Simple Expression of the Complex Thought
Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman September 4, 2024
In his column in The New York Times, the art critic Edgar Allen Jewell wrote a review of a new show hosted by the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors. He expressed his befuddlement at this distinctly modern art, devoid of figuration or tangible form, singling out the work of Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb. Yet, in an unusual act of humble awareness, he offered up the inches of his column to these same artists if they cared offer a response...
Barnett Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimis. 1950-51.
Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman, September 4th, 2024
In his column in The New York Times, the art critic Edgar Allen Jewell wrote a review of a new show hosted by the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors. He expressed his befuddlement at this distinctly modern art, devoid of figuration or tangible form, singling out the work of Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb. Yet, in an unusual act of humble awareness, he offered up the inches of his column to these same artists if they cared offer a response. It was Barnett Newman, who had shown in the same exhibition but not been spotlighted by Jewell, who Rothko and Gottlieb came to with this offer, and Newman penned the following work that the two others signed their name to in agreement. The following essay served as a sort of defacto manifesto for this new form of American painting they were creating – a neo-expressionist style interested in myths, symbols, and emotions above all else. It first appeared in Jewell’s column in June of 1943.
To the artist the workings of the critical mind is one of life's mysteries. That is why, we suppose, the artist's complaint that he is misunderstood, especially by the critic, has become a noisy commonplace. It is therefore an event when the worm turns and the critic quietly, yet publicly, confesses his 'befuddlement,' that he is 'nonplused' before our pictures at the federation show. We salute this honest, we might say cordial, reaction toward our 'obscure' paintings, for in other critical quarters we seem to have created a bedlam of hysteria. And we appreciate the gracious opportunity that is being offered us to present our views.
We do not intend to defend our pictures. They make their own defense. We consider them clear statements. Your failure to dismiss or disparage them is prima facie evidence that they carry some communicative power. We refuse to defend them not because we cannot. It is an easy matter to explain to the befuddled that The Rape of Persephone is a poetic expression of the essence of the myth; the presentation of the concept of seed and its earth with all the brutal implications; the impact of elemental truth. Would you have us present this abstract concept, with all its complicated feelings, by means of a boy and girl lightly tripping?
It is just as easy to explain The Syrian Bull as a new interpretation of an archaic image, involving unprecedented distortions. Since art is timeless, the significant rendition of a symbol, no matter how archaic, has as full validity today as the archaic symbol had then. Or is the one 3000 years old truer? ...easy program notes can help only the simple-minded.
No possible set of notes can explain our paintings. Their explanation must come out of a consummated experience between picture and onlooker. The point at issue, it seems to us, is not an 'explanation' of the paintings, but whether the intrinsic ideas carried within the frames of these pictures have significance. We feel that our pictures demonstrate our aesthetic beliefs, some of which we, therefore, list:
Adolph Gottlieb, The Rape of Persephone. 1943.
1. To us art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks.
2. This world of the imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense.
3. It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way - not his way.
4. We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.
5. It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject-matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.
Consequently, if our work embodies these beliefs it must insult any one who is spiritually attuned to interior decoration; pictures for the home; pictures for over the mantel; pictures of the American scene; social pictures; purity in art; prize-winning potboilers; the National Academy, the Whitney Academy, the Corn Belt Academy; buckeyes; trite tripe, etc.
Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974), Mark Rothko (1903-1970), and Barnett Newman (1095-1970) were American Abstract Artists who together created a new visual language built on symbols, mythology, and color.
The Guldara Stupa (Artefact V)
Ben Timberlake September 3, 2024
The Guldara Stupa is one of the most beautiful Buddhist ruins in Afghanistan. It sits at the head of a valley on a proud spur of rock. Behind it is the remains of the adjoining monastery. The stupa is comprised of a square base with two concentric drums above it. Atop them, a dome, partially shattered and missing its spire...
WUNDERKAMMER
Artefact No: 5
Description: Guldara Stupa
Location: Logar Province, Afghanistan
Age: 2000 Years Old
Ben Timberlake September 3, 2024
The Guldara Stupa is one of the most beautiful Buddhist ruins in Afghanistan. It sits at the head of a valley on a proud spur of rock. Behind it is the remains of the adjoining monastery. The stupa is comprised of a square base with two concentric drums above it. Atop them, a dome, partially shattered and missing its spire.
The role of a stupa has been described as ‘an engine for salvation, a spiritual lighthouse, a source of the higher, ineffable illumination that brought enlightenment’¹. The design is thought to have evolved from earlier conical burial mounds on circular bases that were being built in the century before the birth of the Buddha, from the Mediterranean all the way down to the Ganges Valley. According to early Buddhist texts, Buddha himself demonstrated to his followers how to build the first stupa by folding his cloak into a square as a base, then putting his alms bowl upside-down and on top of the cloak, with his staff on top of that to represent the spire.
Ancient sculpture of the Buddha alongside a corinthian column.
The Guldara Stupa, whose name translates to ‘stupa of the flower valley,’ is the best surviving example of the sophisticated architectural developments during the Kushan period. This Empire, which flourished from the 1st to 3rd centuries CE, epitomized the cultural exchange and fusion between East and West along the Silk Road. Originally nomads from Central Asia, Kushans created a vast kingdom spanning parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern India. Theyadeptly blended elements from Greek, Roman, Persian, and Indian traditions to create a unique syncretic culture. This melding and harmonization was evident in their art, and particularly in the Gandharan style, which combined Hellenistic techniques with Buddhist themes. A Greek influence entered with Alexander the Great’s conquests in the 4th century BC and continued through subsequent Hellenistic kingdoms. Prior to this the Buddha was represented symbolically, but the Greeks introduced more human representations of the Buddha: realistic proportions, naturalistic facial features, and the contrapposto stance. Many Gandharan Buddhas appear in Greek-style clothing with wavy hair and long noses set on oval faces, typical of classical sculpture. In the sculpture here he appears sat at a banquet beside a corinthian column.
“In a single structure, philosophies and ideas from thousands of miles over converge in perfect harmony.”
The Kushans were also instrumental in the spread of Buddhism along the Silk Road, patronizing Buddhist art and architecture while maintaining a religiously tolerant empire. Their capitals, like Bagram, became cosmopolitan centers where goods and ideas from China, India, and the Mediterranean world converged. Their coinage featured Greek inscriptions alongside Indian languages, and depicted both Greek and Indian deities. In governance, they adopted titles from various traditions, such as "King of Kings" (Shah-in Shah), reflecting Persian influence. This Kushan synthesis not only shaped the cultural landscape of Central and South Asia but also facilitated the transmission of ideas and technologies between East and West, leaving a lasting legacy that extended far beyond their political boundaries.
Corinthian pilasters with their Corinthian capitals.
The Guldara Stupa reflects this assimilation. The core structure is a classic stupa design that served both symbolic and practical functions in Buddhist practice. Its form represents cosmic order and the path to enlightenment, while its circular base allows for circumambulation (pradakshina), a key ritual in Buddhist worship. Yet the harmonious proportions of the square base are similar to the Temple of Hera on Samos and the engaged pilasters,with their corinthian capitals, are almost pure classical world finished in flaked local schist. In a single structure, philosophies and ideas from thousands of miles over converge in perfect harmony.
The decline of Buddhism in Afghanistan was not a sudden event but a gradual process that occurred over several centuries. While Buddhism flourished in the region from the 1st to 7th centuries CE, its influence began to wane with the spread of Islam from the west starting in the 7th century. Archaeological evidence, however, suggests that Buddhist practices persisted in some areas long after the initial Muslim conquests. The transition was not uniformly abrupt or violent, as sometimes portrayed in later folklore. Instead, there was a period of coexistence, with some Buddhist sites remaining active even as Islam gained prominence. The process of conversion was complex, influenced by political, economic, and social factors. By the 11th century, Islam had become the predominant faith in the Kabul region and most of Afghanistan, though pockets of Buddhist practice may have survived in remote areas.
The abandonment of many Buddhist sites was likely due to a combination of factors, including changing patronage patterns, shifts in trade routes, and the gradual adoption of Islam by the local population. Interestingly, some Buddhist architectural and artistic elements were incorporated into early Islamic structures in the region, reflecting a degree of cultural continuity amid religious change. The last definitive evidence of active Buddhist practice in Afghanistan dates to around the 10th century, marking the end of a remarkable era of religious and cultural flourishing that had lasted for nearly a millennium.
