Tuesday, September 16, 2008

New Work on canvas - and quote from Henry Miller




Side by side with the human race there runs another race of being, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song.  Out of the dead compost and the inert slag they breed a song that contaminates. I see this other race of individuals ransacking the universe, turning everything upside down, their feet always moving in blood and tears, their hand always empty, always clutching and grasping for the beyond, for the god out of reach: slaying everything within reach in order to quiet the monster that gnaws at their vitals.  I see that when they bellow like crazed beasts and gore, I see that this is right, that there is no other path to pursue.  A man who belongs to this race must stand up on the high place with gibberish in his mouth and rip out his entrails.  It is right and just, because he must!  And anything that falls short of this frightening spectacle, anything less shuddering, less terrifying, less mad, less intoxicated, less contaminating, is not art.  The rest is counterfeit.  The rest is human. The rest belongs to life and lifelessness.
- Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

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