March 2011

people are generally contradictory even by their own standards & it is impossible to be anything but contradictory by society’s standards. paul cezanne was (by report) an ignorant old man. but also a genius.

the broken line he took from goya, the colours he took from daumier, the mass and distortion he took from michaelangelo…

paint marks become the means to eradicate nonsense – to process information & organise the bare essence of life.

i have seen numerous critiquess dismissing his drawings – that he (like william blake & george braque – who tend to be similarly treated) cannot draw. this is a fundamental misunderstanding of drawing.

a drawing can never be a simulacrum of reality.

it can only ever be a study of reality.

[just as it can never be any more than pencil on paper (or whatever medium – sticks, clay concrete, moss, house paint, fireworks, bunting, whatever).]

fashion

12/03/201112/03/2011 ben varneyLeave a comment

When I wish to find out how wise , or stupid, or how good, or how wicked is anyone, or what are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match with the expression.

Dupin, quoting a schoolboy, Edgar Allen Poe from ‘The Purloined Letter’.

yet

06/03/201113/03/2011 ben varneyLeave a comment

There is so little I know. It is as though I were walking down a long corridor that once was mirrored, and fragments of mirror still hang there, dark and shadowy, reflecting a dark image of me… and yet not me… someone else, in other clothes, of another time, doing things I have never done… but still me… And I can’t stop to ask why, I must keep on walking. At the end of the corridor there is nothing but darkness…

Madelaine Ester, Vertigo, script written by Samuel A. Taylor & Alec Coppel based on the novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. 1958.

hm.