Unfortunately, even the work of a conventionally recognized surrealist painter, Magritte, alluded me today.

I am unsure of what I will classify as surrealist painting using Breton's definition.  I'll need a very tidy matrix of examples of successful surrealist work: work that demonstrates the process of thought.  Magritte did not accomplish this in many of his works.   So, now, more furiously than ever, I am seeking these examples.  My study is to figure out what, if anything, separates Kahlo and Carrington's work from that of other surrealists, and what groups other surrealists together.  Today, it is all a jumble.  Sigh.  What challenges do I face in reading visual culture?  Inexperience, lack of an existing framework for analysis and lack of access to varied source material.

On the one hand, I'm in academic agony... on the other bring it on... and on the other, can I get a hand with this?

The Castle is suck. It ends in mid-sentence. Excessively full of fragments. The stream (of consciousness) is not really stream. It proves in a sense that there is effect without cause in writing characters' actions. If it is Tim Burton's, you might say that he only sells fog, blood, black white red ...Burton's stuff I didn't say that Burton's bad ok? I used to like him.. a lot before he did Sweeney Todd cause it is nothing but calamity. Ok back to Kafka. right he sells nothing here but the human's curiosity in the invincible authority. Things are just made dubious, ambiguous for the sake of mysterious enchantment, which I found none in it but merely get the feeling of it. I reject that this is something worth wasting your time.

Modernism is good actually. It was a breakthrough in every aspect of life in that time and I thank them for something. I like some of surrealist painters like Ernst, Dahli and Kahlo ... I worship her. but paining is something different from literature though sometime they can inspire one another but still there's a enormous difference between them. What I don't like about people's taste in surrealism era is their blindly admiration..obsession for something obscure, dreamlike etc. Compare to something in these days it might bekindof a phenomenon that most of people obsess for something trendy and high technology. I am not that kind okay? Steve Jobs isn't my god though he's almost a demi-god now.

When Frida went to Paris for her exhibition entitled somethinglike the surrealist painting, she wrote a letter to Muray told him that 'They are so damn 'intellectual' and rotten that I can't stand them anymore....I'd rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than have anything to do with those 'artistic' bitches of Paris.' (she meant Andre Breton and his flock) but guess what. Kahlo wouldn't be this famous if she didn't follow Breton to Paris! so I guess I have to thank Breton for being a great maketing officer for her.

briefly. Kafka's suck.

Viva Frida!!!!!!!!!!!

The picture has nothing to do with anything, of course. It just seemed like a cool thing to have on a wine bottle. It's a drawing I made on the inside cover of one of my spiral bound notebooks back in the '80s when I was in high school, or maybe college. I manipulated it a bit with The Gimp to make it black and white, of course.

The font I used is called "linux libertine," which seems about right.

By this definition, I propose that Kahlo and Carrington were only inadvertently achieving this task, and that their actual outcomes were not purely surrealist instead they land in other categories of work .  I will argue that the category of surrealism lacks accuracy in the case of many of their works, including specific examples from Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet, and Kahlo's "Memory."  Finally, I will propose alternative terminology for classifying their works, seeking to air out this gender biased and dank corner of art history.

(Thesis statement for my argumentative paper... to be written over the next few weeks... looks like I've got my work cut out for me... and good work it is.)

Elisa Breton, Portrait of André Breton with toad in St.-Cirq-Lapopie, undated.

This is a rather strange photo in  that the bloke with his back to us was actualy inside the work and could not be seen except in his reflection, and the young lady facing us was in my full view with her back to me and totally unconscious of the fact that I was taking the photograph as can be seen in the photo below which is the work in its entirity...

A close look will reveal the crop that I have used to create the first image...

8-2%5*20098.

-Sonny

Nåja nu har jag i alla fall skrivit en kort uppsatts om impressionismen och även gjort en blyertsskiss av en tavla av Cecilio Plá (har dock två tavlor kvar att skissa av) sedan ska man välja en att måla i olja ( det kommer bli en utmaning som hette duga) men jag är inställd på att det ska jag banne mig klara av...

