The Tortured Brain and The No Brained

We have just seen Laocoon as the center of debate whether to suffer in silence or dare expressing violent pain. The figure group itself is composed of so many elements that it is next to impossible to incorporate it into new layers of imagery, but Per Marquard Otzen has managed to do exactly that; uncovering the convolutions of the artistic brain of winding snakes and bodies twisting in pain.

PSST Per, you have given Laocoon his non-authentic arm; Michelangelo could tell you. Unless giving him that very arm is very much intentional in breaking with the unity and thus drawing attention to the anguish of the artistic process. An anguish for us to see only this once since the poet resembles those unhappy men, prisoners of the tyrant Phalaris, who let them be slowly roasted by a gentle fire - in the words of Kierkegaard - only their shrieks did not reach the tyrant's ear. To him they sounded like sweet music. Do sing again, people exclaim while flocking about the poet:

Per Marquard Otzen, Museum of the Mind.
The newly opened Museum of the Mind in London explores
the boundaries between art and mental illness, February 27, 2015.
- do click the drawing to have its full impact before you

Amine Labter /Vit'amine! February 28, 2015.
- You have no soul!
- Why, I was thinking the very same thing about you!
Two short sentences in which the thinking
and the dignity in how to address one's adversary
is all on the one side.

Museums as the meeting place for thoughts and ideas from long before we were here and to be shared long after we are gone, giving food for new ideas, saw a sad week, when the Black Clad of Islamic State decided to show off their inability to think beyond the fabric wrapped around their heads.

Especially since destroying treasures of the past is one way of expressing the power of those majestic artworks. Iconoclasm is and always has been an act of idolatry. The artworks may not move much in any physical sense, as Amine Labter is drawing for us, but their immobility is a symbol of their longevity as opposed to the little men jumping around them.

Speaking of little men, there is a reason for their carefully staged filming, as Doaa Eladl has drawn. Taking even the cat as their hostage.

Doaa Eladl, February 19, 2015.
- Don't worry about being short. I can use effects to make you a giant in the video!
- OK! Can you also make my mouth spew fire!

The cartoons shown are courtesy of their artists and must not be reproduced without their permission.