence and savage demands of that gorged companion, my body, which made itself known by a series of mild disturbances, much in demand among grown-ups ...'

Jean-Paul Sartre

It Takes Longer To Fully Unravel Than It Does To Live

Fig. 1. Liza Lou - Continuous Mile, 2007–2008


'There is an optimism that consists in saying, "In any case, it couldn't be any better." My optimism would consist in saying, "So many things can be changed, being as fragile as they are, tied more to contingencies than to necessities, more to what is arbitrary than to what is rationally established, more to complex but transitory historical contingencies than to inevitable anthropological constants."'

Michel Foucault

The Sunday Six: It Ain't No Carnival For The Animals

Fig. 1. Sue Coe - Elephant Slaughter in Sudan, 2007

Fig. 2. Scott Robert Hudson - Bison, 2005-2007

Fig. 3. Xavier Veilhan - Shark, 2008

Fig. 4. Steve McQueen - Running Thunder, 2007 (film still)

Fig. 5. Bill Hammond - Jingle Jangle Morning, 2006

Fig. 6. Damien Hirst - Tranquility from the “Butterfly” series (2002-)

The Janjuweed (Death on Horseback) using high powered rifles slaughter 100 elephants in one afternoon to sell the ivory to China. The money buys more weapons for the war in Darfur.

When Courage Takes To The Dance Floor, Joy Leads*

Fig. 1. John Brack - Latin American Grand Final, 1969


'There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.'

Henri Bergson

* 'Joy prompts courage.' (Hans Christian Andersen)

For Thy Part, I Passionately Wish Thou Wert A Dog*

Fig. 1. Michelangelo (di Lodovico Buonarroti Simon) - The Last Judgement, 1534-1541


'To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.'

William Hazlitt

* 'I am misanthropos, and hate mankind,/For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog,/That I might love thee something.' (from Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare)