🖼️ Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Festessen bei Neptun, ca. 1954.

"You know ‘Moby-Dick’? the white whale, the lapping waves, the monster appearing, disappearing, making a huge splash every time it hides – well, does that story of a hunt ending in drama ring a bell? […] Those who say they embarked on the Pequod and remained there valiantly to its sinking, [1/4]

🖼️ Fernand Léger, La femme à la rose, 1930.

« […] un court poème qui cherchait à m'atteindre et qui a tait scandale. On se passait la publication clandestine, de main en main. J'admire ce poème, cher monsieur. Et, l'avouerai-je, je le connais par cœur. On a publié contre nous des poèmes interminables. [1/3]

🖼️ Günter Grass, Leseratte I, 1985.

“The following maxim of Goethe’s, this fundamental saying, should be the starting point for any artistic training: ‘The subject matter is clear to everyone, the content is evident only to those who have something to contribute and the form remains a mystery to most.’ [+]

📷 Oscar Murillo, surge (social cataracts), 2025.

“[...] given that he is having increasing difficulty understanding who he is, he decides to become several people whose destinies he lives in parallel, […] which only confirms that this illness connected with the awareness of the self, [+]

📷 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Clown, ca. 1886-87.

ANGELA: I get along better with myself when I’m unhappy: a coming together takes place. When I’m happy, I feel like somebody else. Albeit another version of the same. Someone strangely joyful, whistling, slightly unhappy is more peaceful. Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life. [Tr. Johnny Lorenz]

🖼️ Paul Delvaux, La rue, 1982.

“I did as when I could not sleep. I wandered in my mind, slowly, noting every detail of the labyrinth, its paths as familiar as those of my garden and yet ever new, as empty as the heart could wish or alive with strange encounters.” Samuel Beckett, Molloy, 1955.

📷 Maurice de Viaminck, The Forest, 1914-1918.

„Wie deine grüngoldenen Augen funkeln, Wald, du moosiger Träumer, Wie so versonnen deine Gedanken dunkeln, Saftstrotzender Tagesversäumer, Einsiedel, schwer von Leben! [1/3]

🖼️ Lovis Corinth, Porträt des Dichters Peter Hille, 1902.

"[...] reach me not and all my life’s become One flame, that reaches not beyond My heart’s own hearth, Or hides among the ashes there for thee. “Thee“? Oh, “Thee” is who cometh first Out of mine own soul-kin, For I am homesick after mine own kind And ordinary people touch me not. [+]

📷 Francisco de Goya, Against the Common Good, plate no. 71 from The Disasters of War, 1815/20.

“Hitler’s Reich will, for the time being, continue to be regarded as an operational accident of history. Finally, however, it will be purely and simply history, no better and no worse than dramatic historical epochs just happen to be, bloodstained perhaps, but after all [1/4]

🖼️ George Grosz, Cain or Hitler in Hell, 1944.

“For as long as the German nation, including its young and youngest age groups, does not decide to live entirely without history—and there is no sign that the world’s most history-conscious national community suddenly would assume such a position—then it must continue [1/4]

🖼️ Bernhard Heisig, Unterm Hakenkreuz, 1973.

“The innocence of hands, ever-renewed. A memory comes back to him: the touch of a hand, intimate in the dark. But whose hand? Hands emerging like animals, without shame, without memory, into the light of day.” J. M. Coetzee, The Master of Petersburg, 1994.

📷 Lovis Corinth, Die Lesende, 1911.

“[...] la punta del pie de una silueta era pescado, y los dedos de la mano eran melena de león, que circunscribía un rostro de hombre, con iris ponientes en las cejas y en el labio dientes levantes, y el occipucio de la otra silueta era pájaro, y era un dardo su dedo cordial.” Aliocha Coll, Atila.

🖼️ Hans Thiemann, Requisiten-Scherzo, 1931.

