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Uncanny apparition -- all it wears, grotesquely canted on that grinning skull, is a garland woven out of worms! No spurs, no whip, and still this ghostly cavalier urges his apocalyptic nag onward till her flaring nostrils bleed, horse and horseman mad in pursuit of Space, trampling Infinity with reckless hooves! The rider brandishes a flaming sword above the nameless hordes he gallops down, and like a prince inspecting his domain quarters that unending graveyard where a bleak white sun exposes, mile on mile, history’s hecatombs, ancient and modern both. -- Charles Baudelaire, “A Fantastic Engraving,” 1861, inspired by viewing an etching (1784) by John Haynes (reprod. here), after a drawing (1775) by John Hamilton Mortimer. English trans. of Richard Howard. The original French below: Une gravure fantastique Ce spectre singulier n'a pour toute toilette, Grotesquement campé sur son front de squelette, Qu'un diadème affreux sentant le carnaval. Sans éperons, sans fouet, il essouffle un cheval, Fantôme comme lui, rosse apocalyptique, Qui bave des naseaux comme un épileptique. Au travers de l'espace ils s'enfoncent tous deux, Et foulent l'infini d'un sabot hasardeux. Le cavalier promène un sabre qui flamboie Sur les foules sans nom que sa monture broie, Et parcourt, comme un prince inspectant sa maison, Le cimetière immense et froid, sans horizon, Où gisent, aux lueurs d'un soleil blanc et terne, Les peuples de l'histoire ancienne et moderne.

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“Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war.”  - Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) [at right: El Lissitzky; preliminary drawing for a project commemorating Rosa Luxemburg; 1919-20; gouache, ink, and pencil on paper]

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Young, white, male domestic vigilantes-cum-terrorists conspiring to kidnap (”oh what the hell, let’s just kill them”) national leaders is NOTHING NEW in this country. These are the co-conspirators in the plot to assassinate President Lincoln, the VP, and the Secretary of State in retaliation against the final collapse of the Confederacy at the end of the Civil War. Then, as now, the terrorism was motivated by violent rejection of legislated racial equity. Do not be seduced because a few of them are attractive, and don’t fool yourself into believing that this country was ever terribly free of barbarism. These are the prototypical “proud boys,” the current-day equivalents who have drug us back to this level of barbarity. *Side note: we used to have a President who regularly attended the theatre.

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I had heard her name, but I’m ashamed to admit I did not know anything about Black investigative journalist and civil rights pioneer Ida B. Wells until I recently happened to hear some about her life on the radio. In 1892, she published her research on lynching. A white mob consequently ransacked and destroyed her offices at the Beale Street Baptist Church while she was away to NYC. Above, my recent photos of the historically important Beale Street Baptist Church (est. 1869 by formerly enslaved persons, reputedly the first brick church built for use by African-Americans), and the 6-story mural featuring Ida B. Wells (and the church) downtown at S. Main and Dr. M.L. King, Jr. Ave., installed 2016 by artist Michael Roy a/k/a Birdcap, in collaboration with Derrick Dent, and commissioned by the Urban Art Commission, Memphis.

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All Hallow’s Eve, by Dorothea Tanning (also the author of these images) Be perfect, make it otherwise. Yesterday is torn in shreds. Lightning's thousand sulfur eyes Rip apart the breathing beds. Hear bones crack and pulverize. Doom creeps in on rubber treads. Countless overwrought housewives, Minds unraveling like threads, Try lipstick shades to tranquilize Fears of age and general dreads. Sit tight, be perfect, swat the spies, Don't take faucets for fountainheads. Drink tasty antidotes. Otherwise You and the werewolf: newlyweds.

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Cornelis Dusart

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George Condo, “Distanced Figures,” 2020. “Made during the last three weeks, in the artist’s home studio in New York state, these portrait drawings are evocative of the experience of isolation during this unsettling period of social distance. Depicted in crayon, pencil and ink, overlapping figures are layered, combining multiple viewpoints to reflect different emotions occurring simultaneously; fear, paranoia, claustrophobia, panic and distress are portrayed in this particular group of drawings but handled with such beauty, elegance and resolve as to provide an antidote.” [Hauser & Wirth] [Ed. note: I have added one painting to this group of drawings.]

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Hank Willis Thomas,” A Suspension of Hostilities,” 2019, plus a .gif of the cultural reference point, for those who may not know: a redneckily heroic,  indestructible muscle car named the “General Lee,” which was airborne at some point in every episode of “The Dukes of Hazzard,” a weekly “action-comedy” series on CBS from 1979 to 1985. It took the Charleston church massacre of 2015 for Warner Bros. to stop producing show-related merchandise with the Confederate flag on it, and the death of George Floyd for Amazon to finally remove the series from its video streaming services earlier this year. Mr. Thomas’ work presents a fitting, abruptly destructive end to the seemingly eternal ascension of the General Lee, and to the cultural associations attached thereto.

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Sebastiano Ricci

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This is a good exercise to demonstrate (actively) looking, as opposed to just (passively) seeing.

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Aristaeus, ancient Greek god of many agricultural and horticultural practices, including bee-keeping, by an unknown (to me) engraver (16th c.? German? Italian?). (Please let me know if you know who the engraver is!) It goes without saying that Nude Beekeeping -- except for cape, headband, and decorous boots -- is badass!