Category Archives: Valdehouse

Hunger (2008), Bobby Sands

Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands, 5:07 minute clip ( IMDb )

Bror Ivar ska försvinna, kanske för alltid, IGEN!!!!!!!11

(detta inlägg har godkänts av min bror, Ivar Lethin)

”Ivar”, 2006, 28cm x 33cm, blyerts på papper

Imorgon åker min bror iväg för att under tre månader studera klassisk tantrisk yoga. Under trekvarts år har han lagt undan en tredjedel av sin inkomst för detta ändamål, vilket är högst beundransvärt med tanke på att han endast jobbar 75% som busschaufför och därför erhåller en ynklig lön.

Han vill undersöka huruvida det är möjligt att frigöra sinnet från präglingar och föreställningar som förvränger hur han upplever livet. Han känner sig förvirrad av, och är inte helt överens med vad som blivit ett otympligt redskap genom vilket han förnimmer verkligheten. Han tror att klassisk Yoga är en lära som kan hjälpa honom integrera kropp och sinne på ett harmoniskt sätt och så närma sig en frigörelse.

Han ska genomgå ”Tremånaders Sadhana retreat” på Håå Kursgård, som ligger i södra Småland.

kanske det sista kaffet någonsin

Intressant är hur Ivar från vänner och anhöriga (däribland mig) mötts av skepsis inför sitt företag. Det framförs oro för att han ska vilseledas och utnyttjas. Grunden till oron finns främst i ett av villkoren för deltagande i kursen.

”Vi ber dig meddela dina anhöriga att du inte kommer att ha någon brevväxling och att det inte är möjligt att ringa till dig eller besöka dig under kursen – och att du inte heller kommer att kontakta dem.”

Jag kan se det framför mig; det kommer bli mynta, lavendel, eteriska oljor och hjärntvättning på Ivars lilla stjärt. Fingrar i anus, ormhufvudsknopar genom tarmsystemet, och namnbyte. De kommer raka av honom håret och få honom att tro att han är värdelös.

Nä men seriöst, man kan nog förvänta sig att Ivar i april kommer återvända som en förändrad person. Jag kan i skrivande stund inte förneka att jag faktiskt känner en viss sorg över att vi tillsammans kanske aldrig igen kommer finna nöje i prata bajs och/eller moderater …*snyft*… men, thus is life. The times they are a-changin’. Och hey, a rolling stone gathers no moss!
Inte heller jag kommer vara densamme om tre månader. Utöver mina vanliga fascistiska förehavanden går jag kanske helt hokus pokus. Jag blir utan Ivars dagliga negativa inflytande. Det kanske blir andningsövningar, positiva mantran och huvudstående. När fan ska folk oroa sig för MIG??!

Nej, seriöst, av två anledningar är vi oroliga över Ivars framtid:

1. Vi är naturligt rädda för förändring hos vänner. Det hotar sammanhållning och trygghet in da clan.

2. Vi tjänar en och endast en Gud – den monetära guden. Vi är kapitalister, och det är svårt att se hur Ivars personliga resa ska kunna gagna degen. Vad ska han överhuvudtaget ut på äventyr för när hans framtida plats i ekorrhjulet så endast blir mer svårdefinierad?

Dessa anledningar blir om man förmår erkänna äkthet i stort ointressanta och bör alltså lämnas därhän.

“Stenbron”, 2006, 49cm x 64cm, olja på duk

Jag har själv haft fördel av att kunna prata med Ivar om hans val och framtidsplaner. Min tilltro bär måhända ingen ansenlig tyngd, men detta är min blagg och jag tänker kort formulera den era värderingar till trots – Jag litar på att detta kommer visa sig värdefullt för Ivar, så till den grad att jag avundas honom. Det är i vårt samhälle få förunnat att kunna ta sig för det han nu gör. Om det ordningen stör, kör.