Ben Timberlake at the Guldara Stupa.
It was Guldara’s remote position that probably accounts for its remarkable preservation. In the 19th century it was looted by the British explorer and archaeologist Charles Masson. (It’s a little mean to use the word ‘looted’: he ‘opened’ the stupa looking for relics and artifacts as was the practice at the time). Masson was a fascinating character. His actual name was James Lewis but he deserted from the East India Company’s army in 1827 and adopted the alias Charles Masson. He spent much of the 1830s living in Kabul, travelling the country extensively and documenting the Buddhist archaeological sites there. His work was crucial in bringing these sites the attention of Western scholars. Guldara was his favourite, “perhaps the most complete and beautiful monument of the kind in these countries’.
I visited Guldara this July. It is an hour’s drive from Kabul to the village at the head of the valley, then another 20 minutes up the dry riverbed that tested our 4x4, and finally a half an hour’s trek up to the site itself. There is something deeply spiritual about the Stupa. It seems to belong profoundly to the place - to the valley - and yet floats above it. Its lines and proportions are as graceful as the surrounding mountains while its myriad of eastern and western architectural forms have integrated to be more than the sum of their parts. It is a site of quiet conjunction, of perfect harmony. Of peace.
Ben Timberlake is an archaeologist who works in Iraq and Syria. His writing has appeared in Esquire, the Financial Times and the Economist. He is the author of 'High Risk: A True Story of the SAS, Drugs and other Bad Behaviour'.
¹ The Buddhas of Bamiya, Llewelyn Morgan.
Towards Alienation
Arcadia Molinas August 29, 2024
Engaging in an uncomfortable reading practice, favouring ‘foreignization’, has the potential to expand our subjectivities and lead us to embrace the cultural other instead of rejecting it. In this walk away from fluency, we find ourselves heading towards alienation. But what does it mean to be alienated as a reader, how does it feel, and perhaps most importantly, how does it happen?
Interessenspharen, 1979. Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt.
Arcadia Molinas August 29, 2024
Last time, translator Lawrence Venuti and philosopher Friedreich Schleirmacher showed us the radical potential of walking away from fluency when reading books in translation. Engaging in an uncomfortable reading practice, they argued, favouring ‘foreignization’, has the potential to expand our subjectivities and lead us to embrace the cultural other instead of rejecting it. In this walk away from fluency, we find ourselves heading towards alienation. But what does it mean to be alienated as a reader, how does it feel, and perhaps most importantly, how does it happen?
The concept of culturemes can help us get closer to an understanding of alienation. Culturemes are social phenomena that have meaning to members of one culture but not to another, so that when they are compared to a corresponding phenomenon in another culture, they are revealed to be specific to only the first culture. They can have an ingrained historical, social or geographical relevance that can result in misconceptions or misunderstandings when being translated. This includes jokes, folklore, idioms, religion or expressions. If we pay attention to the translation of culturemes, we can evaluate how alienation is functioning in the translated text and sketch the contours of its effect on the reader.
Panza de Burro by Andrea Abreu made my body come alive from just one sitting. Even in its original Spanish, the book is alienating. Abreu takes us into the mind of her ten-year old narrator, nicknamed “Shit”, as she spends a warm, cloudy summer in a working-class neighbourhood of Tenerife with her best friend Isora. The language is mercilessly juvenile, deliciously phonetic and profoundly Canarian. The Canarian accent, more like the Venezuelan or Cuban accents of Latin America than a mainland Spanish accent, is emulated in a way similar to what Irvine Welsh does for the Scots dialect in Trainspotting. This means, for example, that a lot of the ends of words are cut off, “usted” becomes “usté”, “nada más” becomes “namás”. On top of this are all the Canarian idiosyncrasies that Abreu employs to paint a vivid sense of place: the food, the weather, the games the children play. Abreu demands her reader move towards her characters, their language, their codes and their culture and with itdemands a somatic response from her reader. The translation of such a book should be a fertile ground for the experience of alienation, done two-fold.
“Meeting halfway is a political act that not only allows people to exist at the frontier but brings everyone closer to the frontier too.”
Widening, 1980. Ruth Wolf-Rehfeltd.
On the first page of Panza de Burro, Shit and Isora are eating snacks and sweets at a birthday party, “munchitos, risketos, gusanitos, conguitos, cubanitos, sangüi, rosquetitos de limón, suspiritos, fanta, clipper, sevená, juguito piña, juguito manzana”. Most of these will be familiar to anyone who has grown up in Spain, including the intentional spelling mistakes (“sevená” for example is meant to emulate the Canarian pronunciation of 7-Up). Julia Sanches, in her translation, Dogs of Summer, writes “There were munchitos potato chips, cheese doodles and Gusanitos cheese puffs. There were Conguitos chocolate sweets, cubanitos wafers and sarnies. There were lemon donuts and tiny meringues, orange Fanta, strawberry pop, 7-Up, apple juice and pineapple juice”. The alienating words are still present in the translation, munchitos, gusanitos, conguitos, their rhythm, their sound, carry an echo of their cultural significance and with them maintain the sticky, childish essence of the Canarian birthday party. They are there to flood your senses, which is what, at its best, alienation can hope to do. Yet the words themselves, the look of them, the sound of them, could have also done their infantilizing, somatic job of taking us into the soda pop-flavoured heart of the birthday party taking place on a muggy Canarian day without their tagging English accompaniment “cheese puffs”. To be able to chew the words around for yourself is essential to experience alienation. To experience the foreign, your mouth must move in ways and shapes hitherto unfamiliar to it. In other instances, however, Sanches keeps Canarian culturemes intact, for example the term of endearment “miniña” is untouched in the translated text, which again with its heavily onomatopoeic sound thrusts the unfamiliar reader into a new context, this time for endearment, and so expands the sounds and shapes of affection and proximity.
Gloria Anzaldúa, feminist and queer scholar, wrote Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, a book which takes the alienating project to its logical extreme. The book is not only an exercise in alienation through language but in alienation through form too. Drawing inspiration from her Chicana identity, an identity inherently at a crossroads between Mexicana and tejana cultures, she advocates for a wider “borderlands culture”, a culture that can represent and hold space for the in-between, the interdisciplinary and the intercontinental. In the preface she explains her project, “The switching of "codes" in this book from English to Castilian Spanish to the North Mexican dialect to Tex-Mex to a sprinkling of Nahuatl to a mixture of all of these, reflects my language, a new language-the language of the Borderlands. There, at the juncture of cultures, languages cross-pollinate and are revitalized; they die and are born. Presently this infant language... this bastard language, Chicano Spanish, is not approved by any society. But we Chicanos no longer feel that we need to beg entrance, that we need always to make the first overture –to translate to Anglos, Mexicans and Latinos, apology blurting out of our mouths with every step. Today we ask to be met halfway. This book is our invitation to you-from the new mestizas.”
Anzaldúa wrote a guide on how to live on the borderlands, how to embrace linguistic and cultural hybridity, supporting Venuti and Schleirmacher’s claim that a wider acceptance of difference, of meeting halfway, is a political act that not only allows people to exist at the frontier, but brings everyone closer to the frontier too. Being on the frontier means going towards alienation, it means offering your body to new expressions and new experiences, it is to remain open, to walk on the border like a tightrope, to feel the tension in your muscles from the balance and to come out taught at the other end.
Arcadia Molinas is a writer, editor, and translator from Madrid. She currently works as the online editor of Worms Magazine and has published a Spanish translation of Virginia Woolf’s diaries with Funambulista.
Music Lover’s Field Companion
John Cage August 27, 2024
I have come to the conclusion that much can be learned about music by devoting oneself to the mushroom. For this purpose I have recently moved to the country. Much of my time is spent poring over "field companions on fungi. These I obtain at half price in second-hand bookshops, which latter are in some rare cases next door to shops selling dog-eared sheets of music, such an occurrence being greeted by me as irrefutable evidence that I am on the right track...
Artwork by Lois Long, for John Cage’s 'Mushroom Book' 1972.
