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Masochism is the opiate of the executioner’s assistant.

Unable to share in the isolate, incorporative, sadistic satisfaction of the man whose boots holds down the offender’s neck, the masochist usurps the role of victim without descending to the actual victim’s position of abject helplessness. Expendable, marginalized, a mere tool of the hierarchies of domination, the assistant dreams of making the master become his slave. (…) But in reality the master has better things to do than pay attention to the groveling insignificance of his menials. Hence the executioner’s assistant needs a surrogate master -someone even more marginalized than him- who will play the part of his boss, do his bidding, and “beat” him. (…)

The assistant is the parasite who gives his master life. In 1900 he had already bought a house, and lived quite comfortably among the artists and writers, accountants, soldiers, middle-level executives, and shopkeepers of the enlightened middle class. The principal surrogate he used to fill his master’s role and give meaning to his insignificance as a worker in the quarries of power was his wife, whom he forced to impersonate the devil so that he might play martyr while he watched the executioner of dualistic thought depredate the forces of human coexistence.(…)

Woman, who at mid-century had of necessity been the first to explore the realm of masochism, now found herself pushed into the role of the surrogate sadist, so that the male could vent his pent-up frustrations in an orgy of masochistic self indulgence. With her apparent hunger for gold, her outward purity and inward lust, her seeming self-sufficiency and blood thirsty virginity, she was the perfect foil to the pervasive masochism of the artists and intellectual –the cultural middlemen- of the turn of the century. Spending the male’s money, woman symbolically wasted his seed, and in wasting his seed she caused him to lose the most precious source of nourishment of his transcendent intellect. What was worse, she could spend his money while remaining physically a virgin. Even a daughter could thus participate in the unmanning of her own father.

(Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity, 1986)

Daniel Greiner, Salome, 1922

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Hôtel Solvay (Victor Horta, 1895-1902)

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狗阵 | Black Dog (2024) dir. Guan Hu cine. Gao Weizhe

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Stephan Sinding, To Mennesker, 1889

Gustav Vigeland, 1898

Hendrik Christian Andersen, Night (detail), 1904

Miklós Ligeti, Csók, 1902

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Tyra Kleen (1874-1951) / Bertha Lum (1869-1954)

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The exhibition about the Dutch artist Carel de Nerée tot Babberich at Dordrecht Museum certainly worths a trip to the Netherlands.

The aristocratic Carel de Nerée was not the only one in his family to have a refined skill for the graphic arts. His brother Frans was an artist as well, and the mother, Constance de Nerée tot Babberich Van Houten collaborated with Carel for a series of embroideries on painted silk of exquisite taste.

Echoes of Beardsley, Toorop, Khnopff, the Glasgow School, Wayang kulit, neo-rococo and Viennese perversion run through the rooms of this exhibition like faded ghosts in a dream.

The portrait section is very moving.

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Sigmund Lipinsky, Study for "Calma Marina", 1912

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Friedrich von Schennis, "To Apollo, preserver of the Emperor", Nymph in a landscape with ruins, 1893

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"Qui jouit ou ne jouit pas des fleurs, dans les champs, dans les vases, dans les discours, et comment celui-là en jouit ou n'en jouit pas, révèle sa position dans des rapports de classes. Il ne faut pas croire que les fleurs soient nécessairement à loisirs. Elles portent une violence potentielle d'inégalité."

Marion Grébert, Pourquoi les fleurs - Un autre voyage en Italie, Ed. L'atelier contemporain, Mars 2025

Leonardo da Vinci, La Vergine delle rocce, 1483-86, Musée du Louvre, détail de l'œillet dans la roche

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Le Pain Quotidien (Our Daily Bread) 1942

René Magritte

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[The] records shine with glorious deeds, the self-devotion of heroes and of martyrs; and the result of all is disorder, imbecility, ruin.

-Francis Parkman (U.S. historian, 1823-1893)

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Mood.

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Félicien Rops - Qui aime les japoniaiseries, n.d

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Jane GRAVEROL (1905-1984) - Les divinités naturelles, 1973

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