The Faces of Alexei Korzukhin

Alexei Korzukhin, Russian realist painter, 1835–1894. Wikipedia styles his portraits as "generally accepted as masterpieces of Russian portrait painting." Some highlights from a timeline on rusartnet:

• Born to a family of gold panners at Uktussky Zavod near Ekaterinburg (1835).
• One of the rebellious fourteen students who refused to paint the set topic in the competition for a major gold medal and resigned from the Imperial Academy of Arts with the title of second-class artist (1863).

[It isn't clear what the "set topic" was, but it seems the group was protesting the strict guidelines and divisions between high and low art that the Imperial Academy endorsed. They wanted to make art more accessible to the masses, and after leaving the Imperial Academy of Arts founded a collective called the Peredvizhniki, or The Wanderers, which later became the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions. Evidently Korzukhin was a member of the society but did not participate in the exhibitions. More here, and, of course, here.]

• Suffered from nervous shock and poor health after witnessing the assassination of Tsar Alexander II on the Ekaterinburg Canal in St Petersburg (1881).

Master of portraiture thought Korzukhin may be, the extent of his mastery is more clearly evident in his portrayal of faces in action. Examples below, with details. Click on the full paintings for large versions.

Separation, 1872

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Before Confession, 1877

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Peasant Girls in a Forest, 1878

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In a Monastic Hotel, 1882

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The Sunday, 1884

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There Goes Petrushka, 1888

Fragments II: Symbol

Anima Sola

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blood flight by Jenny Hval

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[The Parnassians] still treat their subjects as the old philosophers and orators did: that is, present things directly, whereas I think that they should be presented allusively. Poetry lies in the contemplation of tings, in the image emanating from the reveries which things arouse in us. They take something in its entirety and simply exhibit it; in so doing, they fall short of mystery; they fail to give our minds that exquisite joy which consists in believing that we are creating something. To name an object is largely to destroy poetic enjoyment, which comes from gradual divination. The ideal is to suggest the object. It is the perfect use of this mystery which constitutes symbol. An object must be gradually evoked in order to show a state of soul; or else, choose an object and from it elicit a state of soul by means of a series of decodings.

Attributed to Stéphane Mallarmé.

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Iamblichus:

Granting, then, that ignorance and deception are faulty and impious, it does not follow that the offerings made to the gods and divine works are invalid, for it is not pure thought that unites theurgists to the gods. Indeed, what then would hinder those who are theoretical philosophers from enjoying a theurgic union with the gods? But the situation is not so: it is the accomplishment of acts not to be divulged and beyond all conception, and the power of unutterable symbols, understood solely by the gods that establishes theurgic union. For this reason, we do not bring about these things by thinking alone. If we did, their efficacy would be intellectual, and dependent on us. But neither assumption is true. For even when we are not engaged in thinking, the symbols themselves, by themselves, perform their appropriate work, and the ineffable power of the gods, to whom these symbols relate, itself recognizes the proper images of itself, not through being aroused by our thought.

New Mario Santiago Papasquiaro translations

I have good news for fans of Mario Santiago Papasquiaro, Infrarealism, Roberto Bolaño, Mexican poetry, DIY publishing, book collecting, good poetry, and everything else under the sun:

La Ratona Cartonera, a small Mexican publishing group, has been working on several translations of poetry by Mario Santiago Papasquiaro. (See my translation of an interview with MSP here.) Their translation of the 538-line poem Advice from a disciple of Marx to a fan of Heidegger is available for $15, which includes shipping and a one-of-a-kind homemade cover:



The proceeds from these will help fund La Ratona's next MSP translation. If you want one, send me an e-mail () or comment here with your e-mail address. Then I will send you my friend Laura Darling's e-mail address, which you can use to contact her and pay for the book via PayPal.

Laura was kind enough to give me permission to post an excerpt from the translation:

Mario Santiago Papasquiaro

Advice from a disciple of Marx to a fan of Heidegger





                                           

To Roberto Bolano & Kyra Galvan comrades & poets

                                   for Claudia Kerik & my good fortune  at having known her

"...it's as well at times

To be reminded that nothing is lovely,

Not even in poetry, which is not the case."

W.H. Auden

The world comes to you in fragments / in splinters:

in a melancholy face you glimpse a brushstroke by Dürer

in someone happy the grimace of an amateur clown

in a tree: the tremble of birds sucking on its nape

in a flaming summer you catch pieces of the universe licking their faces

the moment in which an indescribable girl

                   tears her Oaxacan camisole

exactly next to the half-moon sweat of her armpits

& beyond the peel is the pulp / & like a strange gift of the eye

                                                                              the eyelash

Maybe not even carbon dating will be able to reconstruct

   the true facts

These are not the times in which a naturalist painter

ruminates on lunchtime excesses

between Swedish gymnastic movements

& without losing sight of the pinkish-blue hues of flowers he hadn't

    guessed at not even in his sweetest nightmares



We are actors of infinite acts

      & not precisely under the blue tongue

               of cinematographic lights

for instance today / you see how Antonioni passes by

                  with his customary camera

observed by those who prefer to bury their heads in the grass

to get drunk on smog or whatever / so they don't add

                                                               to the scandals

that already make public roads impassable

by those who've been born to be kissed at length by the sun

& its daily ambassadors

by those who speak of fabulous coitus /of females unbelievable

                                      in this geological age

of vibrations that would've made you a tenacious propagandist of Zen

                                                                                              Buddhism

by those who have once been saved

from the kind of accidents that the crime rags call substantial

& who by the way are not--for now--counted among the flowers of the

    Absurd

Sterility, mental and physical

I apologize to the readers of altarpiece for its state of disrepair. I have begun a Ph.D. program in philosophy, so I spend most of my time thinking about things that are not suitable for presentation here. I'll try to keep posting as I can, but really altarpiece-style posts will probably become more rare (if that's possible).