Vill man ha roligt får man allt se till att först ta sig igenom det tråkiga, så det så XD

Nåja, förhoppningsvis så klarar jag mig igenom impressionismen med ett Godkänt, har två veckor på mig att bli färdig (låter kanske mycket, men personligen känner jag att det är väldigt kort tid, med tanke på allt man ska hinna klart med)

Men jag ska nog ta å koppla av nu, sedan blir det mer plugga i morgon...

Ha det gött!

//Mumintrollet

A coil springs
from memory,
and the impulse
falls on itself.
The middle co-
mingles. What means
make ends when
ends are never last,
never climax
of chance and fate,
and never never?

The middle commingles.
A looped bit of music
insists on perpetuity
in memory.  Echoes?
The ghostly black
strands of branches
in moonlight.  The light
falls on itself, layers
of illumination we can't
separate, can't know
apart from one
another.

A looped rope
about the mast, and more
neat than it would be
without us.  The middle:
it knows itself
without precedent,
consequence.  Who's
to say echoes
die? The days
tread like ghosts, us
among them, amid
them, inside
them, middle
commingling.

...Lacking any biographical details about the artist, one can only indulge one's fantasies in imagining the reasons which might have induced this workman from Upper Austria, a dyer by profession, to undertake so zealously between 1832 and 1887 the elaboration of the most sumptuous bestiary ever seen.

It would almost seem as though Zötl's vision, trained professionally to detect the most subtle colours and tones, had endowed him with a mental prism functioning as an instrument of second-sight and revealing to him in succession, back to its most distant origins, the animal kingdom which remains such an enigmatic aspect in each of our lives and which plays such an essential role in the symbolism of the unconscious mind. 'The world of animals', according to Lamartine, 'is an ocean of sympathies of which we take only a single sip when we could, if we wished, drink it in torrents.'

...It would be...futile to speculate on the origin of the documents, very few of them probably scenes taken from life, which Zötl used to depict this perfect organic harmony between the animal and its environment, of which he is the living hieroglyph. What is so marvellous in Zötl's paintings is that these two quantities are constantly expressed in terms of each other, and that the artist's extraordinary ardour conjures up before our eyes the vision of universal harmony which exists, repressed, in the very depths of our beings.

From André Breton, Aloys Zötl, 1956, in Surrealism and Painting.

Pictures from top to bottom, all from Aloys Zötl's Bestiary: Caiman (1849), Mole (1876), Pangolin (1833), Blue Turtle (1881), Three-banded Armadillo (1866).

Zötl's Bestiary is mentioned in The Deep Zoo, a essay written by Rikki Ducornet in 2002.

Surrealism itself deserves a decentralized and regionalized historiography.

Polish surrealism for example brings the work of latter surrealist Jacek Yerka[1].

More than just a celebration of the new, Surrealism sought to find itself in the past and opened a revisionist approach to historiography. It sought to trace a sensibility in retrospect.

Faustino Bocchi (ill. above) would have been dubbed surrealist, if Breton had known him.

Arcimboldo (ill. above) would have been dubbed surrealist, if Breton had known him

In "What is Surrealism?" Breton defines what we can label proto-Surrealism.

See the insets for the Carrier/Carrière debate

"Young's Night Thoughts are surrealist from cover to cover. Unfortunately, it is a priest who speaks; a bad priest, to be sure, yet a priest.
Heraclitus is surrealist in dialectic.
Lully is surrealist in definition.
Flamel is surrealist in the night of gold.
Swift is surrealist in malice.
Sade is surrealist in sadism.
Carrier is surrealist in drowning.
Monk Lewis is surrealist in the beauty of evil.
Achim von Arnim is surrealist absolutely, in space and time
Rabbe is surrealist in death.
Baudelaire is surrealist in morals.
Rimbaud is surrealist in life and elsewhere.
Hervey Saint-Denys is surrealist in the directed dream.
Carroll is surrealist in nonsense.
Huysmans is surrealist in pessimism.
Seurat is surrealist in design.
Picasso is surrealist in cubism.
Vaché is surrealist in me.
Roussel is surrealist in anecdote. Etc."

