- Feb 24, 2013
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I have always been a huge fan of the noted historian & renowned Aussie Art Critic Robert Hughes (1938-2012.) Ever since I read his 'The Fatal Shore' in my early 20's & then saw his rightly acclaimed Tv series 'The Shock Of The New'....A phenomenal tour-DE-force of the history of modern Western society as depicted in it's art movements.
After Hughes was involved in a near fatal head-on car-crash in Broome, W.A in 1999...He then spent the next 5 weeks in a coma while recovering in intensive care....What happened over the course of those 5 weeks remained with Hughes thereafter....He was haunted throughout his unconscious sojourn, by nightmarish images of ghoulish figures that populated his psyche....But instead of running from those 'realer than real' images & going mad once he awoke from them, he actively sought them out & found them, in the personage & works of Francisco Goya. (1746-1828)
His subsequent documentary that followed entitled: Goya: 'Crazy like a Genius' (2002) was a magnificent insight into the subterranean underworld that populates the human psyche beneath our conscious will.....About which the ancient Greeks knew full well. (Orpheus & Eurydice, Odysseus descent into the underworld, The Persephone cult & the Hymn to Demeter)
Goya went deaf at around the age of 50, from 75 onward he spent his life as a recluse & daubed the plaster walls of his isolated farm-house with what is termed his 'black paintings'....It is these paintings & images that directly struck a chord with Hughes & resonated so deeply with him.
As a kid, I distinctly recall watching episodes of Spider-man in the underworld, prior to heading off to primary school in the morning....For some reason those images also 'stuck-fat' & struck a haunting chord with me, to the extent that they were a foreboding of what was to come....Indeed, Western art throughout the centuries has also depicted this decent into the psychic underworld & yet, we do very little by way of initiation of our children into & about the path that lies before them.....Knowing what I know now, having endured a similar nightmarish path in my late 20'S & early 30's, this is truly shocking to me.
These are well worn archetypes of ancient wisdom....And yet our naive, puritan, one-dimensional Christian fear of what lies beneath, has only served to suppress & crush such emotional psychic truths - about the human predicament - to the point of ostracizing & alienating each & every individual who attempts the journey.....Our Western industrialized & mechanized world has only served to exacerbate the problem further....And now, we sit upon the precipice of a nuclear Armageddon because of such a repressive & tyrannical code.
After Hughes was involved in a near fatal head-on car-crash in Broome, W.A in 1999...He then spent the next 5 weeks in a coma while recovering in intensive care....What happened over the course of those 5 weeks remained with Hughes thereafter....He was haunted throughout his unconscious sojourn, by nightmarish images of ghoulish figures that populated his psyche....But instead of running from those 'realer than real' images & going mad once he awoke from them, he actively sought them out & found them, in the personage & works of Francisco Goya. (1746-1828)
His subsequent documentary that followed entitled: Goya: 'Crazy like a Genius' (2002) was a magnificent insight into the subterranean underworld that populates the human psyche beneath our conscious will.....About which the ancient Greeks knew full well. (Orpheus & Eurydice, Odysseus descent into the underworld, The Persephone cult & the Hymn to Demeter)
Goya went deaf at around the age of 50, from 75 onward he spent his life as a recluse & daubed the plaster walls of his isolated farm-house with what is termed his 'black paintings'....It is these paintings & images that directly struck a chord with Hughes & resonated so deeply with him.
As a kid, I distinctly recall watching episodes of Spider-man in the underworld, prior to heading off to primary school in the morning....For some reason those images also 'stuck-fat' & struck a haunting chord with me, to the extent that they were a foreboding of what was to come....Indeed, Western art throughout the centuries has also depicted this decent into the psychic underworld & yet, we do very little by way of initiation of our children into & about the path that lies before them.....Knowing what I know now, having endured a similar nightmarish path in my late 20'S & early 30's, this is truly shocking to me.
These are well worn archetypes of ancient wisdom....And yet our naive, puritan, one-dimensional Christian fear of what lies beneath, has only served to suppress & crush such emotional psychic truths - about the human predicament - to the point of ostracizing & alienating each & every individual who attempts the journey.....Our Western industrialized & mechanized world has only served to exacerbate the problem further....And now, we sit upon the precipice of a nuclear Armageddon because of such a repressive & tyrannical code.
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