John Cage, August 27th, 2024
I have come to the conclusion that much can be learned about music by devoting oneself to the mushroom. For this purpose I have recently moved to the country. Much of my time is spent poring over "field companions on fungi. These I obtain at half price in second-hand bookshops, which latter are in some rare cases next door to shops selling dog-eared sheets of music, such an occurrence being greeted by me as irrefutable evidence that I am on the right track.
The winter for mushrooms, as for music, is a most sorry season. Only in caves and houses where matters of temperature and humidity, and in concert halls where matters of trusteeship and box office are under constant surveillance, do the vulgar and accepted forms thrive. American commercialism has brought about a grand deterioration of the Psalliota campestris, affecting through exports even the European market. As a demanding gourmet sees but does not purchase the marketed mushroom, so a lively musician reads from time to time the announcements of concerts and stays quietly at home. If, energetically, Collybia velutipes should fruit in January, it is a rare event, and happening on it while stalking in a forest is almost beyond one's dearest expectations, just as it is exciting in New York to note that the number of people attending a winter concert requiring the use of one's faculties is on the upswing (1954: 129 out of l2,000,000; 1955: 136 out of 12,000,000).
In the summer, matters are different. Some three thousand different mushrooms are thriving in abundance, and right and left there are Festivals of Contemporary Music. It is to be regretted, however, that the consolidation of the acquisitions of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, currently in vogue, has not produced a single new mushroom. Mycologists are aware that in the present fungous abundance, such as it is, the dangerous Amanitas play an extraordinarily large part. Should not program chairmen, and music lovers in general, come the warm months, display some prudence?
I was delighted last fall (for the effects of summer linger on, viz. Donaueschingen, C. D. M. I., etc.) not only to revisit in Paris my friend the composer Pierre Boulez, rue Beautreillis, hut also to attend the Exposition du Champignon, rue de Buffon. A week later in Cologne, from my vantage point in a glass-encased control booth, I noticed an audience dozing off, throwing, as it were, caution to the winds, though present at a loud-speaker emitted program of Elektronische Musik. I could not help recalling the riveted attention accorded another loud-speaker, rue de Buffon, which delivered on the hour a lecture describing mortally poisonous mushrooms and means for their identification.
“The second movement was extremely dramatic, beginning with the sounds of a buck and a doe leaping up to within ten feet of my rocky podium. The expressivity of this movement was not only dramatic but unusually sad from my point of view, for the animals were frightened simply because I was a human being.”
John Cage and Lois Long.
But enough of the contemporary musical scene; it is well known. More important is to determine what are the problems confronting the contemporary mushroom. To begin with, I propose that it should be determined which sounds further the growth of which mushrooms; whether these latter, indeed, make sounds of their own; whether the gills of certain mushrooms are employed by appropriately small-winged insects for the production of pizzicati and the tubes of the Boleti by minute burrowing ones as wind instruments; whether the spores, which in size and shape are extraordinarily various, and in number countless, do not on dropping to the earth produce gamelan-like sonorities; and finally, whether all this enterprising activity which I suspect delicately exists, could not, through technological means, be brought, amplified and magnified, into our theatres with the net result of making our entertainments more interesting.
What a boon it would be for the recording industry (now part of America'. sixth largest) if it could be shown that the performance, while at table, of an LP of Beethoven's Quartet Opus Such-and-Such so alters the chemical nature of Amanita muscaria as to render it both digestible and delicious!
Lest I be found frivolous and light-headed and, worse, an "impurist" for having brought about the marriage of the agaric with Euterpe, observe that composers are continually mixing up music with something else. Karlheinz Stockhausen is clearly interested in music and juggling, constructing as he does "global structures," which can be of service only when tossed in the air; while my friend Pierre Boulez, as he revealed in a recent article (Nouvelle Revue Française, November 1954), is interested in music and parentheses and italics! This combination of interests seems to me excessive in number. I prefer my own choice of the mushroom. Furthermore it is avant-garde.
I have spent many pleasant hours in the woods conducting performances of my silent piece~ transcriptions, that is, for an audience of myself, since they were much longer than the popular length which I have had published. At one performance, I passed the first movement by attempting the identification of a mushroom which remained successfully unidentified. The second movement was extremely dramatic, beginning with the sounds of a buck and a doe leaping up to within ten feet of my rocky podium. The expressivity of this movement was not only dramatic but unusually sad from my point of view, for the animals were frightened simply because I was a human being. However, they left hesitatingly and fittingly within the structure of the work. The third movement was a return to the theme of the first, but with all those profound, so-well-known alterations of world feeling associated by German tradition with the A-B-A.
In the space that remains, I would like to emphasize that I am not interested in the relationships between sounds and mushrooms any more than I am in those between sounds and other sounds. These would involve an introduction of logic that is not only out of place in the world, but time consuming. We exist in a situation demanding greater earnestness, as I can testify, since recently I was hospitalized after having cooked and eaten experimentally some Spathyema foetida, commonly known as skunk cabbage. My blood pressure went down to fifty, stomach was pumped, etc. It behooves us therefore to see each thing directly as it is, be it the sound of a tin whistle or the elegant Lepiota procera.
John Cage was an American composer, writer, music theorist and amateur mycologist. He was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde and amongst the most consequential and important composers of the 20th Century.
I Am For An Art… (1961)
Claes Oldenburg August 22, 2024
I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a starting point of zero...
Oldenburg in The Store, 107 East Second Street, New York, 1961. Robert R. McElroy.
Claes Oldenburg, August 22 2024
I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a starting point of zero.
I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap & still comes out on top.
I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.
I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.
I am for an artist who vanishes, turning up in a white cap painting signs or hallways.
I am for art that comes out of a chimney like black hair and scatters in the sky.
I am for art that spills out of an old man's purse when he is bounced off a passing fender.
I am for the art out of a doggy's mouth, falling five stories from the roof.
I am for the art that a kid licks, after peeling away the wrapper. I am for an art that joggles like everyones knees, when the bus traverses an excavation.
I am for art that is smoked, like a cigarette, smells, like a pair of shoes.
I am for art that flaps like a flag, or helps blow noses, like a handkerchief.
Pastry Case, 1961. Claes Oldenburg.
I am for art that is put on and taken off, like pants, which develops holes, like socks, which is eaten, like a piece of pie, or abandoned with great contempt, like a piece of shit.
I am for art covered with bandages, I am for art that limps and rolls and runs and jumps. I am for art that comes in a can or washes up on the shore.
I am for art that coils and grunts like a wrestler. I am for art that sheds hair.
I am for art you can sit on. I am for art you can pick your nose with or stub your toes on.
I am for art from a pocket, from deep channels of the ear, from the edge of a knife, from the corners of the mouth, stuck in the eye or worn on the wrist.
I am for art under the skirts, and the art of pinching cockroaches.
I am for the art of conversation between the sidewalk and a blind mans metal stick.
I am for the art that grows in a pot, that comes down out of the skies at night, like lightning, that hides in the clouds and growls. I am for art that is flipped on and off with a switch.
I am for art that unfolds like a map, that you can squeeze, like your sweetys arm, or kiss, like a pet dog. Which expands and squeaks, like an accordion, which you can spill your dinner on, like an old tablecloth.
I am for an art that you can hammer with, stitch with, sew with, paste with, file with.
I am for an art that tells you the time of day, or where such and such a street is.
I am for an art that helps old ladies across the street.
I am for the art of the washing machine. I am for the art of a government check. I am for the art of last wars raincoat.
I am for the art that comes up in fogs from sewer-holes in winter. I am for the art that splits when you step on a frozen puddle. I am for the worms art inside the apple. I am for the art of sweat that develops between crossed legs.
I am for the art of neck-hair and caked tea-cups, for the art between the tines of restaurant forks, for the odor of boiling dishwater.
I am for the art of sailing on Sunday, and the art of red and white gasoline pumps.
I am for the art of bright blue factory columns and blinking biscuit signs.
I am for the art of cheap plaster and enamel. I am for the art of worn marble and smashed slate. I am for the art of rolling cobblestones and sliding sand. I am for the art of slag and black coal. I am for the art of dead birds.
I am for the art of scratchings in the asphalt, daubing at the walls. I am for the art of bending and kicking metal and breaking glass, and pulling at things to make them fall down.