Jag känner trygghet. Min förhoppning är den att man i april äntligen för första gången kommer kunna föra en vettig dialog med Ivve.

Fridens lilja, Ivar, fridens lilja!

A Woolgathering Exodus

Directed by Church & Steak. Featured on PitchforkTV, XLR8R, and Stereogum.

Church & Steak is a film collective founded by Josh Lowman and Rinee Shah.

pioulard.com
churchandsteak.com

World Champions of Painting – Karin Mamma Andersson

First post in a series of three, four or five. Go HERE for the introduction.

The reigning champion of the world, the no. 1 painter, all categories:

Karin Mamma Andersson

Yes, that’s Mamma as in mama.

Foto: Mikael Olsson

As a painter this mother simply is the best practitioner alive. She is experimental, free, creative, certain and humorous. She is every hackneyed cliché adjective that comes to mind when discussing The Greats of our kind.
Hers is love both motherly and otherworldly.
However embarrassing this is to me, since I do have American readers I feel obliged to point out that Andersson’s paintings aren’t trying to impress on anyone. Dear friends, there can be great opportunity in regarding a work of art expressing the human condition as it is, without buttercream and powdered sugar frosting.
Her voice originates from hard knock rural Sweden; still it more than holds its own universally.

“We Work so Closely Without Even Knowing It”, 2005, 160cm x 128cm, acrylic and oil on two panels

On scrutinizing her paint application Andersson’s self certainty and extensive experience become all too apparent to the eye in the know. There’s no evidence of fear. The paint surface in places appears agonizingly alien yet at the same time simple and childish, invigorating. In a very playful but controlled manner she draws full advantage of the paint.
Mind you, her oeuvre is nothing for the light of heart. While some are left dumbfounded by Andersson’s work, spectators willing to really confront her imagery are left all the wiser. You’re confused, you’re spellbound, and you’re reminded of how fortunate you really are.

“Travelling in the Family”, 2003, 122cm x 92cm, acrylic and oil on panel

Her expression is at once very brusque and dainty.
In her imagery she ingeniously makes man’s horrible and fathomless darkness graspable and venial.
Andersson represents the final frontier of Swedish Memento Mori. Her imagery echoes that of the late Ingmar Bergman. Profound and proud but with a subtle whiff of ‘fuck you’. We’re moving into territory where Sweden with the rest of Scandinavia has long proven a somewhat lonely force. Leave this rocky north and you find everything slightly more shallow and stinky.
As did Andersson’s peers she presents a pictorial depth that by far surpasses the obvious boundaries of her medium. We’re invited to follow multi-layered narratives; motifs of a world distant yet immediately present.

“In the Room of Another”, 2002, 81cm x 64cm, oil on panel

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her in person. She held a lecture / a presentation of her work at an art school I was attending during the autumn of 2001. I remember her as being funny and beautifully human in person. In addition to that, I once saw a photo of her tits.

“The Best Storyteller 1”, 2005, 122cm x 80cm, acrylic and oil on panel

The subject of the unchallenged dominance of Karin Mamma Andersson lends itself poorly to blagging. I assure you this is not just another case of me being a crappy writer or not knowing what I’m talking about. I am a master painter, and I haven’t often lacked insight into any topic. To prove my point I’d like to encourage you to look up anything written about the work of Andersson; you’ll see everything fails miserably at doing her justice. No one comes even remotely close to expressing a valid comment on even one of her canvases. Suck it.

Karin Mamma Andersson. Nuff sayd.

Introduction to ‘World Champions of Painting’

In a series of three, four or five posts I will present to you the best pound for pound painters in the world today. You’ll get some of my humble thoughts on the three top players in this game of life and death. Each painter will be honoured with a blog post dedicated solely to her. I won’t be starting with the runners-up, but with the champion.

I shouldn’t write these if I didn’t beforehand communicate to you my conviction that this is all shit and disgraceful. We’re funnin’, we’re playin’, we are going through the motions. We’re reduced to putting a smiley face on our gross fall from grace. The Messiah died 350 years ago and there won’t be no resurrection.

