Major Arthur de Bles Explains How to Tell Who is Who in Classic christian Art

 

How to Distinguish Saints in Art by Their Costumes, Symbols, and Attributes – Major Arthur de Bles (1925)

 

            Our modernity prevents us from understanding the meanings and messages behind most of the christian artwork used as the foundation for western fine art. A visit to any large museum will expose one to dozens, if not hundreds, of exquisitely painted images, each one portraying moments in the lives of christian deities, saints, and martyrs.  From a time when reading itself was kept from many of the common people, these images helped to foster religious beliefs and feelings in those who viewed them.  Despite widespread illiteracy, the people who viewed these artworks understood them based on their communal knowledge of the life stories of Jesus, his family and friends, his followers, and the many saints and martyrs upon which the stories and legends of the christian church rest.  This great book helps explain and instruct on how to look at these artworks to better understand them and the times in which they were created.

            This is a reference work, and because of that, it is not something that most people would read straight through.  I am not most people.  I adore reference books.  The more data the better!  Arthur de Bles worked on this material for a long time.  This is evident in the exhaustive and engrossing information contained within.  Not only does the author explain in detail the specific visual cues and symbols utilized in religious paintings, but he immerses the reader in the times these paintings were created.

            The first distinction that Arthur de Bles shares is between the two main types of christian religious art.  The first kind is “narrative.”  These images describe specific moments from the Bible, including the many apocrypha books, as well as historic events relating the lives of the people from the Bible and the many saints and martyrs that followed.  For example, a painting which shows Joseph and Mary being turned away from shelter, and having to rest and birth Jesus in a manger, is a narrative painting.  The details included would correlate, at least in the artist’s or patron’s mind, with the actual events described.  The Bible tells of how a group of shepherds saw the bright star signaling Jesus’ birth, and went to pay homage.  There are many paintings showing this “adoration of the shepherds,” and they include sheep, the shepherds, a manger/stable, and the holy family. 

            Other examples of narrative religious painting may show the martyrdoms of early christians.  For example, many paintings show the crucifixion of St. Peter, who, as the legend says, was crucified upside down in deference to Jesus, who was crucified the “normal,” way.  Paintings such as these helped to share the stories from christianity with the general population, many of whom could not read, not to mention the many who were not ALLOWED to read the Bible because the Roman Catholic church loved to keep regular people ignorant and subservient to their sacerdotal lackeys.  In fact, in many of the poorer nations, Roman Catholics today continue to provide church services in Latin, in order to keep the parishioners from actually understanding what is happening, thereby remaining in awe of the priest and his fancy mumbo-jumbo.  Pathetic.

            The other type of christian religious painting is the “devotional” one.  In these artworks, the purpose is not to tell a historical tale, or to describe events.  Devotional artworks are meant to be understood internally, as visual representations of the goodness of the saints, martyrs, religious figures, etc.  Paintings of Mary, holding the infant Jesus, surrounded by angels, saints, and other representations of the divinity, are innumerable.  In these artworks, the intent is to strengthen the religious ardor of the viewer, by symbolically portraying the goodness of someone such as Mary or John the Baptist, or by symbolically rendering the strength of will and faith needed to endure the horrible tortures and deaths of the christian martyrs.  Devotional images are meant to inspire religious fervor, as opposed to the narrative religious paintings which seek to instruct on facts and details.

            Once de Bles describes these types, he divides the rest of the book into sections detailing specifically the visual clues and symbols used in art for the holy family, and the prophets and saints in the Bible.  Other sections explore the symbols and imagery used to depict the many saints and martyrs of the early christian church.  Each topic is heavily illustrated and annotated, allowing the reader to seek these artworks out in person, or to look for further resources with which to study these pieces of art history.

            One thing that Arthur de Bles makes perfectly clear, is how few of these artworks were created because the artist themselves was a deeply religious and devotional person whose personal faith insisted that they paint religious pictures.  Most of the tens of thousands of paintings and images included in this book were commissioned by either churches, religious orders, wealthy bishops, or rich and powerful men seeking to curry favor with the “Lort,” or to at least look like devout, faithful christians.  It is an old trick, covering and surrounding oneself in the symbols and images of faith, all the while ignoring the actual commandments of that faith and behaving like a fucking waste of humanity.