10 actresses to get to know me: Paula Beer Sandrine Bonnaire Bette Davis Julie Delpy Setsuko Hara Isabelle Huppert Jeanne Moreau Hanna Schygulla Léa Seydoux Emma Stone

📷 Raoul Dufy, The White Sail, 1906.

“[...] at bottom—so he told me—he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they were; and more than that, still better than they were. [+]

🖼️ Gilbert & George, DEATH [from Death Hope Life Fear], 1984. [422 x 250 cm.]

“From the bottom of my heart I desired to surrender myself to the sleep of oblivion. If only oblivion were attainable, if it could last forever, if my eyes as they closed could gently transcend sleep and dissolve into non-being [1/3]

“El hombre olvida que es un muerto que conversa con muertos.” Jorge Luis Borges, “There are more things”, El libro de arena, 1975. 🖼️ Simone Sassen, Cimetière de Plainpalais, Genf 2003.

📷 Pablo Picasso, Still Life, Bottle (Vie de Marc), 1911. [Drypoint on paper]

“No great book is explicable [...] for reduction is precisely what a work of art opposes. Easy answers, convenient summaries, quiz questions, annotations, arrows, highlight lines, lists of its references, [1/3]

📷 Konrad von Kardorff, Königin-Augusta-Straße am Calandrelli-Platz in Berlin, 1911.

POZZO: Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It’s abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day like any other day, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we’ll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, [+]

« La jouissance dépasse les possibilités qu'avait entrevues le désir » 🖼️ Julião Sarmento, Les Objets du Désir?, 1977.

“[...] as in the hideous period preceding the establishment of the Second Soviet Union, humanity would regress to its earlier stage as cavemen. Its ideologists would rally around those who had once advocated inequality and injustice. [+]

🖼️ A. R. Penck, „Mißtrauen in die Staalichen Organe.“ (Heiner Müller, Wolokolamsker Chaussee)

„Einer Macht ohne Autorität bleibt die Arroganz, die Verkündigung etwa: Sozialismus (den es noch gar nicht gibt) gehöre der Steinzeit an - um nicht einzugestehen, daß sie zum Zustand der Welt, der für alle, Inbegriffen die Eigentümer, bedrohlich ist, [+]

📷 Salvador Dalí, The Fossil Automobile of Cape Creus, 1936. [Oil on wood]

„Ohne Utopie wären wir Lebewesen ohne Transzendenz.“ Max Frisch, „Wir hoffen“ [Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 1976]

📷 Alfred Kubin, Meereswunder, 1905/1906. [Gouache auf Büttenpapier]

“I don’t like animals. It’s a strange thing, I don’t like men and I don’t like animals. As for God, he is beginning to disgust me.” (Moran) Samuel Beckett, Molloy, 1955.

"Nothing exists in itself." Herman Melville, Moby Dick or The Whale, 1851. 📺 The whale paperweight (and Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet, a.k.a. "The Gentleman Pirate") in Our Flag Means Death S1.E1 (Pilot) (Taika Waititi, 2023).

Favourite films and series watched in May [1/2]: 1966 John Frankenheimer, Seconds 1984 Miloš Forman, Amadeus 2010 Quentin Dupieux, Rubber 2013 Quentin Dupieux, Wrong Cops 2018 Peter Strickland, In Fabric 2019 Quentin Dupieux, Deerskin

📷 Jeanne Mammen, Transvestitenlokal, ca. 1931. [Watercolor and pencil on paper]

“La felicidad arde y se transforma de manera sorprendentemente rápida en su opuesto o, tal vez, no se trate sino de una mezcla inestable de felicidad-infelicidad, pero la felicidad, el estado luminoso del alma, es la verdadera sustancia con la que está formada la realidad. [+]

📷 Brancusi, The Kiss, 1923-25. [Limestone on limestone and poplar base]

« Toutes les impossibilités n’en sont qu’une : celle d’aimer, celle de sortir de sa propre tristesse. » Cioran, Cahiers 1957-1972.

📷 Otto Dix, Bildnis der Tänzerin Anita Berber, 1925. [Öl und Tempera auf Sperrholz]