All posts by bones

Book Title: The Terrance Lindall Retrospective Reviewed by: Phillip Somozo

The Terrance Lindall Retrospective is a difficult book to appreciate if you are not a visionary artist, a philosopher, or a fiend.

As its title suggests, it is a quasi-autobiographical account of a man known as the contemporary world’s foremost illustrator of the greatest English epic poem, Paradise Lost by John Milton. Harmless as it sounds, it subverts modern-day Humanism. This is a book for people that are nobody’s fool.

I did not want to write a review of the book. But reading one page led me to another, and another, until I finished all 253 pages.  The reason for the progression is the author’s versatility because truly versatile people are rare and intriguing to my intellect.

By the turn of the new millennium, scientific studies pushed back the parameters of versatility as they agree that man not only has two intelligences—IQ and EQ—but a dozen. Some say it is two dozen. In effect, should a person be able to develop these potentialities altogether, s/he could become superhuman, even godlike (consider Lucifer)!

Terrance Lindall, already 74 years of age as of this writing (2018), has demonstrated in his life the multiplicity of intelligences a human possesses. A perusal of the Lindall Retro’s contents will show how diverse he has been in his life’s conduct—a soldier, mortuary personnel, financial manager, art and antiques collector and dealer, comic book illustrator, writer, high-fashion model, curator, museum founder, biggest surreal events organizer… and who knows what else. I do not think he was dishonest and self-serving in writing the retrospective.

All the above-mentioned life episodes, inconspicuously or openly, were mere tributaries to the one passion that burned his being: illustrating Paradise Lost. Thus, my review method was to connect points I believe to be significant to Paradise Lost, to come up with a story veiled by Lindall’s economy of narrative text but hinted at by clues and implications. Since I live on the other side of the globe, what is available to me, through internet, is only the e-copy of The Lindall Retrospective. For accuracy of references, I can only hope its paging is the same as that of the hard copy.

An intelligent person is not innocent like Adam and Eve in the Garden. Firstly, he knows what he wants in life, then, acts shrewdly to attain it. Shrewdness becomes necessary due to challenges that are normal metaphysical fixtures of society, as it is with gravity over nature.

Speaking of intelligence, ninety-nine percent of the Earth’s seven billion human population, individually and collectively, at some point or another, cease to attain progressive intellectual enlightenment but convert into puppets of the Establishment. They do what they are told to do without question and thinking. Worse, they serve as nuts and rivets of exploitative societal structures and institutions. Knowledge may be the fruit of Eden’s Forbidden Tree but cognitive dissonance (coined by Earon Davis) is its indigestive symptom.

Not Lindall, to a greater degree than many successful people. If MRI can examine the nooks and corners of his psyche, behind the enjoyment he savors while performing diverse tasks in his career, is his mind’s Eye, bulging, enraptured, staring at Paradise Lost (PL)—a one-pointedness signifying Terrance Lindall is John Milton’s chosen one to illuminate PL with lucidity appropriate for the postmodern period. For this, Humanism’s versatile subversive had no way of escaping the devil, to their mutual benefit and pleasure.

From Afton Wilderness to Minneapolis

Like the first man Adam, Lindall explored and frolicked, in the wild paradisiacal swamp during his childhood in Afton, Minnesota, always searching for strange adventure. Like summer, boyhood came and went. As he grew up and attended high school and college in Minneapolis, separation from this wilderness “devastated” him.

In college, he experienced strange, albeit pleasurable, sensations with unseen presence of a “powerful being” seducing him with “great power” if he yields. These sensations ended with pain and “blackouts”. Because he resisted the sensations, it vanished. He never mentioned the blackouts again in his retrospection.

Instead, he was enamored next by a beautiful young lady artist (p. 64). Driving her around town in a hearse, literally, was not enough to gratify Lindall’s attraction for the woman. I guess the woman is too smart to allow herself to be touched when all her friends were watching wherever the hearse goes.

Never the less, the lady artist turns out to be Lindall’s Eve. In no time, he followed her to the city that never sleeps: New York.  There, Fate ushered Lindall to a sanctum in his psyche where the Madonna of Monsters—one of his lesser known paintings—was waiting manifestation through his canvas and paint palette.  

