Artist and writer, or writer and artist. Sometimes other things, too.
Tag: ontology
A delightfully nihilistic quote attributed to physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the main architects of the Manhattan Project and of the first atomic weapons, although it’s probably apocryphal. It seems to originate in French from Michel Houllebecq’s book H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. The English translation of Houllebecq actually mentions in a footnote that the quote is untraceable.
Houllebecq is, shall we say, a not uncontroversial writer who may conceivably be projecting his own profound misanthropy and negativity onto Oppenheimer; Lovecraft’s, too. Even so, it’s in character for a man who made it possible for the human race to render itself and most other life on the planet totally extinct within a matter of minutes.
It’s also in character for Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. “The first ten million…
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Ars Moriendi(The Art of Dying) was a book that appeared in many editions across medieval Europe. This image is from a block-book edition, i.e. the words and pictures were each carved on the same wooden blocks instead of the text being set in futuristic movable type. The demons appear to be tempting the man with visions of a new 1465 model executive horse, a nice hat, a big house with glass in the windows, and a wine cellar… though surely they’re too late if he’s on his death bed already? Step into my office, imps of Satan; your efficiency and the timeliness of your communications are severely lacking.
Seven hundred years on, this is looking a bit Muppety to me and reminding me of Labyrinth, especially the profoundly unscary demons. If David Bowie’s Goblin King get up of tights, codpiece and joke shop wig were shown here, that
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Alistair Gentry 