Yesterday I went to Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum. Here is the only image I've been able to find online of my favorite piece there:

Jean-Michel Basquiat. Andy Warhol, 1984.

In reality it's about 8 feet tall. Each limb section has a different grain, a different texture. The color is reminiscent of x-ray images.

I was captivated by this, and stood looking at it for an embarrassingly long time, from different parts of the room. Basquiat's left arm in two positions gives the impression of a captured movement, is also reminiscent of da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. The pose is Michaelangelo's David.


The x-ray quality combined with the pasted together panels gives the impression of resurrection.

I asked myself whether I would have been so interested in the portrait if it hadn't been Basquiat. The head is the most awkwardly attached limb. The contrast is starker, the seam is more exact and thus more distracting. It's only the head the objects to its positioning. The tension between the head and the body reminds me of the tension between life and self. But it doesn't detract from the beauty of the human body, which doesn't seem to be the least bit disturbed by being cut up and put back together.

Interim diversion (Spinoza)

Hogs is hogs

Le Retour du Berger, Charles Jacque (1879-1959)

A scene of uncommon hilarity from Cormac McCarthy in Outer Dark:

On a good spring day he paused to rest at the side of the road. He had been walking for a long time and he had been hearing them for a long time before he knew what the sound was, a faint murmurous droning portending multitudes, locusts, the advent of primitive armies. He rose and went on until he reached the gap in the ridge and before long he could see the first of them coming along the road below him and then suddenly the entire valley was filled with hogs, a weltering sea of them that came smoking over the dusty plain and flowed undiminished into the narrows of the cut, fanning on the slopes in ragged shoals like the harried outer guard of schooled fish and here and there upright and cursing among them and laboring with poles the drovers, gaunt and fever-eyed with incredible rag costumes and wild hair.
     Holme left the road and clambered up the rocky slope to give them leeway. The first of the drovers was beating his way obliquely across the herd toward him, the hogs flaring and squealing and closing behind him again like syrup. When he gained the open ground he came along easily, smiling up to where Holme sat on a rock with his feet dangling and looking down with no little wonder at this spectacle.
     Howdy neighbor, called out the drover. Sweet day, ain't she?
     It is, he said. Whereabouts are ye headed with them hogs if you don't care for me astin?
     Crost the mountain to Charlestown.
     Holme shook his head reverently. That there is the damndest sight of hogs ever I seen, he said. How many ye got?
     The drover had come about the base of the rock and was now standing looking down with Holme at the passing hogs. God hisself don't know, he said solemnly.
     Well it's a bunch.
     They Lord, said the drover, they just now commencin to come in sight. He passed his stave from the crook of one arm to the other and cocked one foot on the ledge of rock, his sparse whiskers fluttering in the mountain wind, leaning forward and watching the howling polychrome tide of hogs that glutted the valley from wall to wall as might any chance traveler a thing of interest.
     They's more than one mulefoot in that lot, he said.
     What?
     Mulefoot. I calculate they's several hunnerd head of them alone and they ain't no common hog to come upon.
     What's a mulefoot? Holme said.
     The drover squinted professionally. Mountain hog from north of here. You ain't never seen one?
     No.
     Got a foot like a mule.
     You mean they ain't got a split hoof?
     Nary split to it.
     I ain't never seen no such hog as that, Holme said.
     I ain't surprised, the drover said. But ye can see one here if you've a mind to.
     I'd admire to, Holme said.
     The drover shifted his stave again. Seems like that don't agree with the bible, what would you say?
     About what?
     About them hogs. Bein unclean on account of they got a split foot.
     I ain't never heard that, Holme said.
     I heard it preached in a sermon one time. Feller knowed right smart about the subject. Said the devil had a foot like a hog's. He laid claim it was in the bible so I reckon it's so.
     I reckon.
     He said a jew wouldn't eat hogmeat on account of it.
     What's a jew?
     That's one of them old-timey people from in the bible. But that still don't say nothin about a mulefoot hog does it? What about him?
     I don't know, Holme said. What about him?
     Well is he a hog or ain't he? Accordin to the bible.
     I'd say a hog was a hog if he didn't have nary feet a-tall.
     I might do it myself, the drover said, because if he was to have feet you'd look for em to be hog's feet. Like if ye had a hog didn't have no head you'd know it for a hog anyways. But if ye seen one walkin around with a mule's head on him ye might be puzzled.
     That's true, Holme allowed.
     Yessir. Makes ye wonder some about the bible and about hogs too, don't it?
     Yes, Holme said.
     I've studied it a good deal and I cain't come to no conclusions about it one way or the other.
     No.
     The drover stroked his whiskers and nodded his head. Hogs is a mystery by theyselves, he said. What can a feller know about one? Not a whole lot. I've run with hogs since I was just a shirttail and I ain't never come to no real understandin of em. and I don't doubt but what other folks has had the same experience. A hog is a hog. Pure and simple. And that's about all ye can say about him. And smart, don't think they ain't. Smart as the devil. And don't be fooled by one that ain't got nary clove foot cause he's devilish too.
     I guess hogs is hogs, Holme said.
     The drover spat and nodded. That's what I've always maintained, he said.

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“The last remaining herd of Mulefoot Hogs in the USA has been conserved by an individual farmer.” [source]

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“Hog Drovers” as sung by Ollie Gilbert, Mountain View, Arkansas on October 28, 1969. [source] [see also]

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Le Porcher, Charles Joshua Chaplin (1825-1891)