New York, Lindall, and Fame

The Madonna of Monsters is crowded by the ghastly perversions that Humanism’s progeny had become. Gently stroking the Serpent of Guile and Lies (symbolizing Religion) her other hand lovingly presses the shoulder of Hunger whose face expresses satisfaction as he reaches up for her hip. The picture is theatrically arranged and could well be a monsters family portrait. Other family members present are Knowledge, Ignorance, Fear, Capitalism, Science, and Medicine, among others—all ghastly and dreadful. They were overlooked by God symbolized by the Sun above, while the devil’s minions hover over (p. 184-197).

Lindall’s caption states the Madonna is Hope—a false one as she is described as futile, suggesting it is because of the hope for better life conditions and/or eternal life that people get exploited by religion, government, and big business. Consistent to Lindall’s claim of hope’s futility, the United Nations, for its goals, shifts theme from economic progress to mere sustainability. 

Lindall’s lurid rendition of the Madonna of Monsters on canvas is a milestone that speaks much of his psychological evolution from Minnesota to New York. His own fall from childhood paradise has opened an empty space in his life that needed to be filled. No doubt he must have encountered John Milton and Paradise Lost, academically and more, in high school and college in Minnesota.

It is common belief since time immemorial that a dead man’s ghost is awakened when the living talk about the departed. Is it a question how great personalities long gone supposedly attain immortality? There is more to understand about spirit as indestructible energy. I dare say it was Milton’s ghost or spirit that in Minessota attempted to possess Lindall, giving him very subjective pleasurable sensations and promising him great power should he yield.

Lindall’s resistance to the strange sensations resulted to the earlier-mentioned blackouts, probably forcing Milton’s ghost to make other arrangements to achieve intention. Since then Lindall’s path to success cleared. If it was not Milton, it must had been the devil, itself, tempting Lindall. Either or, even both.

In New York, he gained dexterity over his hands, the brush, and the color palette with which he manifested atypical visions on canvas. Although he did not elaborate on his formal art training, it is obvious his painting compositions are influenced by Hieronymus Bosch. But Lindall ventured further by twisting humor with horror, and vise-versa, or he blended them so well for his unique, now recognizable, marque of surrealism.

Horrifyingly humorous, comically bizarre, he became a sensation in NY’s contemporary art scene and sought after by award-winning horror and futuristic writers (copies of Heavy Metal Magazine reached my hands even as I lived a young recluse in a tropical Southeast Asian countryside from the mid-70s to early 80s). The devastation caused by leaving the wilderness of his boyhood is now being replaced by another form of excitement.

In the retrospective, I am surprised, Lindall’s artstyle was not described by critics as humorous. Descriptions such as visionary, fantasy, narrative, and surrealist in several versions were correct. But none of those who made the definitions saw the humor aspect (p. 6 and 123). For that they missed a very important interpretive element. 

The ugly perverted images (described by the New York Art World Magazine as DNA gone berserk) populating his canvases certainly are ghastly. But seeing through the vomit-inducing and fear-inspiring scenarios, one can discern humor flowing through the artist’s vein. That to me is highly significant to interpretation as I shall later elaborate.

The fame he gained allowed him to purchase luxury cars (Mercedes Benz) and real estates (p. 86), could be factor why he abhorred mortgage. If my speculation is true, one can tie it up with his socio-political-economic disillusionment (p. 110-136 and all over). Understandably, his academic education of Paradise Lost levelled up to involve self-reflection and dialog. 

Paradise Lost Foremost Contemporary Illustrator

We get to know a person by learning about what he does, speaks, and thinks (paints or writes).

Lindall’s magna cum laude from Hunter College, on Philosophy and English with minors on Psychology and Physical Anthropology, is testament he did not personally reject social conformity but to demean it from within. Shrewdly he made use of the social qualifications he had built, speaking his mind freely even if it offended others, mostly, people in position I referred to earlier as establishment puppets and nuts and rivets for oppressive societal structures (p. 51-52 A Few of Many Controversies).

That he had organized history’s biggest-ever surreal events (Brave Destiny and Milton’s 400th Birth Anniversary Celebration, p. 76 and 29) and the recognition he gained as the contemporary world’s foremost illustrator of Paradise Lost (p. 5 and 30) are so far the veritable proofs the great power offered to him is now in his hands.