I am for the art of punching and skinned knees and sat-on bananas. I am for the art of kids' smells. I am for the art of mama-babble.
I am for the art of bar-babble, tooth-picking, beerdrinking, egg-salting, in-suiting. I am for the art of falling off a barstool.
I am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs. I am for the art of ice-cream cones dropped on concrete. I am for the majestic art of dog-turds, rising like cathedrals.
I am for the blinking arts, lighting up the night. I am for art falling, splashing, wiggling, jumping, going on and off.
I am for the art of fat truck-tires and black eyes.
Performances at Oldenburg's The Store, 1962. Robert R. McElroy.
I am for Kool-art, 7-UP art, Pepsi-art, Sunshine art, 39 cents art, 15 cents art, Vatronol art, Dro-bomb art, Vam art, Menthol art, L & M art, Ex-lax art, Venida art, Heaven Hill art, Pamryl art, San-o-med art, Rx art, 9.99 art, Now art, New art, How art, Fire sale art, Last Chance art, Only art, Diamond art, Tomorrow art, Franks art, Ducks art, Meat-o-rama art.
I am for the art of bread wet by rain. I am for the rat's dance between floors.
I am for the art of flies walking on a slick pear in the electric light. I am for the art of soggy onions and firm green shoots. I am for the art of clicking among the nuts when the roaches come and go. I am for the brown sad art of rotting apples.
I am for the art of meowls and clatter of cats and for the art of their dumb electric eyes.
I am for the white art of refrigerators and their muscular openings and closings.
I am for the art of rust and mold. I am for the art of hearts, funeral hearts or sweetheart hearts, full of nougat. I am for the art of worn meathooks and singing barrels of red, white, blue and yellow meat.
I am for the art of things lost or thrown away, coming home from school. I am for the art of cock-and-ball trees and flying cows and the noise of rectangles and squares. I am for the art of crayons and weak grey pencil-lead, and grainy wash and sticky oil paint, and the art of windshield wipers and the art of the finger on a cold window, on dusty steel or in the bubbles on the sides of a bathtub.
I am for the art of teddy-bears and guns and decapitated rabbits, exploded umbrellas, raped beds, chairs with their brown bones broken, burning trees, firecracker ends, chicken bones, pigeon bones and boxes with men sleeping in them.
I am for the art of slightly rotten funeral flowers, hung bloody rabbits and wrinkly yellow chickens, bass drums & tambourines, and plastic phonographs. I am for the art of abandoned boxes, tied like pharaohs. I am for an art of watertanks and speeding clouds and flapping shades.
I am for U.S. Government Inspected Art, Grade A art, Regular Price art, Yellow Ripe art, Extra Fancy art, Ready-to-eat art, Best-for-less art, Ready-tocook art, Fully cleaned art, Spend Less art, Eat Better art, Ham art, pork art, chicken art, tomato art, banana art, apple art, turkey art, cake art, cookie art.
add:
I am for an art that is combed down, that is hung from each ear, that is laid on the lips and under the eyes, that is shaved from the legs, that is brushed on the teeth, that is fixed on the thighs, that is slipped on the foot.
square which becomes blobby
Claes Oldenburg, 1929 – 2022, was a Swedish-born American sculptor best known for his public art installations, typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. In 1961 he opened The Store in Downtown New York which hosted performances, conceptual art pieces and happenings, as well as selling work he made in the space to punters and passerbys, removing the middle-man from the commercialisation of the art world. He wrote this text for an exhibition catalogue in 1961, reworked it when he opened the store and then republished it again in 1970 for an exhibition in London, from which this version is taken.
Mystery and Creation (1928)
Giorgio de Chirico August 20, 2024
To become truly immortal a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken it will enter the regions of childhood vision and dream.
Piazza D'Italia, 1964. Giorgio de Chirico.
Giorgio de Chirico, August 20 2024
To become truly immortal a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken it will enter the regions of childhood vision and dream.
Profound statements must be drawn by the artist from the most secret recesses of his being; there no murmuring torrent, no birdsong, no rustle of leaves can distract him.
What I hear is valueless; only what I see is living, and when I close my eyes my vision is even more powerful. It is most important that we should rid art of all that it has contained of recognizable material to date, all familiar subject matter, all traditional ideas, all popular symbols must be banished forthwith. More important still, we must hold enormous faith in ourselves: it is essential that the revelation we receive, the conception of an image which embraces a certain thing, which has no sense in itself, which has no subject, which means absolutely nothing from the logical point of view, I repeat, it is essential that such a revelation or conception should speak so strongly in us, evoke such agony or joy, that we feel compelled to paint, compelled by an impulse even more urgent than the hungry desperation which drives a man to tearing at a piece of bread like a savage beast.
I remember one vivid winter's day at Versailles. Silence and calm reigned supreme. Everything gazed at me with mysterious, questioning eyes. And then I realized that every corner of the palace, every column, every window possessed a spirit, an impenetrable soul. I looked around at the marble heroes, motionless in the lucid air, beneath the frozen rays of that winter sun which pours down on us without love, like perfect song. A bird was warbling in a window cage. At that moment I grew aware of the mystery which urges men to create certain strange forms. And the creation appeared more extraordinary than the creators. Perhaps the most amazing sensation passed on to us by prehistoric man is that of presentiment. It will always continue. We might consider it as an eternal proof of the irrationality of the universe. Original man must have wandered through a world full of uncanny signs. He must have trembled at each step.
Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian artist and writer born in 1888, who founded the movement of Metaphysical Painting. He was inspired by Neitzsche and Shopenhauer in his philosophy, that informed both his visual and written work, and his own writing was a major source of inspiration to Andre Breton and the Surrealist Movement. This essay was first published in 1928 by Breton in ‘Surrealism and Painting’.
A Forager’s Take on Fairytales Pt. 1
Izzy Johns August 15, 2024
Long ago in Drumline, County Clare, in the late 19th Century, an old farmer and his wife huddled for warmth in a mud hut. Many a cold winter passed, and finally, the man agreed to build his wife a house of bricks and mortar. He set to work the following Spring. Not a day had passed when the old man received a visit from a traveler, who spoke these words…
Izzy Johns, August 15 2024
Long ago in Drumline, County Clare, in the late 19th Century, an old farmer and his wife huddled for warmth in a mud hut. Many a cold winter passed, and finally, the man agreed to build his wife a house of bricks and mortar.
He set to work the following Spring. Not a day had passed when the old man received a visit from a traveler, who spoke these words:
“I wouldn’t build there if I was you. That’s the wrong place. If you build there you won’t be short of company, whatever else.”
The old man paid him no mind, but sure enough, the moment he and his wife lay down to rest in their new home, they were plagued by noise and disruption. Furniture was knocked over, cutlery strewn across the floor, crockery smashed. They couldn’t get a wink of sleep. But, as sure as day, whenever they went to investigate, they found nothing and no one. The old couple sought the help of the local preacher, who recognised this as the work of the Sidhe, the Little Folk of this land. He tried to exorcize the house, but to no avail.
After five sleepless nights, the man wearily set off to the market to sell their cows. It was the Gale day, the day that their rent was due, and money was sparse. English colonisers had seized land from the Irish farmers some years before. Now they were renting it back to them, and the rent was high.
The old man got a fair price for the cows, and he stopped at a roadside pub on the way home. It was there that he encountered the traveler once again. In desperation, the man begged the traveler for advice. He would do anything so that the Little Folk would let him rest. The traveler walked him home, and took him to stand in the yard, on the far side of the house.
He said:
“Now, look out there and tell me what you see.”
[…] “The yard?”
“No,” he says, “look again.”
“The road?”
“No. Look carefully.”
“Oh, that old Whitethorn bush? Sure, that’s there forever. That could be there since the start o’ the world.”
“D’you tell me that now?”
The old man walked out to the gable o’ the house, called [him], then says, “come over here.”
He did.
“Look out there, and tell me what do you see?”
He looked out from that gable end, and there, no farther away than the end o’ the garden, was another Whitethorn bush, standing alone.
“Now,” says the old man, “I told you. I warned you. The fairies’ path is between them bushes and beyond. And you’re after building your house on it.”
