271218: read this now three (3) times. though that might not be how to think of this. maybe i ‘looked’ at this three times over the years, not because i forgot it, not because i want weirdness, but because i want to ‘understand’ it intellectually as much as ‘sense’ it intuitively. i might maybe wonder how and want to know if i can access hans reickart’s deeply fascinating, horrifying, darkly satiric subconscious world...
so i look/read/think/etc. this again. i read some great reviews in agreement, others in sadness. i want everyone to love this work, i want to advance possibilities of this medium, i am so impressed by reading/looking... at this again. as any work of great art it not only has immediate effect but persistent effect, something new every time, something worth repeating, trying out new art strategies, new philosophical, psychological, historical insights. and so i see the late 18th century thoughts when it is not yet clear where science and technology are going, when despite surface triumph of rationality there is rising of disturbing artistic expressions... so i see the dreams given new forms and psychic terrain new cartography...
so i can read/look... at this work who knows how many times. there is to me beauty in ironically clean, sharp, well-drafted lines, all in service of rendering the most complicated disturbing fantastic story. the images are realistically presented but ‘content’ is anything but realistic. maybe this is the Bildungsroman of two very peculiar brothers in that small town conservative world where nobody else thinks of artistic musical possibilities of pig heads, nobody is ready for this, where only the modest little girl who becomes curious new england maid, is diverted from propriety to perversity... and maybe more (who knows as she disappears from the story), where it is only the outsider girl who, um, sleeps with pigs, who is thought beautiful by one boy... this book was given to me by riley, who knows me perhaps too well: he was certain i would love it... i do not know, does this mean i am predictable? or just inherently weird...
first review: weird? yes. great? yes. surreal? yes. terrifying? yes. nauseating? probably. have no idea what this is, but like it. like a lynch movie in graphic form, like a series of interlocking nightmares, like… nothing else. can imagine this as a very strange, compelling, fantastic movie, but would probably break the bank in cost. and who would want to star in it?