Epiphany is hard Labour too #41

After all, world-wide Lucian Freud paints like Francis Bacon under tranxene.

But the best tribute to pay to world-wide Edward Hooper is probably to adapt the light of his paintings to geography.

Moscow-based artist Vladimir Seminsky did so and put the figure of the Urban Lady so dear to Hooper under the Russian rays:

(Hotel, Inside - 2007)

2008 / ..., Credit-crunch got me but not my faith in the absolute need of despising ecology #44

You try to protect the Earth with a solitary but new ethic of sustainable addiction to consumption, you try hard -sustainable pollution is not an easy task & you are even relatively happy to learn that for the first time ever on the continent of Europe, no corpses were binned by governments in 2009 - and then, back from nowhere, the curse of the 80's knocks at your sustainable door: you learn that lipstick-Boy George tries to get his old band 'Culture Club' back together so as to finance his retirement and to mark their 30th anniversary next year.

No rest is apparently possible.

And "One must imagine Sisyphus happy"?

That was before Culture Club reunites.

XXIst century's icons & myths mapping our daily roaming en el Laberinto de la soledad #21

Europeans have two cultures: their national culture & the American one
Rome for a while was in New-York, now it is even not in Shangaï
Wall Street by tomorrow will be located in Beijing

(& switching from my limited English to my future limited Mandarin is hardly inspiring)
Guantanamo will move out of googlemap
In Obamaland, the W.A.S.P. are being replaced by Latinos
The Empire will soften
Indian cinema fights back
Chinese cinema will fight back
& the djihad might soften too one day

In the meantime Paris dithers & considers the future of its museification
In the meantime, a language is a homeland
A bosom is an additional one
Chaos, under its ancient veil, has not evolved but is nowadays more $hining, that's all
& while the new mainstream is in preparation
It is apparently crucial to know one's Epicurian garden well. (Artist: Zhong-Yang Huang, 'Above Washington D.C.')

No time yet for Serenity, even for a Brestoise #21

No more burqa in Belgium: it is fobidden from now to freely decide to jail oneself in a total veil, at least in the common public place; at home, no need of social consensus: veil what you want. Individual radical religions do not supersede for the time-being compulsory compromises - and that is more than relevant-but in practice compulsory compromises, as we know by a long experience, are per se arbitrary. Dura lex, sed lex.

However, if one excludes a pure liberal approach of the phenomenon (after all, you are free to embody your body as you want provided this use of freedom does not bother or injury the society) and if we set aside the fear or unsincere political motivations in Western countries for adopting such a ban on the burqa, it is not so sure that Muslim women need saving: see Lila Abu-Lughod's article 'The Muslim woman - The power of images and the danger of pity' to make up your globalised-mind.

Please, Sin & be prepared to the naked silence that will fill the immensity let by your exhausted youth #80

Please, Sin with your mere presence #79

"Le parole notte, notturno ec., le descrizioni della notte ec., sono poeticissime, perchè la notte confondendo gli oggetti, l'animo non ne concepisce che un'immagine vaga, indistinta, incompleta, sì di essa che quanto ella contiene. Così oscurità, profondo, ec. ec." G. Leopardi, 28 Settembre 1821.

Please, Sin & succumb to my reddened fragrance wherein the world vanishes #78

Please, Sin & believe for a while you can possess a concentration of the universe as resumed in my bedroom #77

... but remember afterwards you cannot patent the attributes: Patents on genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer are invalid, ruled a New York federal court on 29 March.

2008 / ..., Credit-crunch got me but not my faith in the need to be a little improbable #43

Europe is a work-in-progress with no final definition (& indeed, as proposed hereabove with the first picture, it is after all easier to accept it as a phantasm). Like riding a moto, its exciting practice is against common sense (but one always needs to be a 'little improbable', don't we?). Nevertheless, before any major new achievements take place in particular regarding a possible frame to soften the economy, one can still try to portray it with a more or less emphasized scepticism: that is what 'Europe by designers' delivers.

Epiphany is hard Labour too #40

Algerian artist living in NYC: Adel Abdessemed, 'Salam Europe' (2006)- made with 16 km of barbed wire (i.e. the shortest distance between Europe and Africa. It appears to be nowadays an inspiring idea.