            In a very real sense, every religious image is propaganda, selling the idea that the faith depicted is the one that is true and real, to the exclusion of the others.  Images of martyrs cannot help but inculcate an ignorant, illiterate population into admiring the martyr’s devotion and faith, and, in return, to consider themselves as beneath these saints, as someone nearly irredeemable whose soul can only be saved by the intercession of some priest or church.  It is the oldest scam in the word, and differs not at all from a tribal shaman covering themselves in dung, ingesting psychoactive substances, and scaring the general crap out of their tribe, all to make sure they behave and fall in line with whatever the shaman/priest wants the people to believe.   The idea that a “picture is worth a thousand words” is very true, and it is used to this very day by despots, tyrants, and wastes of humanity in order to control the people with fear.

            Books such as these, crammed full of information, are invaluable.  They provide us with a means to understand the past, while allowing us to learn the details which those in power seek to keep from us.  Information is freedom.  Knowledge is freedom.  Ignorance is the easiest way to keep someone enslaved.  Always look to see who is out there seeking to educate and inform, and who is out there trying to indoctrinate and control.  This is the easiest way to differentiate good from evil in this world.

Hermann Kern Takes us Into, and Brings us Back Out of, the Labyrinth

 

Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meanings Over 5,000 Years – Hermann Kern (1982)

A fascination with the story of Daedalus and his ill-fated son Icarus began early after reading a book on the Greek myths, likely found at the local library (Alief Public Libraries for the WIN!). The idea of a genius engineer forced to create a labyrinth in which to imprison King Minos’ step-son, and the story of what befell him and his son as they tried to escape, struck a nerve. As a youth, the simple lesson that a child must pay heed to his elders, especially his parents, when it comes to dangerous matters of life and death, was what drew attention. This was Icarus’ folly, that of a young man too carefree when he should be careful. It resulted in Daedalus’ tragic loss of his son, all because Icarus did not pay attention.

As an adult, reading more and more on the Greek myths, and about the idea of the labyrinth, the focus turned to the labyrinth itself. An understanding of it as allegory grew. My employment now affords the great pleasure of wandering through labyrinthine shelves (see what I did there?), each stocked with all manner of art books. Upon one of these meanderings this large book called out to me. It may be an innate skill, or perhaps the oft-rumored Library Angels really do exist, but sometimes an amazing tome will just fall in my lap. Such was the case with this book, Hermann Kern’s exhaustive, immersive, and deeply informational masterwork on labyrinths worldwide. It is packed with thousands of illustrations and photographs, and translated into English from the original German. Exceedingly awesome.

 As Hermann Kern carefully explains, over thousands of years the ancient symbol/idea of a labyrinth morphed and degraded into our currently accepted meaning, that of an intricate maze, with endless dead-ends, false passageways, and walls meant to disorient anyone inside. This idea is a disservice to the labyrinth, making it seem more of a trap, or a tool for torture and subjugation, which is evident by the time Plutarch wrote of his story of King Minos and the Minotaur. The original idea of a labyrinth was not a maze of dead ends, but a long, winding, singular path to a center. To exit a labyrinth, one must retrace their steps back through the entire thing. There are no shortcuts, and the journey in and out is where meaning is found. Labyrinths may be one of the oldest meditative tools created by humans.

Mr. Kern starts with, and reiterates throughout, the essential feature of a Labyrinth as opposed to a maze or spiral. As stated above, a labyrinth is a single path, convoluted and winding, leading to a central area within it. This is the center of the labyrinth. Once at the center, there is nothing to do but turn around and retrace your steps back through until you reach the initial entrance. This differs greatly from mazes, which may or may not have centers, and which feature countless wrong turns, dead-ends, and misleading paths. One can get lost in a maze. One cannot get lost in a labyrinth. It is this specific trait that makes the labyrinth so useful as a tool of introspection, initiation, and ritual.

The origins of the labyrinth are lost to time. What is known, and what Mr. Kern describes so well, is that the initial labyrinth was of a very specific form, what is now referred to as a Cretan Labyrinth. This very specific shape, carved in stone, has been found in many places, but is associated with Crete due to the Greek Myth discussed above. A critical aspect of the labyrinth, and its use, is called the “Thread of Ariadne.”  The Greek myth tells of how the hero Theseus entered the labyrinth, faced and killed the dreaded Minotaur, and escaped with his life. He did so by using a fine thread given to him by the Cretan princess Ariadne, which he unspooled as he entered the labyrinth and which he spooled back up as he found his way out of the labyrinth. The Greek myth tells of how Theseus then rescued Ariadne and took her away from Crete. This is a retcon of a sort, as the initial “thread” of Ariadne was simply the path taken by the labyrinth itself. Many of the oldest labyrinth images show a red line, the symbolic thread, coursing its way through the bends and twists until it arrives at the center. As a true labyrinth has no dead-ends, or meanders, there is no need for a literal thread, as told in the story of Theseus.