This list comes from a lecture given by Breton in Brussels in 1934, either on May 12 or June 1 of that year, and published as a pamphlet immediately afterwards by René Henriquez, with as cover art Magritte's The Rape, which was created for that purpose. The enumeration in the lecture harks back to a list published in the first Surrealist Manifesto in 1924.

Other versions exist, one was published in the "Surrealist Number" of This Quarter. Another version was translated to Czech and published as "Co je surrealismus?" (1937), with a cover by Karel Teige. This list reprised the 1924 version.

Many of the names on the list are obscure, but I have managed to track all ... but one.

When Breton says "Carrier is surrealist in drowning," I have no idea who he means. Apparently, I am not the only one.

Marguerite Bonnet says in the 1975 André Breton: naissance de l'aventure surréaliste

... "Nous n'avons pas encore retrouvé le texte français de cet article, dont la version anglaise donne au « nom « Carrière » que Breton a corrigé en Carrier"

... "We have been unable to find the French text of this article, of which the English version gives as name Carrière, which Breton later correct as Carrier"

If Bonnet confesses that she could not find the French text (published by René Henriquez) there is even more room for confusion. The "Surrealist Number" (1932) of Parisian "little magazine" This Quarter' (edited by Edward W. Titus)[2]; and André Breton: naissance de l'aventure surréaliste [3] each mention additional names such as Helen Smith (surrealist in tongue), Uccello (in the free for all fight), Radcliffe (in the landscape), Maturin (in despair); and can't agree on the spelling Carrière/Carrier.

His most famous piece, however, The New York Trilogy, simply left me cold -- as did In the Country of Last Things.

Reading this review in The Times Online website of his latest novel Man in the Dark, it struck me that this latest work might actually be worth taking a look at. Yes, he treads familiar ground -- but that's what Auster does. He is the master of metafiction and whilst I don't in any way want to emulate that (been there, done it...), this review did help me see where I need to be going as a writer.

I want to play with form. I want to take the world as I know it -- as I have known it -- and reshape it, present it in a different light. I want to focus on the character driven, where my strength lies, but I want to skew the angles, present unusual juxtapositions in order to challenge preconceived notions.

In short, I probably want to do what Auster himself hasn't really done in a long while. I want to tax myself. It isn't enough to simply follow a familiar path. That was why the outline for We Are Watching/The Yesterday Tree didn't work for me. I'd been there before, even though I didn't realise it at the time. I need to write a novel that keeps me on my toes, something rooted in personal experience, like Children of the Resolution, but also something which presents it in a unique, previously unknown form.

Man in the Dark. If Auster hadn't already used it, it might have been the perfect title for the novel I now have planned. For the time being, let's simply call it...

... Through the Stormy Shades.

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Having recently had the pleasure of touring the Andy Warhol exhibit (with free admission, I might add) in the city where I currently live, I was inundated with the responses from critics, newspaper and other media deriding Warhol’s work not to be art.

In viewing the exhibit, I came to the conclusion that I’d previously alluded to in my posts: that is, that there is such a thing as art in the everyday.  Warhol was a man who wanted to celebrate the art that existed in celebrity, in the everyday, mundane, household objects that we would never otherwise notice; yet he himself hid away, wanting the celebrity for himself, if only to have other masks to hide behind.

This then addresses the question: what is art? For that matter, what drives a person to represent something as art? I believe in Warhol’s motivation, and in his work, as he wanted to show the world why he believed disaster, tragedy and everyday objects had a beauty all of their own. Indeed, as I walked along, admiring his many pieces, I even remarked to an acquaintance that I would’ve loved to get a chance to interview the man.  Unfortunately, Warhol passed some nine days after my birth, a fact that as an art enthusiast, I find a great disappointment.

The simple truth of the matter is this: that there is no true definition of art. In fact, there is no tangible rule or boundary you are unable to cross as an art enthusiast that says if you are a lover of the Impressionists that you may not equally be as enamoured with the works of the brilliant Georgia O’Keefe, or of Canadian pioneer Emily Carr.

