Photo with 93 notes
Untitled by Jacques-André Boiffard, 1930
From L’Amour fou : Photography and Surrealism (Rosalind Krauss, Jane Livingston, Dawn Ades, 1985)
“The division of the universe into subterranean hell and a perfectly pure heaven is an indelible conception, mud and darkness being the principles of evil as light and celestial space are the principles of good: with their feet in the mud but their heads somewhat approaching the light, men obstinately imagine a tide that will elevate them, never to return, into pure space. Human life entails, in fact, the rage of seeing oneself as a back and forth movement from refuse to ideal, and from the ideal to refuse - a rage that is easily directed against an organ as base as the foot.”
— Georges Bataille, The Big Toe
Photo with 37 notes
Aux abattoirs de la Villette by Eli Lotar, 1929 (from Documents)
“For every accessible reality, in each being, you have to find the place of sacrifice, the wound. A being can only be touched at the point where it yields: a woman under her dress, a god on the throat of the animal sacrificed.”
— Georges Bataille, Le Coupable, 1944
Quote with 55 notes
I challenge any art lover to love a canvas as much as a fetishist loves a shoe.
Photo reblogged from Regard Intemporel with 380 notes
Jacques-André Boiffard - Papier collant et mouches, 1930
Photo with 37 notes
Hans Bellmer, Donna dalle braccia articolate, 1965
“A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but begins to give their tasks. Thus formless is not only an adjective having a given meaning, but a term that serves to bring things down in the world, generally requiring that each thing have its form. What it designates has no rights in any sense and gets itself squashed everywhere, like a spider or an earthworm. In fact, for academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or a spit.”
— Georges Bataille, “Formless” - Documents 1, Paris, 1929