By writing the essay The Post-Art World (p. 114-116) he risks becoming everyone’s enemy and, like the Hasidic professor, Kapitalisimo, getting shot to death (p. 118-119). Lindall admits he is not so much avante-garde. In art medium and technique true, but in thought he is avante garde. When he openly described himself as hermeneutic artist (p. 123), he neutralized the would-be assassin (if there were any). The self-contradictory, absolute, Western value of postmodern cultural relativism he verbally denigrated saved him without losing his elitist niche in contemporary art history in New York, and beyond.

More than an artist he is a philosopher. A visionary harbinger of the bad news that art and philosophy are dead, which historically is precursor to civilization collapse. His arguments, unacceptable to many, are sound and well-grounded.

Cognitive dissonance, says social critic Earon Davis, makes a person or group of people perpetuate a system if they profit from it, even if they violate the law or go against ethical standards. It is what is happening now to the world at large.

Lindall’s ubiquitous employ of eye images in his compositions expresses his overriding and calculating propensity to observe objective reality. His philosophical romance with lofty metanarrative Paradise Lost heightened his observation and deepened interpretation of society vis-à-vis PL. Quietly it is the only thing that matters to him.

All his other social commitments are subservient and subsequently dovetailed to Paradise Lost. Some of his employers sensed and expressed irritation over it. But how could they divert him from a lifelong passion? Unknowingly they dealt with an artist-philosopher giant that was born at this period of history to fulfill a mission.

The bottomline of the human problem is greed—for money, power, fame—a petty predicament to the sensible. Man was created in God’s image but was contaminated by Lucifer’s avariciousness. Because it has been man’s operational mode for three thousand years it became a joke. The Blob (p. 132) is alive, self-replicating all over the globe, gobbling everything, victimizing everyone.

Lindall is one who takes this state-of-affairs seriously, but wisely takes a creative detour from exasperation to humor, lest one’s emotional existence suffers the most and you miss the joy of planetary ride. He did an exceptionally right thing by treating a girlfriend to a hearse joyride. Making the best out of a bad bargain, so it is said. Some cracks opted doing a 9/11 or mass shooting.  

Is his life mission to overthrow humanism? Not so. His love for the classics—art and literature—speaks of fine and high standard. There is a zen saying “We don’t throw the baby away with the bathwater.” Education, personal growth, societal development, subsist with historical context. There is wisdom from the past that if preserved can prevent Humanism’s scorpion from stinging itself to death. This wisdom runs through the gamut of history and expresses itself through various mediums—persons that are interconnected by an evolving line of thought, forming as it were a growing and complexifying ecosystem.

Bienvenido Bones Bañez and the Felix Culpa

Modern history is a continuing fall of civilization that could crash with various parts disintegrating, disconnected, dysfunctional, and annihilated. It had happened before. It is happening again despite the advancement of societal operating systems. Warnings are drowning in political din.  

So, quo vadis, homo s. sapiens? At the height of his hermeneutic examination of Paradise Lost and having aborted (post)modern humanism through art and philosophical arguments, this question lingered in Lindall’s mind. Fascination with the devil peaked with a feeling of gratitude. Could this be the most dreadful product of Lindall’s hell-illuminated mind?

Unintentionally, Lindall’s gratefulness was precipitated by a clue from fellow hermeneutic surrealist artist Bienvenido Bones Bañez’s statement that “Satan gives color to the world.”  In a public lecture Lindall admitted to have been inspired by Bones’s pronouncement.

In the Garden of Eden, there is no internet, no social media, no cellphones. Everything is in perfect order and harmony. Human population was only two—one male, the other female. Every day, they smiled knowingly at each other and continue on with their blissful innocence. They ate only fruits. No Barbeque nor McDonald’s.

They walked nude on foot and talked to the plants and animals. No intellectual conversations. You and I were not there because there was no chance. Before the Fall, our original father, Adam, and mother, Eve, did not know about sex. Can you spend eternity in such place as the Garden of Eden? If you can’t even be vegan in this world, don’t be hypocritical by answering Yes.