In the shamanic/mystical sense, the thread of Ariadne is the same thread woven by the fates when a human is born. This thread tells the story of one’s life, which lasts just as long as the Fates allow, one of them tasked with cutting off the thread marking our point of death in this world. In a labyrinth, this thread of life symbolizes the return to the womb, to the primordial beginnings, and then the return trip back to our experiential world. To walk into a labyrinth is to retrace your steps back to your creation, and to leave the labyrinth is to be re-born. The human exiting the labyrinth is not the same human that entered it. This is a deep philosophical point made visible and interactive by means of the labyrinth, which is why many of the old sanctuaries and cathedrals of Europe contain labyrinths inside. They wanted the parishioners to reflect on the journey to Christ and the rebirth afterwards, as they walked the path of the labyrinth to the center (Jesus) and back.

Apart from their mystery, meaning, and use, labyrinths themselves are just beautiful. Many of the great cathedrals contain exquisite labyrinths, tiled as perfectly as any Roman mosaic. Hermann Kern’s exhaustive search also includes many proto-labyrinth carvings whose creators are lost to us. It also includes images related to labyrinths, such as the cup and ring marks, or the many spirals, found throughout paleolithic locations. Kern differentiates between these seemingly related symbols and those of a true labyrinth, providing details and historical context for everything. Because of his rigor in collecting the data, this book has become the seminal resource for those seeking to study the history and purpose of these designs. I am very thankful that it was translated into English, and would love to find a copy of this magnificent reference work for my own personal library. Thank Mario that my workplace affords me access to such wonderful books. I have been fortunate to visit a couple of labyrinths located in my home of Houston, Texas, USA.  More will be sought and I will walk the Thread of Ariadne again.

Carlo Rovelli Shares the Wonder and Beauty of Quantum Theory

 Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution – Carlo Rovelli (2021)

            One of the greatest compliments I can give the eminent physicist and author Carlo Rovelli is that his informative and entertaining science books rival Richard Feynman’s for the sheer joy they give me upon reading.  I have reviewed three of Mr. Rovelli’s amazing books on RXTT’s Book Journey, White Holes, Reality Is Not What It Seems, and The First Scientist: Anaximander and His Legacy.  Each one is incredibly eye-opening, and written in a manner so casual as to seem like personal conversations between Mr. Rovelli and I.  This latest work, an exploration into the ideas of quantum mechanics and their repercussions and implications, is critical reading for me, and has given me much to think about.

            Rovelli understands that us lay readers, people with an interest in physics but not professional scientists, can experience the same awe, the same thrill of understanding, that the researchers and theoreticians feel when they gain new knowledge.  The difference lies in the presentation of the material.  Since quantum mechanics is an intensely odd, yet deeply relevant field of modern science, it takes a special storyteller to relate the discovery, formulation, and utilization of this particularly intriguing area of current scientific thought.

            The author never loses sight of the humanity involved in science, and of the amazing achievements and knowledge that mere humans can bring to the world at large.  The recounting of the early 1900’s, a time when the formal, mechanistic, classical physics of Newton were upended by Einstein’s relativity, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and Planck’s exploration into the world of quanta.  These world-shaking ideas took hold in the minds of young physicists, producing one of the most successful, and rigorous understandings of the natural world that humanity has ever encountered, quantum theory.  Nearly every new development in our world over the past 100 years owes everything to our knowledge of the quantum nature of reality and the ability of our fellow humans to create technology dependent on the quantum world.  Sadly, most of us benefit from these ideas without understanding even the smallest part.

            Besides sharing the story of quantum theory’s discovery, the author explores how the theory refutes many of the long-standing assumptions held by the great thinkers of humanity.  It is this aspect of quantum theory that has yet to see its full flowering.  Most of us walk around with our grammar school science knowledge informing our view of the world, when, in fact, that model of the universe is flawed and incomplete.  Quantum theory instead describes a universe where the divisions between objects disappear, where the observer cannot be removed from what is observed, where absolute certainty about anything is a mirage.  It will take centuries for humanity to fully grasp these ideas and drop the old prejudices.