Upon the instruction of the traveler, the man built two doors in either side of the house, in line with the Whitethorns. From then on, the Little Folk had a clear passage, and the man and his wife were not bothered again.¹
“The higher you climb, the further you travel, the greater the view”
British Goblins, 1880. Wirt Sikes.
I was very struck by this account. It feels different to the rich, meandering folk-tale jewels I love so much, that are wrapped in mythos and allegory. Instead, this tale falls into the realm of family and community stories, that are still “lived in”, in this case, by the old couple’s grandson, who told this story to Eddie Lenihan in the living room of the very same house. He said that he still leaves the two doors ajar each night so as to let the fairies pass. There’s no use in locking them, he says, for they’ll only be open again by the morning.
Make no mistake, this story is not hearsay. A book of fairy tales might read like a book of fiction, but it isn’t. What we see in this tale, and so many others like it, is a relic of a complex faith system from times gone by, and it’s important that we storytellers hold it in that way. This story comes from Ireland, where the fairies are called Sídhe, or Sí, though often called by euphemisms to avoid catching their attention. The Sidhe are the descendants of the people of Danu, the Tuatha Dé Danann, a race of fallen Gods and Goddesses that dwell in the liminality between our world and the otherworld, the An Saol Eile. It’s only fair to acknowledge their providence, not least is it a crucial act of cultural preservation.
Fairies have a range of habitats depending on where you are live. In Ireland, they are particularly fond of two places: a lone Whitethorn (Hawthorn) tree, and the forts - those grand, grassy mounds of earth, often covered in a greater diversity of wild plants than their surroundings. In this tale, the old couple has disturbed not a habitat, but a passage between habitats. More savvy builders would have driven four hazel rods into the ground, marking out the proposed foundations of the house. If by the next day any rod had moved, the house should be built elsewhere.
The fairies in this story star in a role that I’ve seen in countless tales; defending their habitat from ecological destruction. Here, they were able to communicate with the intruders and resolve the problem quickly. It’s a good thing that the old couple were forthcoming. Fairies will always give warnings, but it’s perfectly within their power to cause grave suffering if those warnings aren’t heeded. They can be at best didactic and at worst violent, but they have no interest in troubling a person who isn’t troubling them. I can’t condone the violence, but I marvel at how proficient they are at protecting and stewarding the land. Plus, they greatly enrich the ecosystem. Various tales see fairies fertilizing soil for generous farmers, and producing abundances of wildflowers and fungi. It’s said that the rings of mushrooms we see in woodlands and meadows are where they’ve danced.
The Intruder, c.1860. John Anster Fitzgerald.
Thinking about this with an Ecologist’s gaze, fairies are a fascinating species. They might well be a larger genus with loads of regionally-specific variants like small people, spriggans, buccas, elves, bockles and knockers, browneys, goblins, dryads, gnomes and piskies. There’s a wealth of anecdotal evidence of their existence, thousands and thousands of stories, stretching back millenia, yet we’ve never successfully captured and studied them. Perhaps what makes this species most unique is their ability to outwit ours. Their cunning gently prods at our human arrogance, contesting our claim to be the most “developed” of species.
Far less frequently in the UK do we hear tales of the Little Folk interfering with larger property developments. In London, for example, you’ll scarcely come across a piece of land that hasn’t been leveled ten times over, and most Whitethorns are confined to cultivated hedges. I wonder how many forts have been destroyed in my neighborhood. Our lack of understanding of the fairies’ life cycles and physiology makes it pointless to speculate on why larger builds don’t experience ramifications from the little folk. It’s hard not to wonder if heavy machinery, giant crews of contractors and big blocks of hundreds of dwellings haven’t been too much for the fairies to contend with. I hate to think that, unbeknownst to us, urbanization might have wiped them out. If fairies are still around, it’s clear that they’re gravely endangered.
If this is the case, then it makes fairies one of over two million species under threat of extinction. It’d be such a shame if these creatures, these stories, and the feelings that they represent, disappeared altogether. I love this tale for giving us such a tangible example of humans making space for fairies and subsequently managing to co-exist peacefully. The fairies in this story are model land guardians, and from that we humans have a lot to learn.
Izzy Johns is a forager and storyteller. She teaches foraging under the monicker Rights For Weeds and manages the Phytology medicine garden in East London. You can find her work on Substack [rightsforweeds.substack.com] and Instagram [instagram.com/ rightsforweeds] .
¹As recounted to Eddie Lenihan in 2001 by the couple’s grandson, recorded in ‘Meeting the Other Folk…”
Against Fluency
Arcadia Molinas August 13, 2024
Reading is a vice. It is a pleasurable, emotional and intellectual vice. But what distinguishes it from most vices, and relieves it from any association to immoral behaviour, is that it is somatic too, and has the potential to move you…
Guilliaume Apollinaire, 1918. Calligram.
Arcadia Molinas August 13, 2024
Reading is a vice. It is a pleasurable, emotional and intellectual vice. But what distinguishes it from most vices, and relieves it from any association to immoral behaviour, is that it is somatic too, and has the potential to move you. A book can instantly transport you to cities, countries and worlds you’ve never set foot on. A book can take you to new climates, suggest the taste of new foods, introduce you to cultures and confront you with entirely different ways of being. It is a way to move and to travel without ever leaving the comfort of your chair.
Books in translation offer these readerly delights perhaps more readily than their native counterparts. Despite this, the work of translation is vastly overlooked and broadly underappreciated. In book reviews, the critique of the translation itself rarely takes up more than a throwaway line which comments on either the ‘sharpness’ or ‘clumsiness’ of the work. It is uncommon, too, to see the translator’s name on the cover of a book. A good translation, it seems, is meant to feel invisible. But is travelling meant to feel invisible – identical, seamless, homogenous? Or is travelling meant to provoke, cause discomfort, scream its presence in your face? The latter seems to me to be the more somatic, erotic, up in your body experience and thus, more conducive to the moral component of the vice of reading.
French translator Norman Shapiro describes the work of translation as “the attempt to produce a text so transparent that it does not seem to be translated. A good translation is like a pane of glass. You only notice that it’s there when there are little imperfections— scratches, bubbles. Ideally, there shouldn’t be any. It should never call attention to itself.” This view is shared by many: a good translation should show no evidence of the translator, and by consequence, no evidence that there was once another language involved in the first place at all. Fluency, naturalness, is what matters – any presence of the other must be smoothed out. For philosopher Friedreich Schlerimacher however, the matter is something else entirely. For him, “there are only two [methods of translation]. Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him.” He goes on to argue for the virtues of the former, for a translation that is visible, that moves the reader’s body and is seen and felt. It’s a matter of ethics for the philosopher – why and how do we translate? These are not minor questions when considering the stakes of erasing the presence of the other. The repercussions of such actions could reflect and accentuate larger cultural attitudes to difference and diversity as a whole.
“The higher you climb, the further you travel, the greater the view”
Guilliaume Apollinaire, 1918. Calligram.
Lawrence Venuti coins Schlerimacher’s two movements, from reader to author and author to reader, as ‘foreignization’ and ‘domestication’ in his book The Translator’s Invisibility. Foreignization is “leaving the author in peace and moving the reader towards him”, which means reflecting the cultural idiosyncrasies of the original language onto the translated/target one. It means making the translation visible. Domestication is the opposite, it irons out any awkwardness and imperfections caused by linguistic and cultural difference, “leaving the reader in peace and moving the author towards him”. It means making the translation invisible, and is the way translation is so often thought about today. Venuti says the aim of this type of translation is to “bring back a cultural other as the same, the recognizable, even the familiar; and this aim always risks a wholesale domestication of the foreign text, often in highly self- conscious projects, where translation serves an appropriation of foreign cultures for domestic agendas, cultural, economic, political.”
The direction of movement in these two strategies makes all the difference. Foreignization makes you move and travel towards the author, while domestication leaves you alone and doesn’t disturb you. There is, Venuti says, a cost of being undisturbed. He writes of the “partly inevitable” violence of translation when thinking about the process of ironing out differences. When foreign cultures are understood through the lens of a language inscribed with its own codes, and which consequently carry their own embedded ways of regarding other cultures, there is a risk of homogenisation of diversity. “Foreignizing translation in English”, Venuti argues, “can be a form of resistance against ethnocentrism and racism, cultural narcissism and imperialism, in the interests of democratic geopolitical relations.” The potential for this type of reading and of translating is by no means insignificant.