Myself, while I admire the work of O’Keefe, Carr and Warhol, my true favourites are known by the names of Salvador Dali, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso and others who fit into the realm of abstract expressionism, surrealism and cubism.

In the past, I’ve been asked, why these artists in particular? Why not Rodin, Munch or Van Gogh? Certainly, there have been works from Van Gogh in the past that have resonated with me, but I love abstract expressionism and surrealism because you are able to derive your own meanings, your own emotions from them much more so than other artists.

I say this because to draw inspiration from a painting such as The Secret Life or A Persistence of Memory may be an insurmountable feat to many. There is no defined meaning within the painting itself, no label that allows you to place it into a category immediately upon viewing the work.  They are not scenes of boats sailing in the harbour, or a lioness tending to her cubs. Deeper meanings can and should be drawn from such paintings, even if they may be completely foreign to the artist’s intentions.

What I’ve always loved about art is its subjectivity; there isn’t a person alive who can rightfully claim that you are wrong, that your vision is flawed or that what you choose to place on canvas, on display isn’t beautiful. What it is is a matter of opinion. Much like its fellows in the arts, writing, film, music, stage and others; much of its success or failure depends on the opinion of the vast majority.

I believe that that is why I’d always loathed art classes, though I’ve been an art enthusiast and loved surrealism and abstract expressionism for years, it was never a talent that I’d picked up for myself. The ones who deride your work, your inspiration as nothing but garbage, are those who can’t understand your vision.

Many critics of the great abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock frequently claimed that his work was not art at all; indeed, coining the phrase “a five year-old could do it”.  Fact of the matter was, however, that a five year old didn’t do what Pollock did, nor did a five year old do what Dali, Magritte and even Hurst is doing today.

There is never a right or wrong answer, simply what resonates to you, what speaks to you, and in my case, sometimes hits you so hard you can barely breathe.  I was incredibly blessed to be able to see the Monet to Dali twice in my hometown, and the works from Dali, Magritte and Picasso knocked the wind out of me. Through such work, each artist in turns bares their soul to an audience, in this case, many audiences and though those of us here today won’t get the opportunity to know the artists for who they were, we know them today for who they are and what they mean to us.

For me, it’s not about understanding the artist’s vision as much as it is forming my own vision, my own interpretation and inspiration. I believe that all forms of art; music, film, writing, stage and fine art itself, all somehow derive ideas from one another and from life in general. Much of my emotions, thoughts and beliefs on such works of art have made their way into my poetry as well as other forms of writing.

Art has worked to inspire, move me to tears and embrace me with the visual understanding of my emotions. Though there are a great many artists I will never have the privilege of meeting, the legacy left behind in their work reminds me that at a point in time, there once was an individual who saw the world through my eyes. Though it may be a futile effort to attempt to explain, I believe there is a kinship that connects all of us artists, albeit writer, songwriters, musicians, artists or film makers, that would not survive without one another.

As I’ve often said to those who know me, ‘creativity breeds insanity’ and it is only those of us with creative souls who can understand the complexity and the ongoing struggle in some ways, to have the world understand your vision and embrace you.

Fame and glory may never arrive until an artist is long dead, but the vision and the meaning behind that vision will be a legend. All you have to do is be open to looking for it.

Augustine Dall’Ava’s sculpture exhibition at John Buckley Gallery is part of a Surrealist tradition. Dall’Ava’s continue the simplified biomorphic forms that Jean Arp first discovered. Dall’Ava’s continues Alberto Giacometti’s arrangement of forms, as in Giacometti’s early surrealist sculptures, like “The Suspended Ball in the Hour of Trances”, 1930. Dall’Ava quotes Giacometti’s the hanging objects in Dall’Ava’s Sixteenth and Twentieth Dialogues. Surrealism is a continuing tradition, not a historic art movement, and Dall’Ava continues to perfect the form of Surrealist sculpture.

Dall’Ava sculptures look beautiful. The materials: the marble, travertine, slate and steel are all polished and elegant. The painted wood is bright and glossy.