            Rovelli also makes it abundantly clear that, for even the most highly trained minds, the ability to use quantum theory is not the same as the ability to fully comprehend quantum theory.  He is honestly forthright when describing his own attempts, mostly unsuccessful, to cognitively grasp the deep truths that quantum theory seems to tell us about the reality we live in.  Thank Mario that humanity has minds such as Mr. Rovelli’s whose curiosity leads them to seek and grapple with the most obtuse and rarefied ideas, in order to help the rest of us understand what makes up the world we all share.  As with all of Carlo Rovelli’s books, it is highly recommended.

           

(Helgoland can be purchased here - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653621/helgoland-by-carlo-rovelli-translated-by-erica-segre-and-simon-carnell/ )

May the Mother Goddess Forgive Us All, For We Know Not What We Do

 

The Once and Future Goddess: A Symbol for Our Time – Elinor W. Gadon (1989)

            I love deep reading.  If interested in a topic, I seek to understand it, and to explore the books written on that subject.  Invariably, the books will mention a previous work, whether for inspiration or for reference’s sake.  Once I run into several of these, I must go find the book in question.  Sometimes that is a difficult proposition.  The Once and Future Goddess was one of those sought-after tomes.  Thank Mario for my library employment, and the discovery that we have a copy of it in our collections. INSTANT CHECK-OUT!

            This book is an exploration of our shared human history, especially the early spiritual life of prehistoric humans.  Homo Sapiens have been around for over one million years, per the latest scientific estimations.  Our specific human species, Homo sapiens sapiens, the only branch of Homo sapiens still existing, has been around for over one hundred thousand years.  For most of our existence on this beautiful planet, we humans understood the interconnectedness of the vital forces we refer to as “life.”  The entirety of the Earth was known and respected as life-giving, much in the way that women carry life within them, and there was no division between the fecundity of the soil, the seasonal rutting and birthing of the animals around them, and the cycles of the flora they witnessed yearly.  It was self-evident that “life” was a universal feature of our world, and our ancestors behaved accordingly.  It was also self-evident that the creative, primal, life-giving force resided in the females.  By extension, our Earth was seen as female, and worshipped accordingly, for it is the cradle of all life, plant and animal.  This power is what the author refers to as the Mother Goddess.

            Elinor W. Gadon does a masterful job of gathering observations and data from our collective pre-history.  The bibliography at the back of the book is extensive.  As our earliest ancestors left no written record that we know of, we must recreate their world from what remains.  Frankly, it is amazing what has lasted until our modern times.  Burial sites, art pieces, religious centers, and entire communities have been excavated in the last century, and the collective knowledge gathered from these artifacts is what points to a complex belief system, seemingly shared by all humans throughout our planet.  The aspect that ties all of these disparate sites together is that they were all created at a time when human and world spirituality was immanent, meaning the divine creative spark of life was to be found in anything and in all things. 

            The very earliest examples of art we have are the small figures dubbed “Venuses” by archeologists.  These are symbolic, carved images of exaggerated female forms, with the emphasis placed on the outward signs of a pregnant woman, the large abdomen, full breasts and thighs, and prominent vulva.  Many of these figures lack the unnecessary features, such as feet, hands, or facial features.  Our ancestors knew the power inherent in women’s bodies and celebrated it openly.  The germ of life existed in the soil, in the water, and in women’s bodies.  Before the advent of agricultural society, our ancestors existed in balance with the changing seasons, animal migrations, and flow of nature. 

            This state of communal coexistence lasted for millennia, until the advent of agriculture and animal husbandry.  The Mother Goddess morphed into the Grain Goddess, responsible for the yearly harvests.  Humans experience with their domesticated animals showed them the importance of the male of the species, for new life, while immanent in females, could not grow without the initial impetus from the male.  These humans were unaware of the cellular nature of spermatozoa and ovum, but they understood innately that life arises from this special combination.  The Goddess was given a consort, a “king” fit for a goddess.  This “king” was initially a yearly choice, and would be either ritually or symbolically “sacrificed” after fulfilling their duty.  Our ancestors saw life and death as two sides of the same coin.  For life to flourish it must also die.  For death to exist, life must first exist. The death of crops and plants and the barrenness of wintertime was always followed by the warmth of Spring and the flowering of the earth.  Humans understood the menstrual cycles as tying women into the greater life force of the universe, the Mother Goddess. 

