It Is In The Unveiling Of Mystery That Desire Wanes

Figs. 1. & 2. François Lespingola - Hercules Rescuing Prometheus, late 17thC


'Our gaze can fall, not without perversity, upon certain old and lovely things whose signified is out of date. It is a moment at once decadent and prophetic, a moment of gentle apocalypse.'

Roland Barthes

The Loss Of Everything Is Only A Material Disaster

Fig. 1. William Blake - Fire, c. 1805


'To overcome difficulties is to experience the full delight of existence'

Arthur Schopenhauer

When The Bang Is Not Much More Than A Whimper

Fig. 1. Cai Guo-Qiang - Money Net (No. 3), 2002


'Love without passion is dreary; passion without love is horrific.'

Lord Byron

Only Tourists Will See What They Have Come To See*

Fig. 1. Elio Ciol - Stazione di Milano, 1961


'Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.'

Anatole France

* 'The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.' (G. K. Chesterton)

All The Better Angels Of Our Nature Are Anonymous*

Fig. 1. James Lee Byars - The Angel, 1989


'Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.'

Simone Weil

* (a) 'We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.' (Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, 1861) and, (b) 'A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is anonymous about it.' (Simone Weil)

Addendum #1: Art News - Paris, Australia (click)

Fig. 2. Vincent van Gogh - Bedroom at Arles, 1889

Addendum #2: Art News - Stadel Collection, Melbourne (click)

Fig. 3. Edvard Munch - Jealousy, 1913

To Each Is Assigned His - Or Her - Own Prometheus

Fig. 1. The Innocents (1961) - d. Jack Clayton


'Law and repressed desire are one and the same thing.'

Jacques Lacan

In A World Where Beastliness Is Perilously Beautiful

Fig. 1. Bluebeard (2009) - d. Catherine Breillat

'The perception of beauty is a moral test.'

Henry David Thoreau