Please, Sin as if you were able to fully envisage me #76

(Italian illustrator & graphic designer with a name of a EU Directive regarding prevention of hazardous accidents: Alberto Seveso)

Please, Sin a bit #75

"I will lay my hands
on your nape
& appease your day
I will lay my hands on your softness
& cream the booty
I wil lay my hands on your gentleness to the world
& hear what it says
I will lay my hands
& try to appease what lies behind your securing urban smiles
I will lay my hands on your terror if you concede it
I will lay my hands on your breast as if it was burning luck
I will lay my hands as if for fucking once you were true & I could see it."
Jim Moronson, Hands Latitudes, French people are strange (1967).

2008 / ..., la crise m'a peut-être eu mais pas les bretons toujours capables de mettre minables les nantais #43

4.000 rennais pour un apéro géant: certes, mais les brestois ridiculisent le record chaque vendredi soir que Bacchus fait (et renvoient derechef les nantais aux prisons de Nantes). Evidemment les pouvoirs publics dénoncent l'ode à l'ivresse.

Please, Sin in confidence as I will hold each inch of my suggested promises #74

Please, Sin & do not be afraid of the laudative quills simmering in my Cyclops' eye #73

Please, Sin & release me from that elusive and rough temptation pecking on my back #72

Please, Sin & dive into the Eden of my Semblants #71

Please, Sin as if you believe in my disclosures #70

Avoiding disclosures might even be a fundamental right according to conservative catholic in Spain who are obviously not of the opinion that La Movida was of benefit for the country and who are decided to challenge the scholastic-noisy-exciting lessons on the puberty's revelations (see "Catholics sue Spain over sex education classes" on Euractiv) (Besides, 'want a piece of lasered milk?)

Epiphany is hard Labour too #39

French artist: Estelle Hanania.

Epiphany is hard Labour too #38

Counterpoint.
Gray Down.
Architect's Brother.
American artists in intense dialogue with Eros and with Thanatos: Robert & Shana Parkeharrison.

les psychotiques sont des animistes comme les autres #27

London-based artist: Sam Spencer, Bloom (2007) for 'Yellow since 1877', a celebration of champagne house 'Veuve Clicquot' and its yellow touch (pantone reference #137c)). Yellow is hard to censor; not conformists.

2008 / ..., Credit-crunch got me but not, at last, the needed solidarity for a civilized healthcare in Obama's USA #42

... in spite of well-informed worries on the secret identity of the US President. (lifted from Libé)

XXIst century's icons & myths mapping our daily roaming en el Laberinto de la soledad #20

(British Graphist: hereigo)
No one knows the future of the book's paper-version - especially if the 3D-TV arrives in 2010, a next step could be the 3D-fantasy of a reader with Cybel's shapes reading to your hairy ear the e-book's paragraph of your choice and sparring the old-fashioned effort of turning pages-, but eBook or not, irony is still valid: in the globalised nowhere of the Society of Spectacle, you may stay loyal to your taste for derision and create - just the sake for it- a fake subject of that Spectacle who takes care to collect all the serious symbols of it (e.g. Emile Ajar, The Yes-Men).

Obviously, irony is tastier if incidentally you may cock a snook to conventions of that Society: a French writer anxious of being actively involved into that Spectacle - for allegedly Humanist reasons- let himself be tricked by its conventions and based a philosophical demonstration of his last essay on the developments of a fake-author.

Taking time to check the reliability of his philosophical sources, turn pages, learn more about this fake-author Jean-Baptiste Botul creating fake-concepts ('The Sex Life of Emmanuel Kant', 'Nietzsche, or The Midday Demon') easy to subscribe to because they look familiar with their numerous symbols of seriousness and, then, learn it was pure derision: those were not needs for the Spectacle. But the NYT loved it.

No time yet for Serenity, even for a Brestoise #20

Collage Artist: Scrapatorium.

Please, Sin with me as if innocence was still an available option #68

Please, Sin & bow to the stars I am ready to fulfil you with #67

(Drawing from the Breton graphist & KouignAman-eater Camille Grolleau)

Epiphany is hard Labour too #37

(“The poet's business is not to save the soul of man but to make it worth saving.” James Elroy)

Former doctor, very probable reader of 'Le Petit Prince' & Russian artist anxious of lightness that René Magritte would have welcome: Leonid Tishkov, Journey of the private moon, 2009 (Paris). Click here for the G-key.

I put light in my paintings that does not exist in my country #37

Lifted from the more or less sober nights in New-York of The Arab Parrot loyal to the 'O tempora, o mores' saying.