If you honestly answer NO, I don’t want to spend eternity in the Garden of Eden for all the things I’ve been habituated to and would surely miss, then, you ought to be grateful to Satan too. There lies the connotation of Bones’s pronouncement Satan gives color to the world! It was because of the devil’s seduction that the first man and woman fell from God’s perfect grace and landed in this world of opposites: love and hate, pleasure and pain, right and wrong, fame and shame, peace and war. 

and Eve’s fall was the birth of Humanism, Lindall elaborates. They were now on their own to create meaning out of this world where one life is food to another.   

Satan’s Peculiar Graces

The karmic spell the devil cast over the world jolted man to the reality of having to survive inside a lion’s den, so to speak (Prophet Daniel did, literally). Interestingly, man experienced inspiration at his successes over challenges and became adept at the arts and letters, creating beautiful figures and pictures and writing stories of his life exploits in relation to the universe around him. Man’s fall placed him in a position to aspire something better. From a philosophical perspective, man is a beneficiary of the devil’s peculiar graces, a felix culpa (fortunate fall) Lindall explains.

Certainly, Satan has an important role to play in the drama of God’s creation, without which purpose would not be achieved as Christ would not have been crucified and resurrected without the betrayal by Judas. The irony with man is he gives in to and enjoys Satan’s seductions but makes the devil the ugliest, most fearful, and vilest of all creatures. Lindall’s portrayal as monsters out of Humanism’s labors and of men as caught in horrible but humorous scenario is justified.

Further, Lindall declares that if Christians must celebrate Christmas, their expression of gratitude to the Saviour should include Satan. This one is hard to digest for mediocre minds that has been boxed in for millennia by a cultural practice that in the first place was inherited from pagans.

Satan, always, is projected by the church as someone to be feared and despised. Thus, programming humankind with binary thinking. The choice is either God or the devil, either/or. Through time, the binary choice transformed into my belief system or yours? Humankind understandably fell for the devil, otherwise, society and the world would not be in such mess. Yet human subconsciousness, despite all the technological and systems development, stagnate in the Dark Ages.

The advantage of appreciating Lindall’s gratitude for Satan’s peculiar graces is that those who understand would be able to transcend the binary program thinking and level up one’s understanding of God’s all-pervasive order of love: Ordo Amoris. It is a huge step up should you develop compassion for Judas, being mandated with a difficult task to perform, and understand deeper the role of the devil. Love your enemy, a Christian dictum that feels like stone to be eaten (The Stone Eater p. 152). Once that is achieved, fear dissipates.   

Lindall loves the classics but dismayed by what has become of humanism particularly in the postmodern period. While he recognizes the postmodernist reaction to flagrant art commodification as valid, he rejects the treatment of cultural relativism with absolute value. Contradiction in terms, that’s what it is. Instead, he croons for the “elitists” in the arts—the very few who has “the judgment to know what is worthwhile in human achievement,” his own words.

Despite all his subversive pronouncements about humanism, Lindall still holds faith in the human, saying a new and greater Man (and woman) will emerge from Art’s ashes. But before that, an event or two is yet to happen. All things considered, the end of Lindall’s philosophical argumentation is the door he opened but had not fully entered. A sign hangs at the door it says Ordo Amoris.

Source: https://www.johnmiltoninouterspace.com/review-of-retrospactive-catlogue

Robert J. Wickenheiser

Robert J. Wickenheiser, center, Bienvenido Bones Banez, left, Terrance Lindall, right, in 2012

Robert J. Wickenheiser (December 13, 1942 – November 23, 2015) served as president of Mount St. Mary’s Collegein Maryland from 1977 to 1993 and of St. Bonaventure University in New York from 1994 to 2003.[3] The Maryland State Senate recognized his “exemplary leadership” of Mount St. Mary’s when he retired. The first layman to hold the position at St. Bonaventure, he oversaw the university as it implemented a new core curriculum and expanded its University of Ministries, among other achievements before resigning his position during a scandal over the acceptance of an ineligible basketball player. An avid collector of the works of 17th century poet John Milton for decades, Wickenheiser sold his collection to the University of South Carolina in 2006, helping it establish what was declared at that time to be among the largest collections of Milton in the world.[4]

Early life and education

North Dakota native, Wickenheiser was born in Bismarck on 13 December 1942 and grew up in Strasburg. Wickenheiser was a Benedictine monk for four years,[3] having entered a monastery in 1962. He attended St. Benedict’s College, where he graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1965, and the University of Minnesota, where he earned a doctoral degree in English Literature.[3] He attended the Assumption School of Theology and the Shakespeare Institute in England for a year.