To embrace discomfort then, an uncomfortable practice of reading, is a moral endeavour. To read foreignizing works of translation is to expand one’s subjectivity and suspend one’s unified, blinkered understanding of culture and linguistics. Reading itself is a somatic practice, but to read a work in translation that purposefully alienates, is to travel even further, it’s to go abroad and stroll through foreign lands, feel the climate, chew the food. It’s well acknowledged that the higher you climb, the further you travel, the greater the view. And to get the bigger picture is as possible to do as sitting on your favourite chair, opening a book and welcoming alienation.
Arcadia Molinas is a writer, editor, and translator from Madrid. She currently works as the online editor of Worms Magazine and has published a Spanish translation of Virginia Woolf’s diaries with Funambulista.
Lapis Lazuli (Artefact IV)
Ben Timberlake August 6, 2024
The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural…
WUNDERKAMMER
Artefact No: 4
Description: Ultramarine from Lapis Lazuli
Location: Sare-e-Sang, Badakhshan, Afghanistan
Age: 6000BC to Present
Ben Timberlake August 6, 2024
Blue is the color of civilization. It is the color of heaven.
When the first prehistoric artists adorned the cave walls, they used the earth colors: reds, browns, yellows, blacks. There were no blues, for the earth very rarely produces the color. Early peoples had no word for blue: it doesn’t appear in ancient Chinese stories, Icelandic Sagas, the Koran, or Sumerian myths. In the Odyssey, an epic with no shortage of opportunities to use the word, there are plenty of blacks and whites, a dozen reds, and several greens. As for the sea - Homer describes it as “wine-dark”.
Philologist Lazarus Geiger analyzed a vast number of ancient texts and found that the words for colors show up in different languages in the same sequence: black and white, next red, then either yellow or green. Blue is always last, arriving with the first cities and the smelting of iron. Homer’s palette, at the end of the Bronze Age, sits neatly within this developmental scheme.
The Egyptians had a word for blue, for they also had the tools of civilization, long-distance trade, and technology, that allowed them to seek out and harness the color. 6000 years ago, the very first blue they used - the true blue - was ultramarine from Lapis Lazuli (the ‘Stone of Heaven’), found in the Sar-e-Sang mines in northern Afghanistan. It was this blue that adorned the mask of Tutankhamun, and that Cleopatra wore, powdered, as eye-shadow.
Lapis lazuli was so expensive that the Egyptians were driven to some of the earliest chemistry experiments - heating copper salts, sand and limestone - to create an ersatz turquoise that was the world’s first synthetic pigment. The technology and recipe spread throughout the ancient world. The Romans had many words for different varieties of blue and combined Egyptian Blue with indigo to use on their frescoes. But none of these chemical creations or combinations could match the Afghan lapis for the brilliance of its blues.
“The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural.” - Wassily Kandinsky
The Virgin in Prayer, Giovanni Battista Salvi da Saassoferrato, c.1645.
At the Council of Ephesus in 431AD, ultramarine received official blessing when it was decided that it was the color of Mary, to venerate her as the Queen of Heaven. Since then it has adorned her robes and that of the angels. Ultramarine was the rarest and most exotic color. Its name - meaning ‘beyond the sea’ - first appeared in the 14th century, given by Italian traders who brought it from across the Mediterranean. Lapis Blue was more expensive than gold and was reserved for only the finest pieces done by the most gifted artists.
It was the most expensive single cost in the whole of the Sistine Chapel and it is said that Michelangelo left his painting The Entombment unfinished in protest that his patron wouldn’t pay for ultramarine. Raphael reserved the color for the final coat, preferring to build the base layers of his blues from Azurite. Vermeer was a master of light but less good at economics: he spent so much on the ultramarine that he left his wife and 11 children in debt when he died.
Once again, mankind turned towards chemistry to search for a cheaper blue: in the early 1800s France’s Societé d’Encouragement offered a reward of 6000 Francs to a scientist who could create a synthetic ultramarine. The result was ‘French Ultramarine’ a hyper-rich color that is still with us to this day.
But 200 years later there is still a debate as to whether we have lost something. Alexander Theroux in his essays The Primary Colors wrote “Old-fashioned blue, which had a dash of yellow in it... now seems often incongruous against newer, staring, overly luminous eye killing shades”.
Anthropometry: Princess Helena, Yves Klein, 1960.
True ultramarine is perfect because of its flaws. It contains traces of calcite, pyrite, flecks of mica, that reflect and refract the light in a myriad of ways. Many artists have continued to prize it for its shifting hues, the heterogeneity of the brushstrokes it creates, the feelings it stirs in us. As Matisse said, ‘A certain blue penetrates the soul’.
Yves Klein worshiped the color and used the synthetic version but he owed his inspiration to the real thing. Klein was born in Nice and grew up under the azure blue Provencal skies. At the age of nineteen he lay on the beach with his friends - the artist Arman, and Claude Pascal, the composer - and they divided up their world: Arman chose earth, Pascal words, while Klein asked for the sky which he then signed with his fingers.
It was only when Klein later visited the Scrovegni Chapel and saw the ultramarine skies of Giotto’s paintings did he understand how to achieve his calling. Klein devoted his brief life to the color, he even patented International Klein Blue (IKB), a synthesis of his childhood skies and the stone of heaven itself.
Ben Timberlake is an archaeologist who works in Iraq and Syria. His writing has appeared in Esquire, the Financial Times and the Economist. He is the author of 'High Risk: A True Story of the SAS, Drugs and other Bad Behaviour'.
Sator Squares (Artefact III)
Ben Timberlake May 28, 2024
It might be innocently regarded as perhaps the world’s oldest word puzzles, were it not for its association with assassinations, conflagrations and rabies…
WUNDERKAMMER
Artefact No: 3
Location: Across Europe and the Americas.
Age: 2000 years
Ben Timberlake May 28, 2024
It might be innocently regarded as perhaps the world’s oldest word puzzles, were it not for its association with assassinations, conflagrations and rabies.
Sator Square in the village of Oppède le Vieux.
The “it” in question is the Sator Square. A Latin, five-line palindrome, it can be read from left or right, upwards or downwards. The earliest ones occur at Roman sites throughout the empire and by the Middle Ages, they had spread across northern Europe and were used as magical symbols to cure, prevent, and sometimes play a role in all sorts of wickedness. The one pictured here is set in the doorway of a medieval house in the semi-ruined village of Oppède le Vieux, Provence, France, carved to ward off evil spirits.
There are several different translations of the Latin, depending on how the square is read. Here is a simple version to get us started:
AREPO is taken to be a proper name, so, AREPO, SATOR (the gardener/ sower), TENET (holds), OPERA (works), ROTAS (the wheels/plow), which could come out something like ‘Arepo the gardener holds and works the wheels/plow’. Other similar translations include ‘The farmer Arepo works his wheels’ or ‘The sower Arepo guides the plow with care’.
Some academics insist that the square is read in a boustrophedon style, meaning ‘as the ox plows’, which is to say reading one line forwards and the next line backwards, as a farmer would work a field. Such a method would not only emphasize the agricultural nature of the square but also allow a more lyrical reading and could be very loosely translated thus: “as ye sow, so shall ye reap.”
“Early fire regulations from the German state of Thuringia stated that a certain number of these magical frisbees must be kept at the ready to stop town blazes.”
Sator Square with A O in chi format.
There are multiple translations and theories surrounding Sator Squares. They became the focus for intense academic debate about 150 years ago. Most of the early studies assumed that they were Christian in origin. The earliest known examples at that time appeared on 6th and 7th century Christian manuscripts and focussed on the Paternoster anagram contained within: by rearranging the letters, the Sator Square spells out Paternoster or ‘our father’, with the leftover A and O symbolizing the Alpha and the Omega.
However, in the 1920s and 30s, two Sator Squares were discovered within the ruins of Pompeii. The fatal eruption of Vesuvius that buried the city occurred in AD 79, and it is very unlikely that there were any Christians there so soon after Christ’s death. But the city did have a large Jewish community, and many contemporary scholars see the Jewish Tau symbol in the TENET cross of the palindrome, as well as other Talmudic references across the square, as proof of its Jewish origins. Pompeii’s Jews faced pogroms throughout their history, and it makes sense that they might try to hide an expression of their faith within a Roman word puzzle.
