The Paranoiac-Critical Method serves the Art of Deniability

Ceci n'est pas un cigare.

Hendry Holiday was an underestimated artist.

In Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, Holiday made sure that it is you who will be hold responsible for your perceptions. Both, Holiday and Carroll/Dodgson, were masters of the art of deniability. They applied the "paranoiac-critical method" a few years before Dalí invented it to pull our legs.

Holiday's illustration to the last Snark chapter:

Comments

Götz Kluge ^club

• "Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide."
Heinz von Foerster: Ethics and Second-Order Cybernetics, 1990-10-04 (Système et thérapie familiale, Paris)

• "It is possible that the author was half-consciously laying a trap, so readily did he take to the inventing of puzzles and things enigmatic; but to those who knew the man, or who have devined him correctly through his writings, the explanation is fairly simple."
Henry Holiday (1898-01-29) on Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark

• "To Paint is Not to Affirm"
Michel Foucault. This is Not a Pipe, Chapter 6, 1968

• "An anti-subject painting might effectly conceal its subject, hiding it from everyone except the painter; or it might tease viewers with clues; or it might be so arcane that few people can see its subject: What counts is the retreat from the obvious, unambiguous primary meaning."
James Elkins (The School of the Art Institute of Chicago): Why are our Pictures Puzzles?, p. 129, 1999 (see also book review)

• "To say it fully, a cryptomorph is an image that is hidden at its making, remains invisible for some period, and then is revealed so that it becomes an image that once was hidden (and the can no longer be hidden again)."
James Elkins ..., p. 184

• "The act of revealing fully hidden cryptomorphs is an act of terrorism against pictorial sense."
James Elkins ..., p. 203

• "Honi soit qui mal y pense"

9 years ago. Edited 8 years ago.

Götz Kluge ^club

Here Henry Holiday turned John Martin's horses into weeds which are having some fun:

9 years ago. Edited 7 years ago.

Götz Kluge ^club

9 years ago.

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See also...

Photos of Götz Kluge Photos of Götz Kluge

Snark Updates Snark Updates

The Art of Deniability The Art of Deniability

The Baker The Baker

The Hunting of the Snark The Hunting of the Snark

Italo-Byzantine Vacuity Italo-Byzantine Vacuity

Pattern Recognition - the Adventure of Perception Pattern Recognition - the Adventure of Perception

surreality surreality

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The Paranoiac-Critical Method serves the Art of Deniability

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