XXIst century's icons & myths mapping our daily roaming en el Laberinto de la soledad #19

tiré du recueil L'Os à Moelle, Ed. Julliard 1963 / Livre de Poche 1978 et repris de l'excellent Muller-Fokker.

Please, Sin, make me flesh & bone, & concede deep inside you have always been a pure pleasure seeker #66

Isn't it? Pour faire l'amour avec son cerveau, son imagination pas trop falsifiée et une capote sur mesure, c'est ici.


"Consider visual images, for example. We live in an unending rainfall of images. The most powerful media transform the world into images and multiply it by means of the phantasmagoric play of mirrors. These are images stripped of the inner inevitability that ought to mark every image as form and as meaning, as a claim on the attention and as a source of possible meanings. Much of this cloud of visual images fades at once, like the dreams that leave no trace in the memory, but what does not fade is a feeling of alienation and disconfort.
But maybe this lack of substance is not to be found in images or in languages alone, but in the world itself."
Italo Calvino, Six memos for the next millenium (unachevied lectures for Harvard university, 1985).

Please, Sin as the opening of my gaze in your defenceless universe permits no other choice #65

(starring the French Brigitte baby doll Bardot in the early 60's)

No time yet for Serenity, even for a Brestoise #19

Please, Sin well but sin fast as I do not feel comfortable with those mum's ears #65

"To sin or not to sin, that is the whole damn' question" Mike Mohan, director of the self-distributed movie "One Too Many Mornings".

Please, Sin with intensity & take me to unformulated places that lie in me #64

Please, Sin & release me from public & private constrictions that unfold me more and more closely #63

(Photo: Jindrich Styrsky)

Please, Sin with me & try to pacify the malign anger that constantly shivers my tan #62

(Click on Artemis to become a prey)

2008 / ..., Credit-crunch got me but not my imagination of a water-skyscraper #41

In a Madoff-mood because you are fed up with the top of your skyscraper and its contact with the CO2-cumulus? Take a rest and chill out in the ocean's depth as you are now proposed to be in contact with the polluted abyss.

A recent skyscraper concept competition - "EVolo Competition"- yielded this concept of Mr Sarly Adre Bin Sarkum’s “water-scraper” for a self-sufficent floating city. Click here to learn more on your new balcony.

XXIst century's icons & myths mapping our daily roaming en el Laberinto de la soledad #18

Anonymous (?) tribute to 'pop' Roy Lichtenstein.
("I don't know what psychotherapy does. I have been seeing the same person for 26 years now." Jim Harrison)

2008 / ..., Credit-crunch got me but not the MEPs' willingness to reform Financial Services #40

US Artist: Hanna von Goeler
British Artist: Justine Smith

An overwhelming majority of MEPs on 10 March pushed the EU executive to weigh up the costs and benefits of a possible tax on financial trading to compensate taxpayers for bank bailouts and plug public deficits. American economist Jeffrey Sachs also launched a campaign for a broad-based tax on banks and encouraged the EU to go it alone if the US moves too slowly. Clich here for details.

Please, Sin as if innocence was a recent surrender #61

(Amsterdam-based artist and designer: Handiedan)

XXIst century's icons & myths mapping our daily roaming en el Laberinto de la soledad #17

Having a Love affair is a French atavism we are proud about and that protocol does not erode.
Discretion is optional behaviour.
But nasty Albion's newspapers love to unveil the option and it is the Daily Telegraph that makes more than clear today that our French President's couple is in pink trouble (see on the attached cover the article 'Sarkozy affair rumours sweep France').
Political marketing finds unexpected limits in atavism and the French Berlusconi, autodesignated as 'king of willingness', is unable to keep his wife Mrs Bruni at home.
The very recent icon introduced in France with Mr Sarkozy's election of the perfect and successful couple embodying the successful political ideas of the French President is from now obsolete.
Replacement of the icon will come very soon: nowadays in France, sucessful political ideas cannot remain without female incarnations.
Mariane has gone, Cybele is back.
Fine. But androcracy may have to adapt.
Updating: History will tell whether it was a clumsy hoax or just a bothering truth, but the French newspapers which originally published the news presented its excuses and claimed ultimately the reported disappointments in love of the official Couple were not true.

New updating: Former French cabinet star, Rachida Dati, has had her government security team withdrawn after being blamed for spreading rumours about the state of Nicolas Sarkozy’s marriage. Too bad for my line on atavism but, praise the Lord, the icon is finally safe.