Thursday, December 13, 2007

Art for Red World of Polaris

The colorful illustration for Clark Ashton Smith's Red World of Polaris is at least as "science fictional" as the narrative. Actually, I share Smith's real orientations. The commonality is a yearning for beauty that can only be experienced in terms of the Grotesque. The Grotesque is a spiritual grimace, an expression of tension like the distorted features of someone who is expressing anger or fear or passion. The Grotesque is the crystalized poetry of anguish. . . . the distillation when Beauty and Anxiety are mingled.

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