One refinement is the board, the base of the sculpture; they are boards, rather than extremely long, very thin plinths. They are, to be precise, game-board, like a chessboard and the base of Dall’Ava’s Eighth Dialogue and Third Dialogue have chessboard patterns. Games, the play of children and the chance rolls of a die are all very important to Surrealism.

A board game is a formalized, miniature, schematic representation of a world; Duchamp described games of chess as sculptural. In a game there is not just the positive and negative space, occupied or unoccupied by the pieces, but the potential spaces of occupation, the possible moves. The pieces in Dall’Ava’s sculptures: trees, clouds, rocks, the moon and other forms in appealing miniatures are carefully arranged on his boards. There are also cubes with pitted sides, suggesting dice, in many of the Dialogues.

All of Dall’Ava’s sculptures in this exhibition are titled ‘Dialogue’. Unlike Geoffrey Edwards, Director of the Geelong Art Gallery, in his catalogue essay for the exhibition, I believe that this collective title does give away a lot of allegorical intent. For a game, like chess, is a dialogue between two players.

There is no need for monumental sculpture in the anti-imperialist, anti-war world of Surrealism. It is a world where we have a playful dialogue with sculpture rather than idolizing the dead soldier or dictator high up on plinth.

Jag: Mitt bajs är brunt

Du: Vad fan, hur kom du att tänka på det?

Jag: Är aldrig du spontan?

Du: händer väl

Jag: När?

Du: Vadå, sist råmade korna

Jag: Jag tro du gillar kor

Du: Nä får

Jag: Varför är himlen blå?

Du: Inte är den röd inte

Jag: Blå, sköna blå

Du: Ser du mannens hatt där borta?, den är ju trekantig

Jag: Den vandrar på väggen

Du: Runt hörnet och mot oändligheten

Jag: Nu pruttar jag

Du: NEEEEEJ

Jag: Men jag är ju bara en människa

Pulserade musik börjar spela

Du: Jävla technomusik

Jag: Det här kallas trance!

Du: Mot nirvana

Jag: Ska lära mig meditation när jag har tid

Du: Voff voff

Jag: Fattar inte poängen med tyngdlyftning, bara lyfta upp och ner massa kilon jobbigt

Du: Verkligen meningslöst

Jag: Klassas Kina kommunist eller nykommunism?

Du: Snarare en hybrid mellan båda plus man korsar det med lite korrupt våld

Jag: Nej det liknar snarare en påfågel som har blivit med barn med en örn

Musiken slutar

Du: Tyst

Jag: Jag

Du: Ja du det finns ju ingen annan här

Jag: Varför

Du: Så Tyst

Jag: Oh inte var dag man hör tystnaden

Du: Men du pratar ju

Jag: nä jag tänker

Du: Men betyder det att jag inte finns

Jag. På sätt och vis

Du: Förstår inte riktigt ditt sätt och uttrycka dig

Jag: Förstår man inte det enkla först, så förstår man inte det svåra sen.

Du: Klokt

MUUUUU

Jag: Håll mun

Du: Har ingen mun

Jag: Ja just det du är ju bara en tanke.

And for my own attempt at BOD: The Onion AV Club does a really good Project Runway recap . I like how they make fun of Jennifer: "Jennifer was delusional about her own aesthetic right to the end: 'I brought something different to Project Runway ... with my surrealism.' That word doesn't mean what you think it means, Jennifer."

I just realized Jennifer could read this, and now I feeel bad. Sorry, Jennifer.

(I also love Tim's Take..obvs).

Her infant body has been broken over the spines of
The ocean's rocky protrusions, burned by the brine,
And beached on the sandy illusion of safety.

Shadows and dust are all that she may be,
A complex driftwood husk, Ash or Elm, lifeless until
The moment she breathes her first earthen breaths.
Her skin seethes hot with life, and is fused with color.

Her thoughts begin to analyze, and to imagine.
She witnesses the clockwork strife of things.
When she draws the first longing sip from her
Generation's naked breast, she begins to understand all the rest.