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599-1660)
Even accomplished people mentioned in any context involving Velazquez fade into nothingness. Or rather, considering the fact that an entity like Velazquez has walked the earth renders all of this – this blagg, me, you, the entire human race, pointless. Anyone or anything that came after Velazquez, or anything before him for that matter, is nothing more than a shameful skeet of life / energy / existence or whatever you wish to call that which we are wasting in this cesspool of stool.
Velazquez was the beginning and the end. He represents the zenith of human achievement and purpose, and we are all mere afterbirth at increasing speed heading for the apocalypse.

However, we must move on. There shan’t be individual self-destruction. Sadly, it’s in our genes not to give up. We all come from a long line of survivors; baby-making survivors. We too must make babies, and blaggs. We’re having a barbeque and everyone’s got to chip in.

Today’s top ranked superstar painting overlords:

1. Karin Mamma Andersson

2. Banksy

3. Neo Rauch

I may or may not write something about a couple of runners-up:
James Jean, Golucho, Anselm Kiefer, Michael Borremans…

Stay tuned!

memento vivere

Morgenrot

film by Jeff Desom
music by Hauschka
Song issued from the album “Ferndorf” released by FatCat Records

The judge on war, excerpt from BLOOD MERIDIAN, Cormac McCarthy

Chapter 17, page 248

The judge cracked with the back of an axe the shinbone on an antelope and the hot marrow dripped smoking on the stones. They watched him. The subject was war.
The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, said the black.
The judge smiled, his face shining with grease. What right man would have it any other way? he said.
The good book does indeed count war en evil, said Irving. Yet there’s many a bloody tale of war inside it.
It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.
He turned to Brown, from whom he’d heard some whispered slur or demurrer. Ah Davy, he said. It’s your own trade we honor here. Why not rather take a small bow. Let each acknowledge each.
My trade?
Certainly.
What is my trade?
War. War is your trade. Is it not?
And it aint yours?
Mine too. Very much so.
What about all them notebooks and bones and stuff?
All other trades are contained in that of war.
Is that why war endures?
No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.
That’s your notion.
The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.
Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.
Brown studied the judge. You’re crazy Holden. Crazy at last.
The judge smiled.
Might does not make right, said Irving. The man that wins in some combat is not vindicated morally.
Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by an ultimate test. A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view. The willingness of the principals to forgo further argument as the triviality which it in fact is and to petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute clearly indicates of how little moment are the opinions and of what great moment the divergences thereof. For the argument is indeed trivial, but not so the separate wills thereby made manifest. Man’s vanity may well approach the infinite in capacity but his knowledge remains imperfect and howevermuch he comes to value his judgements ultimately he must submit them before a higher court. Here there can be no special pleading. Here are considerations of equity and rectitude and moral right rendered void and without warrant and here are the views of the litigants despised. Decisions of life and death, of what shall be and what shall not, beggar all question of right. In elections of these magnitudes are all lesser ones subsumed, moral, spiritual, natural.
The judge searched out the circle for disputants. But what says the priest? he said.
Tobin looked up. The priest does not say.
The priest does not say, said the judge. Nihil dicit. But the priest has said. For the priest has put by the robes of his craft and taken up the tools of that higher calling which all men honor. The priest also would be no godserver but a god himself.
Tobin shook his head. You’ve a blasphemous tongue, Holden. And in truth I was never a priest but only a novitiate to the order.
Journeyman priest or apprentice priest, said the judge. Men of god and men of war have strange affinities.
I’ll not secondsay you in your notions, said Tobin. Dont ask it.
Ah Priest, said the judge. What could I ask of you that you’ve not already given?

Job – Léon Bonnat

1880, 127cm  x 160cm, oil on canvas

“The Crucifixion” – Léon Bonnat

1874, oil on canvas