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Sepand |
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Post subject: "The soul is the ancestral animals" drawing
 Posted: Mar 10, 2008 - 01:35 PM
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Joined: Jun 26, 2006
Posts: 39
Location: Tehran
Status: Offline
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What is the face at bottom-right corner of the drawing entitled "The soul is the ancestral animals" in Focus of Life? A jester smoking pipe or what? It seems too unusual for Spare's style.
Sepand |
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BlueKephra |
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Post subject: RE: "The soul is the ancestral animals" drawing
Posted: Mar 10, 2008 - 07:05 PM
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MichaelStaley |
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Post subject: RE: "The soul is the ancestral animals" drawing
Posted: Mar 10, 2008 - 08:29 PM
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Joined: Apr 21, 2004
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| It looks like that to me, too. In my experience, odd little touches like that are fairly common in Spare's work. |
_________________
"It's all in the egg".
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Posted: Mar 11, 2008 - 12:46 AM
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Joined: Jan 02, 2006
Posts: 205
Location: New York
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
ummm..... I'll take a guess and say it's the head of a man wearing a helmet adorned with a hexagram and alchemical glyph of Sol surmounted by a seated woman in profile.
The resolution of opposite elements fused in the hexagram, perhaps?
Love is the law, love under will.
John |
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oneiros |
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Post subject:
Posted: Mar 11, 2008 - 09:55 AM
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Joined: Nov 23, 2005
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So which drawing are you attributing to the title? You might have noticed that the list of illustrations in The Focus of Life doesn't quite relate to the placing of the pictures.
If you're talking about the drawing opposite page 11, it's a little piece of South American statuary which Spare incoporated into several drawings around that time. Probably not a piece that he actually owned, as it's copied from a plate in a book on mythology.
o |
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Sepand |
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Posted: Mar 11, 2008 - 04:47 PM
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Joined: Jun 26, 2006
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Location: Tehran
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I meant this:
http://www.hermetic.com/spare/images/focp10.jpg
I was thinking that the following paragraph could be regarded as an explanation to this drawing:
'I multiply I' is creation: The sexual infinity. There is no end to the details of my extreme likeness. The more chaotic-the more complete am I. The soul is the ancestral animals. The body their knowledge.
If we suppose that AOS habit for explaining drawings in Earth Inferno is also applicable in this instance, one may deduce that Kia in his soliloquy toward Zos is explaining the qualities of "body" and "soul" (outer and inner) of himself. This way, in pictorial representation of this purport, woman's body in drawing may be an allegory toward "knowledge".
If my theory can lead to any meaningful deduction, one may wonder what that strange face may stand for. An ancestral "watcher"? It is also interesting that, etymologically, "animal" is derived from "anima" meaning "soul"...
In some eastern schools of mysticism, it is said that Perfect Man is the soul (or spirit) of the world and and the world is his body. If we compare this paradigm with Spare's, the summation of Perfect Men (I multiply I) as "ancestral animals (animas)" constitute the "soul" and the World, the "body". So one may think that idea of ZOS is very congruent with Perfect Man.
Sepand |
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oneiros |
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Posted: Mar 11, 2008 - 06:12 PM
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Joined: Nov 23, 2005
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I think you'll find that generally Spare placed such elements in his compositions to deliver specific, non-textual, messages. That's one reason he can be counted within the Symbolist camp but not within the Surrealists. Once you've identified the object you'll probably find that Spare is using it to stand as a signifier for one concept, notion, idea or whatever. Frequently the whole "meaning" or emblematic purpose of the object within the picture is explained by the wording of its museum label, or book caption, as Spare's roving eye came upon it.
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Sepand |
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Post subject:
Posted: Mar 12, 2008 - 03:44 PM
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Joined: Jun 26, 2006
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Location: Tehran
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oneiros |
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Post subject:
Posted: Mar 12, 2008 - 04:16 PM
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Joined: Nov 23, 2005
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There y'go - you can see it from the side as well. So who is it? And what's the attraction for Austin?
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in 1° 
: 
in 16° 
: Anno IVxvi 
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