            The menstrual blood itself was seen as a life force, and women’s lives were shaped by their temporal state.  It was observed that the life of a woman flows in three stages.  Youth, followed by sexual maturity, was then followed by old age. These ages of woman were codified into the idea of the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, all different aspects of the same fertile spirit alive in women.  The Maiden was the promise of life, the bounty of possibility.  The Mother was the eternal mother, evident in all life around us, and responsible for each and every living thing us humans understood at the time.  Once a woman reached what is now called menopause (the pause of menses), it was believed she became even more powerful, for instead of losing the holy menstrual blood monthly, it was assumed she kept it inside, absorbed as part of herself.  This placed a great responsibility on the older women, who were responsible for the communal knowledge, whether of food gathering, care of children, manufacture of household goods, and whose wisdom helped protect the entire tribe or village.

            Society in our early days was communal, and female-centric, in terms of spirituality and divinity.  It was NOT a “matriarchy,” a society ruled by women, where men were seen as secondary. That misconception arises from seeing the past as a mirror of our present.  Humans have lived under strict patriarchy, where men rule and decide, and women are nothing more than property for breeding, for thousands of years, so we assume that before, it was the opposite.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Gadon masterfully details how the cyclical Goddess cultures were overrun by invaders from lands whose people worshipped sky gods, gods detached from the everyday existence of life on earth.  Invariably, their gods were male-focused, and everywhere they went they helped to erase or alter the native goddess worship.

            When Goddess worship was an integral part of daily life, everyone understood that the spark or life, of divinity, was found in us and the world around us.  This meant we lived in admiration and respect for the world, and there was no division between “natural” and “supernatural.”  Once the invaders brought their male sky gods, all of this began to shift.  If the gods lived above, separate from us and from the nature around us, then it was surmised that divinity and holiness existed apart from the natural world we inhabit.  This schism is what we are all currently living with, the idea that the natural world is soiled, unholy, and base, and that goodness and divinity only exist in an “afterlife”, where we go to join the male gods in their sky domains.  To make this shift happen, everything feminine was debased, deemed unimportant, and unnecessary.  Once agriculture brought certain stabilities and built up more permanent communities, the male humans began to conceive of private ownership.  Whereas, for tens of thousands of years, humanity considered everything to belong to everybody, much like Native American tribes describe, the idea of personal ownership, and the power and influence assigned to those who happen to “own” more than others grew and grew, until they believed this was the way to be.  They altered and created religion to suit their greed and power-hungry ways.  The divine was purely a means by which to enforce their male domination.

            The symbols of the Great Goddess, symbols of regeneration and plenitude, such as the snake who sheds its skin and is “reborn,” the tree or carved pillars representing the cycle of life itself, and the wildness of nature, were all subverted and perverted. Gadon describes this process, and explains it well.  Consider the story of Genesis, altered countless times by males seeking to denigrate the female and to assign divine importance to being male.  The symbols of the Goddess, the Tree of Life and the snake, become the Tree of knowledge of life and death, which, after the snake seduces the woman, she eats the fruit thereof, and “convinces” the man to do the same, causing all humanity to suffer forever more because woman misled man. Instead of the menstrual cycle, conception, and birth being seen as divine, they were now to be seen as punishments from a male god for disobeying him.  These few passages are to blame for the myriad of horrors suffered by women in the past 3-4 thousand years.  Death is woman’s fault.  Pain is woman’s fault. Shame and degradation are woman’s fault.  It is the single greatest program of propaganda ever foisted on the human race, all to benefit a few powerful males wishing to control the entire population.

It makes me sick, and goddamn it I was raging while reading this book.   Countless examples of the pure misogyny brought forth by the stupids seeking to invalidate the power of women infuriated me.  Instead of a Maiden, Mother, and Crone, we are now expected to believe life stems from a Father, a Son, and some sort of Holy Spirit, who is probably also male, although how deities and spirits can have genitalia and sexual reproductive organs I will never understand.  Even the one named Emmanuel, Jesus the Christ, could not be tainted by a female.  The idiot church “leaders” decided that Mary was a virgin (based on a very stupid mistranslation), and because of that, they reasoned that Jesus was born without the “sinful” method of carnal copulation.  To further their stupid reasoning, they then decided, centuries later, that Mary was also born from a virgin, which rationalized their view of her as a non-erotic, non-sensual, container for Jesus.  Never mind that after Jesus was born the Bible talks of his brothers, children of Joseph and Mary. (The church is always GREAT at telling you what the Bible says and means, without actually letting you read it yourself.  Bunch of assholes.  What a blight on humanity. They claim we are all too stupid to understand without their interpretations, and we believe it because they have “authority.”)