She is exposed and sensitive, a chickadee with her mouth ajar.
She is a child who abides only by the moon-tides.
She sleeps at night and awaits the break of dawn,
Hungry to witness the human fray that preys on what is natural.

Courage becomes her only hope along her journey through life.
In the sky suspended on high, she finds her father,
Smiling from the iridescent infinity of space and time.
Immersed in the wonder of such beautiful things, she pauses,
Then begins to travel again, to wonder and ask, “Why?”
When she meets the lonely sundered woods.

The forest has had its defenses breached;
Slowly, utterly, it shrinks and then falters.
In her lifetime, the wilderness mounts its final resistance;
It is folding and buckling, churning and chuckling,
At the slash-and-burn persistence of the greatest predator.

The child continues on, and finds her mother among the desolation
That is in all the ages and in all of the places on this Earth.
With the wisdom of the sages, Mother gives consolation,
Meaning to the isolation, all life now stripped of what it was once worth.

On the damp soil that lies beneath her feet and
In the quiet shelter within the shade of the trees,
She finds solace in Father's timeless embrace,
And courage in Mother's nurturing whispers.

She has become a woman now, and with pride and
Intent, she walks and strides to the rhythm of the wind.
Her shadow is the darkness that creeps across the falling leaves,
That bluster past us in frightening, frigid blasts.

In the short moments between the shifting dissonance of
Seasons and societies, ages and phases,
In the time it takes for our ashes to become oaks,
She has found her home, her heart, and her reasons.

All that this Earth once was is now fleeting,
Save our remembrance of the smell of the endless sea,
The pang of salty brine, and the cool turquoise breeze.
Our woman watches and waits and we take the bait.

Above the splashing waters and the groaning waves,
She waves her reverent farewell to us and notices
The color when it drains from our drooping faces.

Death relaxes each of our hallowed forms in time,
And lays us first to bake and broil beneath the sun,
Somewhere among the universe of our forlorn things.

Then the rope slips and the knots come undone --
She lets us make our plunge back into the sea of fire.
Her watchful face wavers and then fades into the light.
Our lives vanish beneath the waves.

That evening that the three dead men were swimming,
You and I could go skinny dipping without worry,
For the leeches were preoccupied by the reddening rush of fluids
And the buoying bubbles of postmortem exasperations.
And the lazy fish swam about in shifting circles,
Welcoming us to immerse ourselves within the cool liquid
Of their aquatic domain.

That evening that the three dead men were swimming in Little Pond,
We mistook it for the ocean, the blast of polluted air as the sea breeze,
And the toxic sky as the greenest Aurora Australis

We laid together on our bare backs and bottoms in the cold groggy sand,
And gazed up towards the milky way.
We made the radiant stars our lovely children;
Alpha Centuari had epilepsy, and Polaris was our little politician;
And then we laughed in a gaily way, and made the ethereal arms of
The far-off galaxies the boundaries of their cosmic playpens.

Henryk Fantazos is a wonder. His story is as unlikely as his paintings are good. My first encounter with his work was the "Face of the South" collection, which is the focus of this article, and from which all of the works displayed here come from. These paintings move with the fluidity of the Mississippi and sway with the cotton fields of Georgia. Even submerged in the murky bayous of Louisiana, his paintings still shine with a light of fantasy that is most unique. Below is an interview with Mr. Fantazos which covers such subjects as a blushing peach, wal-mart shoppers, and of course his singular take on the intrinsic beauty of the South.

JD: My first thought when I saw your "Face of the South" collection of paintings was, "Where did this come from?" because it seemed so otherworldly, but at the same time still captured an inherit beauty of the South that is not easily seen. You took two seemingly opposite elements, the rural/conservative South as a subject, and painted it through a surrealist eye, which is obviously about as non-southern as you can get. Was there a specific inspiration for meshing these two contrasting elements together, or did it occur naturally?

HF: That is well observed: indeed there is blending of metaphorical language which I bring with the subject usually depicted in a softly sentimental way by others. The results are, I hope unique.

JD: Who are some the artists that inspired you to begin painting, and who shaped your early work?

