spotlight

"Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it." Georges Bataille


this reminds me of a movie that my friend andrei adores. monica bellucci is raped and severely beaten in a dirty hallway on the way to the subway. her exquisite beauty is destroyed by the hands of her rapist. her face rendered a bloody pulp. i always thought this was the expression of utter disgust at the idea of beauty and the power it has over us. beauty enthralls, enslaves. the befouling of it sets us free of it. or so it seems.

to me, i look for beauty in what is not obvious. you have to search for it, reveal and uncover it. read an image, a word, a sentence, a face. a friend goes down into basements of abandoned places. because of the selective diffusion of light, he says. shining a light on only particulars. accidently. everchanging with the movement of the sun and clouds. movement of the earth. bringing to light parts of what is left unconscious to most. few spots at a time. that return to obscurity soon after but for that moment visible. to the artist's eye. not afraid to see. little beads of consciousness. the most beautiful image freud could create of the unconscious.

so i guess, in the end, even in the thing of beauty what is unseen is the inherent profanity, its inevitable passing, the rot of future times. profaning it means revealing also that which is unseen to most. only to the one not afraid to see. graphic and disturbing. like our nightmares.