Eyes

Banger cormorant eye footage today 🪶

centre for useless splendour

if you need me, I'll be here

Many cadres of the Front National during its first 40 years of existence were ex-OAS. Pierre Sergent got to sit at the Assemblée Nationale. Louis de Condé, who literally took part in the Petit-Clamart attack, became a local FN leader.
Jean-Marie Le Pen personally tortured Algerians during the war.

Today is my birthday and if you wanted to get me a gift, feel free to share my work 😊 🦊 🐟

A clear-furred feral kitten atop a low wall in the foreground. Seashore in the background. The picture was taken moments before sunset, hence the waning light.

The most recent on my camera roll is from five months back. I don't meet enough cats.

Can't, I'm being sucked in again

Homemade comics. First panel: Mulder walks in the sewer, spits a sunflower seed shell. Second panel: we see that Mulder is being followed by Donatello (the turtle) Third panel : Donatello holds a sunflower seed: "EATING SEEDS AS A PASTIME ACTIVITY ?!!?)

Three more panels: First: a liquid is seen oozing from pipes running on the ceiling: "hasn't this dude..." Second: a drop of liquid hits a su flower seed on the sewers ground: "been warned about..." Third: a mutant sunflower with sharp teeth stands menacingly: "THE TOCICITY OF OUR CITY ????"

Special agent Fox Mulder investigates sightings of katana-wielding mutant turtles in the sewers of New York.

Beetle medieval marginalia over musical symbols.

Green bottle fly medieval marginalia. Some musical symbols.

Dragonfly medieval marginalia. The text above it contains the french words "comme" and "homme".

Mite medieval marginalia, from the pointy part of the heart.

The book of love has music in it
In fact that's where music comes from
Some pages have pictures of insects
Some pages are just really dumb

(Pictures from the "chansonnier cordiforme", a 15th century heart-shaped songbook)

A mob of pitchfork-wielding villagers chases away a giant anthropomorphic vulture in a woodcut by Goya.

It's giving

A young girl wearing a penguin-themed shirt proudly shows the soapbox car she's built. The soapbox car is shaped like a fat penguin.

Three fauns, two male, one female, embrace each other. The faun in the middle is eating a bunch of tulips handed to him by the female faun.

"I built a fat penguin" + "Bi faun eating tulip"

Amateurish ballpoint pen drawing of a table with a tuba, a lute, sheet music, a coffee pot, a coffee mug, some figs, a jar of fig preserve, a panini stuffed with figs and fig preserve.

Presenting: "Tuba, lute, fig panini"
Coming soon: "I built a fat penguin"

Saw this skeet this morning and thought, what if I based my next drawings on anagrams of "beautiful painting"?
So here is "Flute in a pig in a tub"

The next one, "Tuba, lute, fig panini" will be less topical.

I hate this shit so much man

The quote is from an article on Nerval written by Théophile Gautier in 1867. Translation by me.

Gérard de Nerval's eyes from a photograph by Félix Nadar. The photograph was taken less than a year before Nerval's death, which occured on this day in 1855.

"he lost the concepts of real and imaginary, and jumped from reason into that which we call madness, and which may merely be a state where the soul, being more intensely stimulated, perceives invisible connections, unnoticed coincidences, and enjoys spectacles which elude the material eye"

📷 Nadar

Amateurish drawing of a seahorse next to an amateurish drawing of Danton's head (based on a sketch by David)

Unginished drawing of a man holding a baby in his arm while his wife Þórunn Jóhannsdóttir holds a paper tissue to the baby's nose so that he can blow into it. Based on a photograph by Hugo van Gelderen.

Me: I've taken up drawing.
Friend: What do you draw?
Me: You know, the usual stuff: seahorses, Danton, that time in '63 when Vladimir Ashkenazy's baby upstaged his father during a photo op in Amsterdam...

A woman's head, voluptuously tilted back. In the fog that embraces her, one can make out a vaporous face: a brow, a nose, a cheek. Two pools of darkness form the eyes, which are looking straight into the woman's face. As for the foggy figure's mouth, it seems to be kissing Io's right cheek. Stendhal, who was #botd in 1783, had a particular fondness for Corregio's work.

"Those lovely eyes, in which was revealed the most profound boredom, and, what was worse still, a despair of finding any pleasure, came to rest upon Julien. At any rate, he was not exactly like all the rest."

Stendhal, "The Red and the Black", Scott-Moncrieff's translation

🖼️ Corregio, Jupiter & Io

Macron with a bloodshot right eye.

He had a bloodshot eye.

The letter to his grandmother. He extends his wishes to his aunts and uncles, and expresses sympathy for the one aunt who has lost her dog. The writing is neat, with perfect spacing.

The letter to Ernest Chevalier, who was a year older than him. The writing is much less neat, with words crossed out, crooked lines, poor spacing etc... After opening with the "New Year is dumb comment", he goes on to comment on La Fayette's retirement, says he has written liberal political speeches which he promises to send to Ernest, writes about the two kids' dreams of becoming writers: "I will write comedies and you will write your dreams"

These two letters were written on the 30th (left) and 31st (right) of December 1830 by a nine-year-old Flaubert.
The first one is for his grandmother: "I hasten to fulfil my duty by wishing you a happy New Year..."
The second one is for his friend: "You are right to say that New Year is dumb."

