In these new pictures by Julian Schnabel, we see the present state of painting: abandoned like unfortunate refuse, making do with what it has, left to its own devices, to elaborate what still remains within it.

The path of the artist is perilous and filled with dangerous obstacles, not least of which is memory… Octave and Maurice are off — and the world they left behind is truly gone!

Octave in the sky with diamonds

The first time I read in workshop, I fainted and broke my nose when I fell.

Octave and Maurice finally begin their journey! Will our heroes be able to find what they seek on the road?

If objects — like that dead paintbrush — mean nothing but their functional definition, a human being might well be nothing more than a machine for destroying nature; love, a purely mechanical function.

Octave finds revelations in his sleep. But can he accomplish the monumental task set before him?

Conceptual poem

Though Bajagić’s work may not escape certain tropes of avant-gardist art, it manages to capture pockets of discomfort, images charged with ambivalent energy.

Conpo replicates the cultural effluvia it poaches with little trace whatsoever, really, of any purposeful détournement.

Art about or responding to the COVID pandemic may simply be destined to be bad, but some things truly stand out. Caesura chimes in on the worst.

Octave and his new companion Maurice set out on their journey. And yet the memory of the Firm still haunts our hero…

Mailer’s essay burns as a piece of literary criticism that clarifies the philosophical, aesthetic, and political motives of modern authors like Miller, who have gone the way of the dinosaur.

(‘equal to a gift’)

The hellmouth no longer speaks but softly sings a nonsense verse as we suckle at its infernal teat in forgetful slumber.

The social role of poetry has always been a question, but it has not always been posed explicitly as a question.

The continuing adventures of Octave.

We can say without exaggeration that never has civilization been menaced so seriously as today. Even in times of “peace” the position of art and science has become absolutely intolerable.

Selected Spectral Works

Machado’s Posthumous Memoirs are a de-composition, so to speak, a gnawing of the source material that their author had encountered both in literature and in society.