Friday, October 29, 2010

How to use the brush by Hugo Pratt



Saturday, October 23, 2010

Today at the Tate

Freud

Turner

Pollock

Bacon, out of focus

Friday, October 08, 2010

Rimbaud



Venus Anadyomène

Comme d’un cercueil vert en fer blanc, une tête

De femme à cheveux bruns fortement pommadés

D’une vieille baignoire émerge, lente et bête,

Avec des déficits assez mal ravaudés;


Puis le col gras et gris, les larges omoplates

Qui saillent; le dos court qui rentre et qui ressort;

Puis les rondeurs des reins semblent prendre l’essor;

La graisse sous la peau paraît en feuilles plates:


L’échine est un peu rouge, et le tout sent un goût

Horrible étrangement; on remarque surtout

Des singularités qu’il faut voir à la loupe…

Les reins portent deux mots gravés: CLARA VENUS;

—Et tout ce corps remue et tend sa large croupe

Belle hideusement d’un ulcère à l’anus.

Venus Anadyomene

As from a green zinc coffin, a woman’s

Head with brown hair heavily pomaded

Emerges slowly and stupidly from an old bathtub,

With bald patches rather badly hidden;


Then the fat gray neck, broad shoulder-blades

Sticking out; a short back which curves in and bulges;

Then the roundness of the buttocks seems to take off;

The fat under the skin appears in slabs:


The spine is a bit red; and the whole thing has a smell

Strangely horrible; you notice especially

Odd details you’d have to see with a magnifying glass…


The buttocks bear two engraved words: CLARA VENUS;

—And that whole body moves and extends its broad rump

Hideously beautiful with an ulcer on the anus.

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

The Death of Dagwood




By Wally Wood in Mad Magazine, late fifties.