Sator Squares spread throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and appear in the margins of Christian manuscripts, in important treatises on magic, and in a medical book as a cure for dog-bites. Over time, they gained popularity amongst the poor as a folk remedy, even amongst those who had no knowledge of Latin or were even illiterate. (Being ignorant of meaning might increase the potency of the magic by concealing the essential gibberish of the script). In 16th century Lyon, France, a person was reportedly cured of insanity after eating three crusts of bread with the Sator Square written on them.
As the square traveled across time and country, nowhere was it used more enthusiastically than in Germany and parts of the Low Countries, where the words were etched onto wooden plates and thrown into fires to extinguish them. There are early fire regulations from the German state of Thuringia stating that a certain number of these magical frisbees must be kept at the ready to stop town blazes.
Oath Skull with Sator Square carved into bone.
From the same period comes a more sinister use of the square: The Oath Skull. Discovered in Münster in 2015 it is a human skull engraved with the Sator Square and radiocarbon dated between the 15th and 16th Centuries. It is believed to have been used by the Vedic Courts, a shadowy and ruthless court system that operated in Westphalia during that time. All proceedings of the courts were secret, even the names of judges were withheld, and death sentences were carried out by assassination or lynching. One of the few ways the accused could clear their names was by swearing an oath. Vedic courts used Oath Skulls as a means of underscoring the life-or-death nature of proceedings, and it is thought that the inclusion of the Sator Square on this skull added another level of mysticism - and the threat of eternal damnation - to the oath ritual.
When the poor of Europe headed for the New World, they took their beliefs with them. Sator Squares were used in the Americas until the late 19th century to treat snake bites, fight fires, and prevent miscarriages.
For 2000 years, interest in the Sator Squares has not waned, and a new generation has been exposed to them through the release of Christopher Nolan’s film TENET, named after the square. The film, about people who can move forwards and backwards in time, makes other references too: ‘Sator’ is the name of the arch villain played by Kenneth Branagh; ‘Arepo’ is the name of another character, a Spanish art forger whose paintings are kept in a vault protected by ‘Rotas Security’. In the film, ‘Tenet’ is the name of the intelligence agency that is fighting to keep the world from a temporal Armageddon.
Sator Squares have been described as history’s first meme. They have outlasted empires and nations, spreading across the western world and taking on newfound significance to each civilization that adopts them. Arepo should be proud of his work.
Ben Timberlake is an archaeologist who works in Iraq and Syria. His writing has appeared in Esquire, the Financial Times and the Economist. He is the author of 'High Risk: A True Story of the SAS, Drugs and other Bad Behaviour'.
Maeshowe, Sound, and Viking Runes (Artefact II)
Ben Timberlake March 5, 2024
Maeshowe is a Neolithic chambered burial complex on the Orkney Islands, an archipelago to the north of Scotland that is a floating world of midnight suns and brutal, dark winters. The tomb overlooks the Lochs of Harry and Stenness. On the narrow spit of land that separates the two lochs is The Ring of Brodgar, an ancient stone circle. It is nothing to look at from the outside - bored sheep munching salty grass on a small mound — but inside is one of the finest prehistoric monuments in the world…
WUNDERKAMMER #2
Artefact No: 2
Location: Maeshow, Orkney Islands, Scotland
Age: 5,000 years
Ben Timberlake March 27, 2024
Maeshowe is a Neolithic chambered burial complex on the Orkney Islands, an archipelago to the north of Scotland that is a floating world of midnight suns and brutal, dark winters. The tomb overlooks the Lochs of Harry and Stenness. On the narrow spit of land that separates the two lochs is The Ring of Brodgar, an ancient stone circle. It is nothing to look at from the outside - bored sheep munching salty grass on a small mound — but inside is one of the finest prehistoric monuments in the world.
The tomb’s structure is cruciform: a long passageway some 15m long, a central chamber, with three side-chambers. The main passageway is orientated to the southwest. Building began on the site around 2800BC. It is a work of monumental perfection: each wall of the long passageway is formed of single slabs up to three tons in weight; each corner of the main chamber has four vast standing stones; and the floors, walls and ceilings of the side-chambers are made from single stones. Smaller, long, thin slabs make up the rest of the masonry. They are fitted with unfussy but masterful precision in the local sandstone. It is even more impressive when you realize that these stones were cut and shaped thousands of years before the invention of metal tools. It is estimated to have taken 100,000 hours of labor to construct.
The interior chamber of Maeshowe, illuminated by the sun of the Winter Solstice.
Maeshowe sits within one of the richest prehistoric landscapes in Europe. The four principal sites are two stone circles - the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness - Maeshowe and the perfectly preserved Neolithic village of Skara Brae. These sites are within a further constellation of a dozen Neolithic and Bronze Age mounds, and other solitary standing stones.
Aligned within this landscape like a vast sundial, Maeshowe is sighted so as to tell the time just once a year, at midwinter. For a couple of weeks at either side of the winter solstice the sun sets to the southwest and the rays of the run enter down the long passage and illuminate the wall at the back of the end chamber. And this midwinter sun, at the zenith of its year, sets perfectly above the Barnhouse Stone some 700m away. The spectacle can be viewed live online every year.
Maeshowe and its sister sites are open to the public and well worth a visit. Because of their remote location they get a fraction of the visitor numbers similar sites receive. There is something deeply penitential about a visit there. The long passage is only a meter and a half tall and archaeologists believe it was designed this way to force people to bow and submit as they walked towards the center of the complex.
The Barnhouse Stone, on the left, aligns perfectly with the entrance to Maeshow, the mound on the right, so that on the day of midwinter, the sun sets above the stone and into the entrance to Maestowe.
“The frequency for Maeshowe was a drum being beaten at 2hz creating an infrasonic frequency that, although inaudible to us, could be felt as a physical or psychological sensations such as dizziness, raised heartbeat, and flying sensations. And that’s before we factor in the drugs.”
As much as Maeshowe is a place of the dead, it is also a temple to sound. Dr Aaron Watson, an honorary fellow from Exeter University, spent a number of years researching the effects of sound at different prehistoric sites. He found that specific pitches of vocal chants and different types of drumming could produce strange, amplified sound effects known as ‘standing waves’. These are very distinct areas of high and low intensity which seem to bear no relation to the source of the sound. In the case of Maeshowe, a drummer in the central chamber could be muted to those standing nearby but the sound would be vastly magnified in the side chambers. The acoustics are so powerful that the Neolithic builders must have known what they were doing when they built the structure. A recessed niche in one of the tunnel walls allowed a large stone to be dragged into the passageway blocking the passage and amplifying the sound.
Even more impressively was the possibility that Maeshowe displayed elements of the Helmholtz Effect - a phenomenon of air resonance in a cavity - but on a much larger scale. The frequency for Maeshowe was a drum being beaten at 2hz creating an infrasonic frequency that, although inaudible to us, could be felt as a physical or psychological sensations such as dizziness, raised heartbeat, and flying sensations. And that’s before we factor in the drugs. These European prehistoric societies made ample use of regular magic mushrooms and the red-and-white spotted Fly Agaric. To the Neolithic visitors the acoustics effects of Maeshowe alone must have been powerful but to combined with hallucinations it must have been one of the most profound and life changing experiences of their lives.
The tomb was rediscovered in 1861. I write ‘rediscovered’ because when the Victorian antiquarians began to clear soil and debris from the inner chambers, they came across evidence that they were not the first ones there since prehistoric times: the walls were adorned with Viking runes.
We have a very good idea who these Vikings were thanks to the Orkneyinga Saga, a medieval narrative history document woven through and embellished with myths. There appear to be two sets of culprits. Firstly, in 1151, a group of Viking Crusaders led by Earl Rognvald on their way to the Holy Land. Then, a couple years later - Christmas 1153 to be precise - a band of Viking looters on a raid led by Earl Harald.
The Norse traditionally held such ancient places with dread and it is not known what drove them to risk their mortal souls and enter the mound: a terrible storm is mentioned, but it may have been the legends of treasure too. The saga records that two of the Earl Rognvald’s men went mad with fear of the mythical Hogboon, from Old Norse hiagbui, or mound-dweller.
