Drawing (350) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP
"So Va In. Art has likely never been more usefully applied: Verlaine’s verse 'Les sanglots longs / Des violons / De l'automne / Blessent mon coeur / D'une langueur / Monotone' (The long sobs / Of the violins / Of Autumn / Wound my heart / With a monotonous / Languor), read out 48 years after his death by a BBC announcer on June 1st and 5th 1944, prepared the French resistance for the Allied landing to take place in the next few days. Two ships from the invasion fleet ran aground on Arromanches beach in Normandy before the artificial Mulberry harbor of concrete modules carried over the Channel from southern England could be erected. The statue of a face from Bomarzo spits out an Erector Set easel, the snake Scheltopusik (Pseudopus apus) crawls towards it – so in vain. A hand protects the linden leaf parachute attached to a woman crawling on the sand. To the left, a lathed bedpost covered by mouches volantes, seen in Los Angeles in 1992." (From: arsenal, february 14).
(1996)