Wednesday, January 17, 2018

John Sweet writes



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
Wolfgang Paalen, Les cosmogones, 1944
Les cosmogones (The Cosmogonies)-- Wolfgang Paalen

1 comment:

  1. 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in his art journal "DYN" (derived from the Greek phrase meaning "that which is possible") he wrote, "Paintings no longer represent; it is no longer the task of art to answer naive questions.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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