Here, in Lorrain's poisoned little jewel of a tale (“The Man Who Made Wax Heads”) the consummate achievement of decadent art is caught in miniature. The genius of the artist entangles perpetrators and victims in a sticky web of perverse delights, in which exploitation becomes collusion, the ripples of guilt spread outward, and the real criminal slips away. In the end, responsibility is lodged firmly with the consumer, forced — he must confess — by his own perverse desires, to buy into the values of this particularly black market. Jennifer Birkett
Abuse manipulates and twists a child’s natural sense of trust and love. Her innocent feelings are belittled or mocked and she learns to ignore her feelings. She can’t afford to feel the full range of feelings in her body while she’s being abused–pain, outrage, hate,...
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Unknown
Killers aren't always assassins. Sometimes, they don't even have blood on their hands.
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Ruta Sepetys
God judges men from the inside out; men judge men from the outside in. Perhaps to God, an extreme mental patient is doing quite well in going a month without murder, for he fought his chemical imbalance and succeeded; oppositely, perhaps the healthy, able and...
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Criss Jami
Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100, 000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100, 000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100, 000. <span...
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Christopher Hitchens
And yet, sometimes facts are no more than pitiful consequences, because guilt does not reside in our acts but in the intentions that give rise to our act. Everything turns on our intentions.
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Unknown
More Quotes By Jennifer Birkett
Art makes murder into the supreme image of Beauty and in doing so sets free the vengeful God. (referring to Jean Lorrain's LE VICE ERRANT)
Hidden away behind the closed doors of aristocratic and bourgeois privilege, concealed under those ultra-respectable masks of black frock coat and veil, the green glow of corruption flickers into sight, steadies, and spreads everywhere, fostered by Lorrain's horrified and complicitous gaze. This decadent detective is...
The mask of art is the means through which corruption is spread. The mask makes vice seem beautiful, turns squalor and nastiness into glamorous thrill, seduces the onlooker into the game — and leaves him or her with the corpse on his hands.
Art serves to confront that which is outside order, to give form to the obscene. In the process, it opens it to transformations that can not only make it safe for public consumption, not a powerful vehicle through which to address the public imagination.
