
“Amidst the agony of flowers, the present never ends” – Yayoi Kusama
images that haunt us
“Amidst the agony of flowers, the present never ends” – Yayoi Kusama
“An atypical work for the naturalistically inclined Cuvelier, this highly Romantic image of two people sitting below the skeletons of burned pine trees and looking into the featureless distance like the contemplative figures in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, was no doubt a response to the startling sight of the charred landscape.” | quoted from The Met
“A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)
“Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow”
― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)
Life is merely a fracas on an unmapped terrain, and the universe a geometry stricken with epilepsy. ― Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay (1949)
“I did ‘Salome’ as a purgative”, declares Nazimova. “The trash I had played made me sick with myself. I wanted something so different, so fanciful, so artistic, that it would take the taste out of my mouth”. Costume designs for Salome were Natacha Rambova’s (including the iconic wig).
Far up the porch there grew an Eastern rose,
Gown’d in pure white, that fitted to the shape,
Holding the bush, to fix it back, she stood,
A single steam of all her soft brown hair
Poured on one side. (Tennyson)
Song of the Open Road (1856)
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens;
I carry them, men and women ─ I carry them with me wherever I go;
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them;
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)
Walt Whitman
Filming for me is an illusion planned in detail, the reflection of a reality which the longer I live seems to me more and more illusory.
Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern – IV (trans. Joan Tate) | via