Wednesday, March 02, 2005
This news is coming in a little late, but I think I've only just had time and presence of mind to reflect on it today. Polish painter of the bizarre and macabre Zdzislaw Beksinski was murdered last week, stabbed to death. The story is here. The news was passed along to me by Richard Kirk, otherwise, I likely wouldn't know.
(Zdzislaw Beksinski, 1929-2005)
4:45 PM
Comments:
Zdzislaw Beksinski (1929-2005)
Zdzislaw Beksinski and his art were not only shaped by, but transcended the brutal juggernaut of the modern world of whom he was inextricably a part.
Now, he has become a victim of it. And it devastates me.
A towering figure in the world of art, the only other masters whose names could be spoken of in the same breath were Dr. Ernst Fuchs or Brueghel.
Beksinski's apocalyptic nightmare landscapes and cathedrals of the damned were the Real McCoy - true surrealist art in its apotheosis. His work was a stark yet sublime Totentanz, mist-shrouded and surcharged with vast mysteries and intimate morbidities, the breeze always whispering with a heavy sigh, hinting at the raw gristle of terror lurking beneath the poetics of despair.
It fills me with rage to contemplate how our world has been flensed of genius once again by the coarse and blunted minds, the common, garden-variety assholes. We may have been robbed of his extraordinary visions, but his work shall always remain before us, hovering just out of reach, perpetually inspiring us. We should take some solace in that, if nothing else.
Zdzislaw, my only hope is that, in death, you've finally found the peace that has always eluded you in life.
Ave et vale, Frater,
Curt Chiarelli
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Zdzislaw Beksinski and his art were not only shaped by, but transcended the brutal juggernaut of the modern world of whom he was inextricably a part.
Now, he has become a victim of it. And it devastates me.
A towering figure in the world of art, the only other masters whose names could be spoken of in the same breath were Dr. Ernst Fuchs or Brueghel.
Beksinski's apocalyptic nightmare landscapes and cathedrals of the damned were the Real McCoy - true surrealist art in its apotheosis. His work was a stark yet sublime Totentanz, mist-shrouded and surcharged with vast mysteries and intimate morbidities, the breeze always whispering with a heavy sigh, hinting at the raw gristle of terror lurking beneath the poetics of despair.
It fills me with rage to contemplate how our world has been flensed of genius once again by the coarse and blunted minds, the common, garden-variety assholes. We may have been robbed of his extraordinary visions, but his work shall always remain before us, hovering just out of reach, perpetually inspiring us. We should take some solace in that, if nothing else.
Zdzislaw, my only hope is that, in death, you've finally found the peace that has always eluded you in life.
Ave et vale, Frater,
Curt Chiarelli