Career

After serving as an English teacher at Princeton University, Wickenheiser was named 21st president of Mount St. Mary’s College near Emmitsburg, Maryland in 1977. Following his announced intent to retire in 1993, he was celebrated by the Maryland State Senate, who passed a resolution to recognize “his exemplary leadership” of the college. The last year of his tenure had been marked by controversies which Wickenheiser indicated arose from “firm and difficult actions [that] had to be taken to place the Mount clearly on track with its mission”.

Brought aboard as the 19th president of St. Bonaventure University in 1994, Wickenheiser was in tenure at the university in 1998 when it introduced its new core curriculum.[3] He resigned from the university in 2003 after acknowledging that he had ordered subordinates to allow an ineligible student entry to the school so he could play basketball.[9]

Collecting

Wickenheiser began collecting works related to John Milton in the late 1960s, amassing over 6,000 volumes of books about the poet which he sold to the University of South Carolina in Columbia in 2006 for one million dollars.[11][4][12] According to the university, Wickenheiser and his wife desired to keep the collection together in one library and so accepted a conservative valuation for the sale. The Robert J. Wickenheiser Collection is housed in the William L. Richter Room, named for the philanthropist who provided the bulk of the funds.[4] At the time of the sale, the Associated Press noted that the influx of manuscripts made the Milton collection at USC “among the largest in the world”.[4]

Source: https://everipedia.org/wiki/Robert_J._Wickenheiser/

Introduction: SATANIC VERSES OF BONES BANEZ -{Our 666-Intellectual Inspired ‘’John Milton Paradise Lost’’)

666-SURREAL-BLASPHEMOUS INTO ARMAGEDDON!!!

