Quote vs. Quote
Posted by ben on 14 Dec 2007 at 02:51 am | Tagged as: books, essays, vs., wordy
“Prosaically, lunk-literal-mindedly, I’ve wondered to what extent Pollock was being subliminally influenced by the color images of telescopic deep space suddenly proliferating in all the popularizing magazines and books and movies of the period. And, too, I’ve wondered about the human scale — the place of the human in the unfolding drama. Standing before such paintings, I can get to feeling positively infinitesimal (less than minuscule, a merest speck, utterly, in Greenberg’s phrase, “beside the point”); or, alternatively, as my eyes sweep the canvas and my mind identifies, momentarily, with the glory of the painting’s making, I can get to feeling almost godlike. One is reminded of the various self-dramatizing films of Pollock around the time he was making those paintings — a Colossus striding purposefully from side to side, pausing, stabbing, hurling the universe itself into existence.” — Lawrence Weschler,
“Henceforth, when man is for once overcome by the horror of alienation and the world fills him with anxiety, he looks up (right or left, as the case may be) and sees a picture. Then he sees that the I is contained in the world, and that there really is no I, and thus the world cannot harm the I, and he calms down; or he sees that the world is contained in the I and that there really is no world, and thus the world cannot harm the I, and he calms down. And when man is overcome again by the horror of alienation and the I fills him with anxiety, he looks up and sees a picture; and whichever he sees, it does not matter, either the empty I is stuffed full of world or it is submerged in the flood of the world, and he calms down.
“But the moment will come, and it is near, when man, overcome by horror, looks up and in a flash sees both pictures at once. And he is seized by a deeper horror.” — Martin Buber,
Sparked a great discussion at home. And word has it that it will be read and discussed in a certain elementary class next week! Nice choice–very provocative.
TASCHEN News December 18, 2007
Crumb’s personal selection of his most secret fantasies, freshly colored just for TASCHEN
They have little to do with the standard procreative urge, Mr. Crumb admits. He has also said he finds nothing more boring than someone else’s sexual obsessions, and yet through his long career the world’s most famous underground cartoonist has felt compelled to include his own sex fantasies in his art. He explains it as a compulsive catharsis, while fans call R. Crumb’s erotic fantasies the Master at his best.
Now Crumb has selected his most intimately revealing comic strips and single page drawings to create a 258 page encyclopedic trip through his sexual psyche. All images were created between 1980 and 2006, and all strips are hand-colored for a lush vibrancy never seen in his comic books. In total the book features 14 complete stories, including My Troubles With Women, If I Were a King, A Bitchin’ Bod, and How To Have Fun With a Strong Girl, as well as 60 single page drawings.
The artist admits it’s a little scary to see his most fevered obsessions collected end to end like this, but fans will find Robert Crumb’s Sex Obsessions a fascinating peek inside an often tortured, always brilliantly talented mind, as well as an unparalleled collector’s item.
This signed limited edition of 1,000 copies is a work of art in itself, with every part of the book – front and back covers, spine, and introductory pages – created for this project by Robert Crumb. Each book also comes with an art print selected by Mr. Crumb.
Robert Crumb’s Sex Obsessions
Edited by Dian Hanson
Hardcover + Box, 8 x 10.8 inches, 258 pages
ISBN 978-3-8228-2540-2 (English edition), $ 500.00
Order NOW and save $ 200