Gadon details the vast disintegration of Goddess worship at the hands of those pushing their self-created sky gods.  The Goddess was reduced from the center of divinity to an afterthought by those who wished to maintain their hold on humanity.  The Christian church either destroyed the ancient places of worship, or, more frequently, just built their own churches atop the old sacred sites.  A cheap ploy which works every time.  This helped fan the lie that there are no holy places on Earth except those built by man and dedicated to their male god.  I could write ten books about how fucked this shit is and has been, and how much I HATE IT ALL.

The author spends the last section of this book detailing the work of contemporary female artists whose work tries to reclaim and renew the idea of female divinity, and of the goddess herself.  In doing so she presents a hope that we may all soon return to an understanding of the universality of divinity in our world, and of the critical role that women have in restoring a sense of equality and fairness to humanity’s religious beliefs.  Should that day ever come, I will be first in line to celebrate it, but my cynicism and world-weariness tells me there is very little that can be done to combat the current state of things, without scrapping the whole thing and starting fresh.  We are all fooled by the endless conditioning we experience, where young girls are taught repeatedly that their role is to be subservient to a man, whether it is their father or husband, and that they are merely baby making machines, male babies preferable.  Us males are conditioned to believe in our inherent superiority, and of the woman’s inherent subservience.  It is the single greatest stupidity ever foisted on us by our so-called spiritual leaders.  May their end be swift and thorough, and may we eventually return to a state where life itself is seen as divine and worthy of respect, whether male, female, animal, or plant.  There is no way to return to the past, but we may yet build an equitable future, worthy of our promise as sentient beings and our duty as caretakers of our world.

The Great Ralph Steadman Shares His Love for Leonardo da Vinci

 

I, Leonardo - Ralph Steadman (1983)

(Readers of RXTT’s Book Journey may have noticed a lack of new reviews on the blog.  The end of 2023 was a brutal time for the RXTT household.  What should have been a time of joy, just after celebrating our wedding anniversary, became one of the lowest points of my life.  Soon after my dogs and I fought back against a vicious pit bull attack, an extremely traumatic event in and of itself, my employment situation became untenable, after five-plus years of exemplary work.

As you may imagine, these events brought me to a low place, and reading, absorbing and writing about books became somewhat of an afterthought.  Apart from the love and support of my wife, which is always treasured, what pulled me out of the melancholia was my novel, IN CRED.  I had completed the bulk of it in 2023, but the first part of 2024 was spent finalizing it and getting the book published.  It is available here.  The joy of creation is infectious, and by July my novel was in the hands of many readers.  At the same time, after months of looking, I secured a new position.  As a book lover, I always fantasized about working in a library.  The very idea of it fills me with bookish glee.  The fact that the library is an exceedingly beautiful one is just overkill.  As one of my gurus, Robert Anton Wilson once said, the journey to enlightenment must always pass through “castle perilous” first, meaning nothing worthwhile, whether in life, spirituality, or psychedelia, comes without experiencing the bottom edge of fear and despair.  If it wasn’t for the brutal slap-down life gave me in late 2023, I would not be where I am now, in late 2024.  I hope to renew my regular book review postings, and share with you some of the amazing books I now have access to.

Thanks for your continued support. – RXTT)

 

Sometimes serendipity brings one access to a previously desired item.  I have spent the past decades in deep admiration of one Ralph Steadman, an English gentleman whose artwork is crazed and transgressive, and whose collaborations with my favorite journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, blew my mind apart as a young man.  Steadman’s illustrations combine high draughtsmanship with visceral experimentation, often exposing the inner horrors normally disguised by people’s outward appearances.  When people ask me who my favorite visual artist is, my answer is Ralph Steadman.

After my initial exposure to Ralph Steadman’s art, I saw him as a kindred spirit and a personal muse.  I looked to find as many of his books as I could.  The one book I wanted but was never able to collect was his first one, I, Leonardo.  My new employment has afforded me the greatest of gifts, the ability to check out and absorb I, Leonardo, directly from the library shelves!

As a young man, Ralph Steadman was fascinated by Leonardo da Vinci, as I am and I am sure many other fellow artists are.  He is a fascinating individual, especially once you read about the world he lived in and the insane life he led.  Ralph Steadman’s first contact with Leonardo da Vinci was a fortuitous occasion, where he found a paperback copy of Leonardo’s notebooks, a near-perfect amalgam of art, science, and genius, loved and cherished by Steadman to this day.  In I, Leonardo, Steadman created a magical work, using his own unique art to portray the events of Leonardo’s life, while the text functions as if the artist himself relates his life story. It is a clever conceit, and one that works well.  I soon found myself lost in the ever-troubled world of Renaissance Italy.