From Maupassant's 1883 short story "Décoré !" (Decorated!). My translation.

From "Odysseus" (1987), a multimedia show created by the Laterna Magika in Prague. Members of Odysseus's crew (wearing tight white pants) are played by real actors on a platform hanging above the stage, while the terrifying eye of Polyphemus is projected on a screen at the back of the stage.

"The first was: "The Instruction of Children Through the Eyes". He wanted free theatres to be established in the poor parts of Paris for small children. Taken there by their parents at the earliest age, they would receive, by means of a magic lantern, all the elementary pieces of human knowledge."

Saint E.T.ienne

"Young Thracian Woman Holding Orpheus's Head" is painting where a young woman of Thracian origins holds the severed head of Orpheus. Totoro stands beside her because I thought it would be funny, which I'm only now realising it isn't.

Well then you're definitely not ready for Totoro in a Moreau.

"30 ans ou la Vie en Rose" (30 years or Life in Pink") depicts the corner of a room with pink floral wallpaper, and a table with a rose bouquet on it. I added Daffy Duck next to the table.

What about Daffy in a Dufy, ever heard of that?

La Partie Carrée (The Foursome) by Antoine Watteau. It shows two women and two men dressed for a ball. They're in a park, at night. Watto from Star Wars is also there, flying five feet above the ground, because I added him, for a dumb "elf on a shelf" pun.

Ever heard of Watto in a Watteau ?
I thought not.

Gaston depuys les troys iusques à cinq ans feut nourry et institué en toute discipline convenente par le commandement de son père, et celluy son temps passa comme les petitz enfans du pais, c’est assavoir à boyre, manger, & dormir, à manger, dormir, & boyre, & dormir, boyre, & manger.

A dish made with eel, leeks and black olives used to be a staple of Xmas eve dinner in Martigues ("le gros souper", as this dinner is know in Provence, is traditionnaly meatless). Though there are no more eels in the area since the 1860s, the recipe of the "Anguille de la veille de Noël" is not lost

ORESTE Tel est de mon amour l'aveuglement funeste. Vous le savez, Madame, et le destin d'Oreste Est de venir sans cesse adorer vos attraits, Et de jurer toujours qu'il n'y viendra jamais. Je sais que vos regards vont rouvrir mes blessures, Que tous mes pas vers vous sont autant de parjures, Je le sais ; j'en rougis. Mais j'atteste les dieux, Témoins de la fureur de mes derniers adieux, Que j'ai couru partout, où ma perte certaine Dégageait mes serments, et finissait ma peine. J'ai mendié la mort chez des peuples cruels Qui n'apaisaient leurs dieux que du sang des mortels : Ils m'ont fermé leur temple, et ces peuples barbares De mon sang prodigué sont devenus avares. Enfin je viens à vous; et je me vois réduit À chercher dans vos yeux une mort qui me fuit. Mon désespoir n'attend que leur indifférence, Ils n'ont qu'à m'interdire un reste d'espérance. Ils n'ont pour avancer cette mort où je cours, Qu'à me dire une fois ce qu'ils m'ont dit toujours. Voilà depuis un an le seul soin qui m'anime. Madame, c'est à vous de prendre une victime, Que les Scythes auraient dérobée à vos coups, Si j'en avais trouvé d'aussi cruels que vous. HERMIONE Quittez, Seigneur, quittez ce funeste langage. À des soins plus pressants la Grèce vous engage.

The whole Cocteau drawing. Oreste appears to be kneeling, he has one hand up, as if appealing to the heavens. The hand in question, like the rest of his body, ils made of cones and pipes (like that of a church organ)

My translation. From "Andromaque", act 2, scene 2.
I tried to make it rhyme, but promptly gave up. You can read the tirade in the original rhyming French below.

Orestes's tragic face, as drawn by Cocteau while he was struggling with opium addiction. The face is an assemblage of cones. The mouth is at the base of a cone, and so are the eyes.

At last I come to you, expecting nothing but
To find inside your eyes a death that eludes me.
My despair wants only for their indifference,
They need only forbid a remainder of hope.
For my race towards death to end sooner they need
Only to tell me once what they've told me always.

Racine

🖼️Cocteau

The part of the poem from which the quote is from: Pensif, j'entraînais loin des crimes, Des dieux, des rois, de la douleur, Ce sombre cheval des abîmes Vers le pré de l'idylle en fleur. Je le tirais vers la prairie Où l'aube, qui vient s'y poser, Fait naître l'églogue attendrie Entre le rire et le baiser. C'est là que croît, dans la ravine Où fuit Plaute, où Racan se plaît, L'épigramme, cette aubépine, Et ce trèfle, le triolet. C'est là que l'abbé Chaulieu prêche, Et que verdit sous les buissons Toute cette herbe tendre et fraîche Où Segrais cueille ses chansons. Le cheval luttait; ses prunelles, Comme le glaive et l'yatagan, Brillaient. Il secouait ses ailes Avec des souffles d'ouragan. Il voulait retourner au gouffre; Il reculait, prodigieux, Ayant dans ses naseaux le soufre Et l'âme du monde en ses yeux. Il hennissait vers l'invisible, Il appelait l'ombre au secours. A ses appels, le ciel terrible Remuait des tonnerres sourds.

My lazy translation, from "The Horse" (see below for the original French)