Yakka Fob Mog!

The only obsession everyone wants: ‘love.’ People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You’re whole, and then you’re cracked open.

Philip Roth, The Dying Animal (via wordsnquotes)

#libro #Carl Sagan

Caracol-venado ;)

snailstag  ‘Hours of Joanna the Mad’, Bruges 1486-1506.

BL, Add 18852, fol. 305v

Los perros de Colima

Howling Dog Effigy, Jalisco, 300 BC-AD 200. 

Why were dogs so significant to the Mexica?

Dogs were associated with the god of death, Xolotl, among the Mexicas of the highlands of Mexico. Both a dog and Xolotl were thought to lead the soul to the underworld. The skinny body and white hue of the shown dog represented above may have underworld connotations, connecting it to this belief. Xolotl was also associated by the Mexica with the planet Venus as the evening star, and was portrayed with a canine head.

The dog’s special relationship with humans is highlighted by a number of Colima dog effigies wearing humanoid masks. This curious effigy type has been interpreted as a shamanic transformation image or as a reference to the modern Huichol myth of the origin of the first wife, who was transformed from a dog into a human. However, recent scholarship suggests a new explanation of these sculptures as the depiction of the animal’s tonalli, its inner essence, which is made manifest by being given human form via the mask.

The use of the human face to make reference to an object’s or animal’s inner spirit is found in the artworks of many ancient cultures of the Americas, from the Inuit of Alaska and northern Canada to peoples in Argentina and Chile. (Walters)

On the subject of the significance of dogs, and dog effigies wearing humanoid masks, check out this post from a while back of ‘examples of dogs represented in ancient Mexican art.’ The final artefact here is from Colima, and shows a dog wearing a human mask.

Courtesy of & currently located at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, USA, via their online collections, 2009.20.148.

De lo que no se puede hablar es mejor callar.

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (1889-1951)…filosofo

Surreal Wisteria Flower Tunnel in Japan

The spectacular views of the wisteria flowers at Kawachi Fuji Gardens, in Kitakyushu, Japan is another shining example of Japanese perception of beauty and architecture. The private garden hosts around 150 wisteria flowering plants of 20 different species. The crown jewel of the garden, ...

»wittgenstein-generator« by jochen höller

exhibited at the international group-exhibition: »(in)constancy of space« 5. – 22. july 2018 meštrović pavilion (hdlu), zagreb

more information

Paisajes de El Greco

View of Toledo by El Greco.

El Greco cultivated other genres more rarely…. His two landscapes, View of Toledo (c. 1610; New York, Met.) and View and Plan of Toledo (Toledo, Casa & Mus. El Greco), are also late works of c. 1610. In these El Greco is preoccupied with the means of representing what is perceived as well as an emblematic sense of the urban landscape and a zenithal projection of the city, a combination that was advanced in the representation of urban topography. It is possible that in Toledo and Madrid these works influenced interest in still-life and in landscape, genres that had, almost exclusively, been orientated towards a naturalistic type of formal structure.

From 'Greco, El [Theotokopoulos, Domenikos [Dominico; Dominikos; Menegos]]' in Grove Art Online on Oxford Art Online.

We’re examining inspiring landscapes this July on the Oxford Academic Tumblr. 

Image credit: View of Toledo. El Greco. c.1599. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Public domain via WikiArt.

A man in a town married twenty women. There have been no divorces or annulments, and everyone in question is still alive and well. The man is not a bigamist, and he has broken no laws. How is this possible? Where Do Eureka Moments Come From? : The New Yorker