HF: I never really had a true choice. Painting chose me and one does not diddle with Fate.

JD: Who are some contemporary artists that you admire?

HF: The list is very, very long of artists I admire. They come from gloomy Flanders and from sunny Italy but they are not my contemporaries. If you are in love with a woman it would be practical that she’d be your contemporary, but in painting it has no significance.

JD: What inspires you to paint?

HF: A vision flies into my mind and demands to be painted. I have learned not to respond by reacting: ”but, dear gods, you are too weird, too irrational for the Wal-Mart shoppers to accept!” and instead I throw all my resources at building that vision, making it convincing and artistically solid.

JD: In another interview you stated that "modern art" is "grotesque," can you expound on this idea?

HF: To clarify- I said that grotesque is the proper language for depicting our times. Now, "modern art" is not “grotesque” in my view. There is some decaying cadaver still offered for reverent viewing by art-market manipulators as “modern art” but it is wise to keep enough acquaintance with the development of Western culture to see it is rubbish, like hoola-hoops, experimental poetry and cacophonic music.

JD: Your rural Southern depictions capture its intrinsic nature, but not by conventional means. You pick scenes and characters that are unusual, but still dead on to the Southern phantasm. Can you talk about this subject further?

HF: Well,that is a huge subject. In the first place, because it is so important; I never initiate work on some composition by conceptualizing about the South and forcing some ponderous and clever contrivance. I know it would have the fetor of formaldehyde cerebrations and falsity of plaster of Paris kisses. It has to be authentic, originating in the depth from which all true visions come.

JD: Can you expound on your personal relationship to the South, how you came to settle in the South, if it was a conscious decision, and what effect it has had on your work, and what it means to you?

HF: When I still lived in Europe I fed richly on Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Porter, Carson McCullers, Faulkner, Walker Percy, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams. Later, looking for America in America I found that the Holy Land of the South is my home to grow into, to love and deserve. Living here has daily, constant and direct influence on my work. Indeed every element I include in my paintings is taken from my Southern surroundings.

JD: It seems as if people are blind to their own beauty and the beauty that is around them if they stay in the same place, or if they grew up in a place they take it for granted. Do you believe that you being an "outsider" to the South allowed you to see it anew and discover fresh qualities about it that before were untapped?

HF: So very true! To be a painter you have to remain an observer, an exited peeping tom. Reality, to which we are all newcomers, is actually shocking and sensational. I look at the blushing peach and I am shocked!

JD: Have you ever been influenced by your last name, since a lot of your work has a fantasy/fantastic quality to it?

HF: Yes, I feel in some overarching, large scale way obligated to live up to the promise my name carries. Of course if I chose to be a funeral-parlor beautician or a tax-collector that obligation would disappear.

JD: Who are some of your favorite author's and their works?

HF: From the blessed moment when my English has firmed itself in me and I was able to taste Shakespeare I mostly stay inside of His Continent.

JD: Some of your favorite musicians?

HF: Mozart, Brahms, Puccini, Rachmaninov, & Orff.

JD: If you could collaborate with any artist dead or alive, who would you choose?

HF: Jan van Eyck, but he would not have me,alas! He would glance at my efforts and shook his head with a sigh-not good enough.

JD: If you were a celebrity impersonator, dead or alive, who would you be?

HF: I impersonate myself and do a less and less credible job of it.

JD: What’s the best day you can imagine?

HF: A long day of love and wide-ranging conversations.

JD: If you could live anywhere in the world where would that be?

HF: Several places to reside there for a while and move to the next, already comfortably appointed . Probably New Zeeland islands, Bali, Portofino, Santorini and more.

JD: What are some of the other ways you utilize your time besides painting?

HF: I grow antique roses, talk with a few well selected friends, but I have very little time to spare : To get good at what I do takes all my time.

I would like to give full credit to Conway, Arkansas based Oxford American Magazine for introducing me to the wonder of Henryk Fantazos. Oxford American was founded in 1992 with an editorial mission to "explore the American South." They are devoted to the art, music, and writing that spews from the fertile lands of Dixie.

-Sonny