10 November 2014

A dark Illimitable ocean, without bound, without dimension



Among many extraordinary images in Cosmigraphics by Michael Benson (2014) is a seldom-reproduced depiction of the black void before the light of creation from Utriusque comsi... by Robert Fludd. [1]

Benson notes a similarity to Kazimir Malevich's Black Square on a White Ground (1915) [2]

Anselm Kiefer pays homage to Fludd in works such as The Secret Life of Plants (1987-2014). Equally striking, to me at least, is Kiefer's For Ingeborg Bachmann: the Renewed Orders of the Night. [3]  In this work, hundreds (perhaps) of small diamonds embedded in a large sheet of textured lead shine like stars as one approaches, and like rainbows as one gets even closer.  It seems like something that could emerge out of Fludd's primal black.


Notes

[1] A selection of more frequently reproduced images at Public Domain Review

[2] As Julian Bell notes, Malevich declared:
I have destroyed the ring of the horizon and escaped from the circle of things...
I have released all the birds from the eternal cage...
I have untied the knots of wisdom and set free the consciousness of colour!...
I have overcome the impossible...
[3] I can't at present find a reproduction of this image.

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