I know very well that I would be better off living normally, better off keeping to the straight and narrow, not to be (at the age of 30 years) as futile as Cherubino di amore for Beaumarchais (…). I know that I do not have enough respect for the law, that I am as scatterbrained as a mayfly, and as unworried as a monk, I know that I do not contribute to the good of the State but that which you do not suspect and that which will cause all serious people to faint, right up until the fifth male generation, is that I am happy and almost proud of being like this and not otherwise…. I hope that this surpasses the boundaries of decent insanity… (read more)

First stage of cruelty (Plate I)

Second stage of cruelty (Plate II)

Cruelty in perfection (Plate III)

The reward of cruelty (Plate IV)

Find more etchings by  William Hogarth on gutenberg.org

Let him laugh now, who never laugh’d before;
And he who always laugh’d, laugh now the more.

also take a look at Piotr Dumała’s Franz Krafka 1991, 16min;
and Woslnosc Nogi/Freedom of a Leg 1988, 10min (more)

(via @Mieko Suzuki)

The Darker Side of Light reveals the private worlds of late nineteenth-century Europe through prints and other works meant for quiet contemplation. The exhibition presents over one hundred prints, drawings, illustrated books, and small sculptures by artists such as Félix Bracquemond, James Ensor, Max Klinger, Käthe Kollwitz, James McNeill Whistler, Charles Meryon, and Anders Zorn, among others. The Darker Side of Light evokes shadowed interiors and private introspections to tell a far less familiar story of late nineteenth-century art. (read more)

Download selected images in High Resolution at smartmuseum.edu

Max Klinger, Abduction, 1881

Albert Besnard, Morphine Addicts, 1887

Eugène Carrière, Sleep, 1897

Käthe Kollwitz, Woman with a Dead Child, 1903

Félix Bracquemond, The Moles, 1854

Odilon Redon, This Is the Devil from Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1888

Beardsley later converted to Catholicism, and would subsequently beg his publisher to destroy all copies of Lysistrata and bad drawings…by all that is holy all obscene drawings.

The Yellow Book, an illustrated quarterly 1894

The Yellow Book was the brain-child of Beardsley even down to its title. Novels by the French decadent writer were often issued in yellow wrappers; the most important of the novels was J.K. Huysmans’ A Rebours, 1883. Beardsley proposed a new illustrated quarterly dedicated to modern literature and art because many brilliant story painters and picture writers cannot get their best stuff accepted in the conventional magazines, either because they are not topical, or perhaps a little risquÇ. The Yellow Book published some of the best authors and artists of the Nineties, often causing scandals to the conservative public. (via)

Read all 13 volumes of the yellow book online or download via wikipedia

(via arrested motion)

Read an interview with the artist on fecal face,
and have a look at Eric White’s Eclecticism: Virtue or Defect?

This exhibition explored the way photographic images and videos represent reality as much as they can construct and betray it. One of its section was dedicated entirely to the treatment of images in the context of war.

Artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin followed the British army in Afghanistan as embedded photo reporters in June 2008. (Read More)

What Broomberg and Chanarin seek to demonstrate with this paradoxical work of “anti-documentation” is that their images are equivalent in terms of truth content to the photographs of embedded reporters approved by military censorship. Their abstract painting of light bears witness to the reality of the conflict in the same almost paradoxical way as the work of the war photographers, which in any case does not present the truth. (Read More)

take a look at their latest special issue: schmiede 09 (where my work is featured)
and make sure to submit your photographs or short stories for the next issue.

Click here to view the embedded video.

robots vs armour

see also: New Friends by David Shrigley

For the first time, I used light to write the names of everybody related to me. In the following nights, I did the same thing. Writing always became more difficult later in the night, and also more evocative and sentimental, especially when I wrote the names of those who have died, who live at the other end of the world, or whom I might never meet again . (read more)

also take a look at: Le Roman de Violette

First published in Bruxelles by Augustin Brancart in 1870 [c.1883] as “Le Roman de Violette”. A later edition was published, c.1883, probably by Kistemaeckers, with 6 engravings by Fredillo. The English translation was published, possibly by Mlle. Doucé, in 1891 as “The Romance of Violette”.