Drawing Hands (1948) by MC Escher.
• New music: The World In Layers by mōshonsensu; The Rest Is My Ghost by Lawrence English; Rotostyles by Julien Ash & M.Nomized.
• At Public Domain Review: “The Persian Mâr-Nâmeh or, The Book for Taking Omens from Snakes” (1892).
• At Little White Lies: Sam Moore writes in praise of Hiroshi Teshigahara, “surveyor of the abyss”.
Paradoxically, art is useful only if it is allowed to remain entirely useless—that is, entirely free to go where it will. Wilde finds an ally here in Baudelaire, who followed his observation of the strangeness of the beautiful with a sharp rebuke to those who would subordinate artistic beauty to a utilitarian logic. Baudelaire asks:
“How could this necessary, irreducible, and infinitely varied strangeness…ever be controlled, amended, and corrected by Utopian rules conceived in some little scientific temple or other on this planet, without mortal danger to art itself?”
The privileging of utility over uselessness, of work over play, is the death of art—and the death of the given world in which our utilitarian spirit must be grounded if it is to have purpose and meaning.
JF Martel explores the ways in which art invented humanity
• Old music: Visions Of Sodal Ye by Mar-Vista.
• RIP Bill Oddie and Raoul Vaneigem.
• Martyn Ware’s favourite albums.
• Snake Rag (1923) by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band | Ananta Snake Dance (1980) by Suns Of Arqa | Snakes Crawl (1980) by Bush Tetras