As Leonardo ages and tells his story, his inventiveness and mechanical ingenuity come to the fore.  From an early age, he devised contraptions to aid in the manual labors of the home, to better understand the natural world around him, and sometimes to create frivolous fun in a world severely lacking in such.  He describes making extra money because he could easily achieve great likenesses with his drawing skills.  After a lengthy apprenticeship, he began to look for commissions, slowly building up his network of friends, patrons, and cohorts.

Many of Leonardo da Vinci’s commissions were never completed, or at least he never thought them good enough for his personal taste.  This was largely due to the volatile times in which he found himself.  Artists always lived and died by their patronage, and in the Italian states of the 15^th century, those in power rarely retained their position for long.  For example, Leonardo would move to Milan, find a patron, usually a Duke or Bishop of some sort, and be commissioned to create some sort of magnificent fresco, painting, or engineering design.  He would dive in, work hard, and often, just as he was to complete a work, would lose his patron to political upheaval, or a change in the religious leadership.  Due to the recurrence of such situations, Leonardo began to take his sweet time preparing and finishing work.  He was concerned with experimentation, with new techniques and materials, and due to this he could not work as fast as his contemporaries such as Michelangelo or Raphael.  Even a work he finished, such as the Last Supper masterpiece, was damaged by floods within a few months of completion.

Whether due to his constant experimentation with materials, or the varied whims of his patrons, Ralph Steadman surmises that Leonardo willfully slowed down his work so as to serve the art and not the master.  Speaking through Leonardo, Steadman describes how infatuated Leonardo became with the sitter for the world-famous Mona Lisa, or as Leonardo would call her, his Madonna Lisa, having her come for extra sessions, and noting that her specific beauty was best captured in the soft light of the waning day.  Leonardo never delivered this painting to the husband who commissioned it, instead choosing to keep it for himself. 

Much like Leonardo’s own notebooks, many of the large artworks in this book are accompanied by Ralph Steadman’s preliminary sketches.  This allows an artist like myself to see the process by which Ralph Steadman conjures up his visions.  Awesome.  This was a labor of love, and Steadman’s admiration of Leonardo da Vinci shines through in every page.  Not only is it a great primer on the life of one of the world’s foremost artists and engineers, but it is a great introduction to anyone looking to learn more about Steadman’s work.  The reverence he holds for Leonardo shows in the relatively restrained artwork, showing a greater feeling for form, perspective, and narrative than Steadman’s normal, and notoriously chaotic, images do.  As is the norm with Ralph Steadman, the portraits of aristocrats and powerful religious figures are scathing grotesqueries, showing the reader the true ugliness hidden beneath the trappings and finery of the supposed “elite.”

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  Much like Rudy Rucker’s As Above, So Below: A Novel of Peter Bruegel, I was captivated by the immersion into the artist’s world, times, and life.  The true originals, such as Leonardo da Vinci, or Ralph Steadman himself, use their skills and acumen to show us something new, something which no one before or since can capture in quite the same manner.  In doing so they transcend the limits of time, language, culture, etc.  The created work exists, and that is what matters.  We are all the luckier for it.  I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking an overview of Leonardo’s life, or an introduction to the amazing artwork of Ralph Steadman.

(Signed copies of I, Leonardo can be purchased here: https://www.ralphsteadman.com/collection/i-leonardo/ )

To My Readers

             

For the past decade I have published my thoughts on the many weird books I read.  In that time, RXTT’s Book Journey has grown in ways I never imagined, reaching readers worldwide.  The blog arose because of my love of the old, weird, out of print, and reference books, and my wife’s desire that I share my thoughts on them with the world at large, as I always do with her.  She is my inspiration.

If I believe in anything, it is the power of the wisdom, stories, and information contained within humanity’s writings.  The ancients assured us that language and written words were powerful tools.  “In the beginning was the word,” and all.  Our thoughts may or may not shape the world around us.  The mystics still debate.  However, our spoken and written words most definitely DO shape the world around us.  I am not the man I am, and this world we share is not the world it is, without the words handed down through the thickness of time. 