There are some 30 runes in Maeshowe, the largest collection outside Scandinavia. Here is a sample:
Crusaders broke into Maeshowe. Lif the earl's cook carved these runes. To the north-west is a great treasure hidden. It was long ago that a great treasure was hidden here. Happy is he that might find that great treasure.
Ofram, the son of Sigurd carved these runes.
Haermund Hardaxe carved these runes.
Thatir the weary Viking came here.
Ingigerth is the most beautiful of all women (carved beside a picture of a slavering dog).
Thorni fucked. Helgi carved.
All too often historians and archaeologists concern themselves with official inscriptions left by kings and emperors and other fevered egos but I don’t think that anything quite says ‘Look on my works ye mighty and despair’ than a Viking warrior getting laid and then recording it on the rock of ages with his axe.
Ben Timberlake is an archaeologist who works in Iraq and Syria. His writing has appeared in Esquire, the Financial Times and the Economist. He is the author of 'High Risk: A True Story of the SAS, Drugs and other Bad Behaviour'.
La Pasiega Cave Paintings (Artefact I)
Ben Timberlake February 15, 2024
The first artefact in our wunderkammer, or cabinet of wonders, is wonder itself. It is an abstract sign of red ochre, painted deep in the cave of La Pasiega in Cantabria, Northern Spain.
It dated to over 64,000 years ago. It is amongst the earliest examples of art that we know. There are earlier claims to the first aesthetic act. Flint tools from 200,000 years ago whose balance and grace go beyond their utilitarian function. Pierced shells that may have been the first body adornments. A cross-hatched piece of red-ochre 73,000 years old recently found in South Africa…
WUNDERKAMMER #1
Artefact No: 1
Description: Entoptic Phenomena, Red Ochre Symbol
Location: La Pasiega Cave, Cantabria, Spain
Age: 64,000 years
Ben Timberlake February 15, 2024
The first artefact in our wunderkammer, or cabinet of wonders, is wonder itself.
It is an abstract sign of red ochre, painted deep in the cave of La Pasiega in Cantabria, Northern Spain. It dated to over 64,000 years ago. It is amongst the earliest examples of art that we know.
There are earlier claims to the first aesthetic act. Flint tools from 200,000 years ago whose balance and grace go beyond their utilitarian function. Pierced shells that may have been the first body adornments. A cross-hatched piece of red-ochre 73,000 years old recently found in South Africa.
A close-up photo and drawing of the panel with the ladder-motif. Later artists added the cascading dots, the enigmatic symbol to the right, and even the hindquarters of an animal within the centre square.
But these are examples of more art-in-work rather than a true work of art and none have the sheer beauty and sophistication of this symbol. 64,000 years ago someone chose to take this sign, which until then existed only inside their head, and paint it on the cave wall. This creative act - the earliest demonstration of the ability to use, interpret and respond to symbols - is one of the key defining traits of the modern mind, of the very essence of what it is to be human. It is pure artistic expression. It is an act so perfectly useless as to be sacred.
Symbols like this are known as entoptic phenomena (literally ‘within vision’) that occur somewhere between the retina and the brain. You might see them in their most basic forms now if you close your eyes: tiny pinpricks of red snow, phosphenes, and random meteora. Some are caused by implosions of dying proteins within the eye’s rod-cells, others by static within the ophthalmic nerve’s wiring, or at the processing centre of the visual cortex.
“This creative act - the earliest demonstration of the ability to use, interpret and respond to symbols - is one of the key defining traits of the modern mind, of the very essence of what it is to be human. It is pure artistic expression. It is an act so perfectly useless as to be sacred.”
We don’t know exactly how or why these symbols are produced within our vision. We do know that they increase in number and gain in complexity if we put our minds and bodies through stress: tough rituals or religious ordeals, sleep deprivation, extreme exertion, fasting, drumming, dancing, sweat lodges, trauma, or drugs. All humans appear to be neurologically hardwired to see entoptic phenomena, and they occur universally within the earliest art, regardless of time and culture.
The red sign in the picture is a basic ladder motif. Other common motifs might include lines of dots, concentric circles, zig-zags, and diamond patterns. Sometimes they remind me of the earliest single-celled lifeforms and in many ways that is what they are: the first sparks of imagination, the protean beginnings of art and culture.
The archaeologist David Lewis-Williams wrote a paper called ‘The Signs of All Times,’ that looked at entoptic phenomena in rock art from across the world. He proposed that there are three stages to these hallucinations: the basic entoptic phenomena, then the ‘construal stage’ when the brain tries to make sense of the images, and finally the Deep Trance stage.
In the Construal Stage, our brains rely on previous experiences and culture to interpret these minor hallucinations: a line of dots may be seen by one person as a snake and another as a flight of birds. Environment is key: a San Bushman doesn’t hallucinate a polar bear and an Inuit doesn’t dream an eland.
Between the second and third stages is something known as the vortex. Once again, this visual theme appears across many different cultures and periods. It is a buckling of the visual field and a collapse of reality that tapers into a singular point. In rock art this is represented in a number of ways, ladder symbols may multiply into elaborate lattices which begin to form a funnel. Or lines of dots may converge into a crack in the cave wall. In San rock art this is sometimes represented as a swarm of bees entering their hive.
Through and beyond the vortex, in the final stage of Deep Trance, our brains splice animals with human forms to create therianthropes. Again, these types of hallucinations are universal but the form they take is local: a Palaeolithic hunter imagines a reindeer man; an ancient Greek creates a goat-man or satyr; a medieval sailor sees a mermaid.
The cave of La Pasiega contains all three stages. Its passages are richly painted with a huge variety of abstract symbols: ladder motifs, dotted lines, claviform shapes, triangles, polygons, and tectiforms. Then there is a wild bestiary: an exquisite deer in red, engraved horses, black ibexes and a bold stylised bison. And human motifs too: vulvas, and hand motifs. And lastly a combination of human and animal: a red human figure with black horns and dotted black mane, a Minotaur of sorts, at the heart of this eerie and ancient labyrinth.
But here comes the kicker. The art in this cave has been known to archaeologists for decades, and for all of this time we understood it to be the work of modern man, Homo sapiens. Rock art is very hard to date accurately. Sometimes we can roughly attribute pieces of art to certain periods stylistically. Other times, if there is charcoal present or other organic substances, we can use Carbon-14 dating. But much of the art in La Pasiega is made with mineral pigments that defy this type of dating.
Recently an international team of archaeologists sought to sidestep this problem by using uranium-thorium dating on small calcite concretions covering part of the ladder symbol. As rainwater leaches through the soil above the cave it picks up mineral traces, including uranium, which drip into the cave system below, forming stalagmites and stalactites, some of which cover the art. The uranium is trapped in this mineral veneer and - because uranium decays at a set rate into thorium- measuring how much of either element is present provides an accurate date for the formation. Anything below the layer must be older.
The uranium-thorium dates took the team by surprise because 64,000 years ago we know of only one species of human in Europe and it wasn’t us; it was our ancient cousins the Neanderthals, who we had always assumed weren’t capable of creating such art. Despite still being a byword for oafish savagery Neanderthals have recently been shown to bury their dead with care, use medicinal plants for their ills, and harness complex technology. In their paper in Science the team concluded that Neanderthals and early modern humans were cognitively indistinguishable. Alistair Pike, who was part of the team, said, “What we’ve got here is a smoking gun that really overturns the notion that Neanderthals were knuckle-dragging cavemen”. If creativity is what defines humans, then Neanderthals are us too.
In the West nowadays, we still reference entoptic phenomena in popular culture. And like our ancestors we use our environment and life experiences to make sense of these images: drawing stars or rings of tweety-birds around cartoon characters who have received a knock on the head, zig-zags or lightning bolts in association with stress or anger, or use halos or a lightbulb to signify those who have received illumination.
These sparks of wonder have been with us since our earliest days. We’ve come a long way together. And that’s how I hope you will think about this strange red image: not as something ancient within a distant cave, but living and within you now.
Ben Timberlake is an archaeologist who works in Iraq and Syria. His writing has appeared in Esquire, the Financial Times and the Economist. He is the author of 'High Risk: A True Story of the SAS, Drugs and other Bad Behaviour'.