paalen
if
and when you wake up in
the
burning house
when
and where the highway ends
fifteen
miles
then
five
then
the desert of yr imagination
the
bones of yr children
beautiful
flowers growing where
you’ve
buried them
and
an abundance of weeds
and
a field of splintered crosses
give
them the names of soldiers
give
them the names of saints
does
the prayer caught in yr throat
taste
like ashes?
remember
that i was there
when
you bought the gun
remember
that even christ will
eventually
be forgotten
just
leave his picture on the
wall
and run
Les cosmogones (The Cosmogonies)-- Wolfgang Paalen
Wolfgang Paalen was one of the 1st Surrealist painters who lived mainly in Mexico after 1939, where he developed his art and ideas about art, telling Gordon Onslow-Ford that "we, and not the people in New york, have found the opening to the new world." At about the time he painted "Les cosmogones" (cosmogonies are theories about the origin of the universe) in his art journal "DYN" (derived from the Greek phrase meaning "that which is possible") he wrote, "Paintings no longer represent; it is no longer the task of art to answer naive questions. Today it has become the role of the painting to look at the spectator and ask him: what do you represent?" His 300 or so paintings (plus a few sculptures and objects) were enormously influential at the time of their creation. Annette Leddy compared him to Vincent Van Gogh on acid, saying his art was "like a spinning star from "Starry Night" that had spun out of control and multiplied and expanded to cover a whole canvas."
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