An example, nearly one hundred years ago, a man named Vonnegut witnessed the fickle whim of man’s inhumanity to man.  Decades later, after many stories and books, he wrote a novel called Slaughterhouse Five, or The Children’s Crusade.  In it, using the constructs and themes of science fiction (time travel, aliens, dimensional travel, lunatic fringe, etc.), Vonnegut vomited out his vitriol, pure and choleric, upon the vast, unchanging, and overwhelming stupidity of man, the stupidity that would allow for war, slaughter, pain, and terror to be the tools used to bring “peace.”  He told the rest of us what many tried to, but none had done in words which both a bright thirteen-year-old, and a deeply wise octogenarian would understand.  It is the saddest and funniest book I have ever read.  It changed who I am deeply, altering everything I have ever done, and every interaction I have ever had.  If that is not power, then nothing is.  That is just one book.  One among thousands published in my country that year alone.  It is said that most of the words written by man have been lost.  The works humanity is aware of existing are nearly infinite.  Thinking about the vast oceans of lost works is like mental torture to a book lover like me.

It is a mindboggling thought as I desire to know as much as possible, to understand as much as possible, at least about what interests me.  Because of this desire, I also flatly understand the impossibility of my dream.  I stare bluntly ahead, facing my own wall of ignorance, the mountain of books and wisdom and teachings lost to time, but specifically to me.  I think this is something all book lovers face sooner or later.

It is because I love books that I wanted to create RXTT’s Book Journey.  Each new book is a new world to explore, or a new idea to ponder, and I have travelled deep and wide, reading what interested me, when it interested me.   I appreciate a well-written, insightful review, whether it be of a film, book, or kitchen appliance.  It is a pure communication of ideas.  The feedback I receive from the authors themselves, sometimes concerning a decades-old book of theirs, is precious to me.  Corresponding with, and hearing sincere appreciation, from giants such as Freeman Dyson and Alan Moore was a never-imagined dream come true.  Meeting and reading brand-new works from young writers is an equal thrill, and I have been very fortunate in that regard as well. 

Writing a novel is another story.

While not many of the books I read are fiction, I love the power of a well-crafted story to illuminate, entertain, and enlighten its reader.  Most life-long readers dream of writing their own novel, and many try.  I joined them.  I wrote daily.  My story grew.  The world I created filled up, the story flowed like a glacial stream, slow but steadily building, and I managed to complete it.  IN CRED is my first novel.  I wrote it mindfully, wanting to present a self-contained world, a story entertaining and intelligible, to any clever reader willing to explore the mindways.  The tens of thousands of readers I have worldwide showed me that there are many like me, many who want deep dives into old texts, who are curious to know what the source materials are like.  Readers whose favorite reading experience is not the self-satisfaction of a driving plot, or the florid oscillation of word and language, but the quintessential feeling of having one’s mind BLOWN AWAY by a new idea.  I want my readers to experience that as often as possible, and I wrote IN CRED with you in mind.

Once finished, I had to share it with someone.  The magic and power of words truly spark up when they are shared.  I handed IN CRED to my wife.  I shared it with some close friends.  I reached out to a couple of authors I call friends and asked them for their opinion.  Their feedback and appreciation mean everything to me.  It took some internal literary courage, but I worked diligently to make IN CRED available to readers. 

It is available on Amazon, in Kindle eBook, glossy paperback, or hard cover versions. (I used my B.F.A. in Studio Art and drew the cover artwork also.)

IN CRED’s dedication page may speak of my wife and parents, but IN CRED would not exist without the readers of RXTT’s Book Journey.  I so greatly appreciate that you are out there, wherever you may be in this beautiful world of ours.  I hope my reviews have enlightened and informed you in the same way that the books I love have enlightened and informed me.

If you love science fiction that explores intimate segments of what it means to be human, you will enjoy IN CRED.  If you seek speculative fiction with big ideas told in intimate ways, you will love IN CRED.  If you enjoy original characters and settings, and a clever story whose progress is constantly surprising, you will love IN CRED.  If you appreciate literature that is honestly edifying without being sentimentally trite, IN CRED is for you.  If you enjoy stories where daily experiences go batshit crazy, and regular people are forced to deal with it, you will enjoy IN CRED.

This is just the beginning.  The spigot has been opened.  Further stories are in the works, and I am very excited about it.  If RXTT’s Book Journey was an initial stab at sharing my thoughts with the world, IN CRED is a mighty cannonade.  I would love for you, my fellow readers, to dive into IN CRED and let me know your thoughts!  Stories are magic, as my man Neil Gaiman says, and I have just begun the show.

 

Sincerely Yours,

 

RXTT