YHWH GOD ALMIGHTY DOES NOT NEED THE PERMISSION OF HUMAN GOVERNMENT TO ACCOMPLISH HIS PURPOSE, FOR TO HIM -{YHWH God Almighty of the Universe)” THE NATIONS-{Human Rulership/ 666-World Government} ARE AS A DROP FROM A BUCKET; AND AS THE FILM OF DUST ON THE SCALES THEY HAVE BEEN ACCOUNTED.”-ISAIAH 40:15 -‘’THE PERPETUAL CURSE from THE PARADISE LOST’’-Genesis 3:15.
WELCOME BONES 666 ART WORLD SATANIC VERSES! NOBODY ESCAPE THIS NUMBER 666, BECAUSE GOD CREATED MAN, GOD’S CREATION, created in … ”THE SIXTH DAY”, the Creation of Man & Woman, … for the future of the SURREAL-BLASPHEMOUS WORLDWIDE INTO 666-SUBLIME PROPHECY! WHY? Because we are ”TRUST OURSELVES” rather than YHWH-ALMIGHTY GOD! And according to Jesus Christ -“With men {666 Number) this is impossible, but with God {YHWH) all things are possible.”
INTRODUCTION: ”SATANIC VERSES of Bones Banez”
Sin and death enter the world 666; “seed” foretold as deliverer (Gen.3:1–5:5). The woman eats the forbidden fruit and persuades her husband to join her in rebellion, and so Eden becomes defiled through disobedience. God immediately points to the means by which his purpose will be accomplished: “And YHWH {Jehovah} God proceeded to say to the serpent [Satan, the invisible instigator of the rebellion]: ‘ . . . And I shall put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He will bruise you in the head and you will bruise him in the heel.’” (Gen.3:14, 15) Man is expelled from the garden, to live in pain and sweatful toil among thorns and thistles. Finally, he must die and return to the ground from which he had been taken. Only his offspring may hope in the promised Seed.There are two seeds appear next at Genesis 3:15, we should interested in these, because they are related to the issue. First, there is a seed, or offspring and 666 DNA-Satanic generation, of the Serpent… Since Satan, or Beelzebub, they are the ruler of the demons” but they are invisible organization of the world 666.–Mark 3:22; Ephesian 6:12. And Jesus Christ told Jewish religious leaders of his day: ”You are from your father the Devil, and you wish to do the desire of your father.” according to-John 8:44, And we understand their opposition to God’s Son Jesus, those religious leaders showed that they too were Satan’s offspring.
Satan’s human seed-satanic began to be manifested very early in mankind’s history, we have an example, there was Cain, the first human born, ”who originated with the wicked one and murdered his brother” Abel. Moreover, some rebellious angels joined Satan and become part of his Satanic seed.–Jude 6; Genesis 6:4-12; 7:21-23; and 2 Peter 2:4,5.
Shortly after the great Deluge, a tyrant named Nimrod appeared on earth, some Bible scholar describe him as ”a mighty hunter in opposition to YHWH {Jehovah)” truly part of the Serpent’s or Satanic-seed. And Nimrod inspired from Satan desires he showed a spirit of opposition or first revolutionary and built the city of Babel, or Tower of Babel and Egyptian and Babylon the Great, in defiance or against of YHWH {Jehovah) purpose to have to mankind spread out to fill the earth and today into presence modern world United Nation the final 666 world power. As mankind multiplied, other ambitious humans followed like Nimrod, Pharoah, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander th Great, Julius Caesar, Emperor Claudius, King Philip II of Spain, Napoleon of France, Adolf Hitler, Lenin, and Mao tse-tung, these are example in seizing power or control the Satanic world 666. Man began to dominate man to his injury.–{Ecclesiastes 8:9) We testify or witnessed the great grand modern technology military power and organizational 666 geniuses carved out huge empires for their own enrichment desire, fame and glory into sucking colors then swallowing soul. The Bible prophecy refers to some of these, including Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia{#), Greece{#), Rome and today Anglo-America and the final United Nation-666!, well showing themselves to be part of the Satanic seed of the Serpent,– 1 John 5:19 { We know that we originate with God, but the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.) —{
{#)The angel was obviously not referring to Persian King Cyrus, who at that time looked with favor upon Daniel and his people. Moreover, how could a mere human king resist a spirit creature for three weeks when it took one angel only one night to destroy 185,000 mighty warriors? -Isaiah 37:36 , This hostile ‘prince of Persia’ could only be an agent of the Devil, that is, a demon who was given control over the realm of the Persian Empire. Later in the account, God’s angels stated that he would once again have to fight against ”the prince of Persia” and another demon prince, ‘the prince of Greece.”–Daniel 10:20}– Roots of the 666 World Powers of Daniel’s Prophecy, The immense image -{Daniel 2:31-45) , Four Beast out of the sea -{Daniel 7:3-8, 17,25) These are the Demon Prince and they are part of Satanic seed of the Serpent.
From Ancient Babylon became a colorful fountain of religious idolatry, World Sport and Hollywood Stars as an idolatry too! They manipulation the worship of creatures flesh and of a multitude of gods and goddesses, and they fabricated myths to explain into empirical philosophy then applying origin of the earth and man upon it performed degrading rituals and sacrifices, supposedly to ensure flesh fertilty in childbearing and crop raising industry, and world victory in war.
Revelation refers to the world 666 embracing empire of false religion as a city named BABYLON the GREAT.-Revelation chapters 17, 18 wherever it has been sown, false religion has sprouted oppressive priesthoods, superstition, and ignorance. It has been a most powerful tool in Satan 666 Domain into worldwide.
Therefore these are part of SATANIC VERSES of Bones World Verification into faith in God’s word. {1 John 5:19 – We know that we originate with God, but the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.)
This beast, created and empowered by Satan, has the number 666, denoting heightened imperfection. Understanding what the beast is helps us so that we neither follow it with admiration, idolized nor worship it as mankind in general does.—John 12:31; 15:19. This mark is mentioned at Revelation 13:16-18. The beast refers to human rulership like United Nation, and the beast’s bearing “a man’s number” indicates that our world governments reflect the fallen human condition. The 6 plus 60 plus 600 shows that it is utterly deficient in God’s eyes. Those who bear this mark give worshipful honor to the political State, or they look to it for salvation from Satanic seed of the Serpent desire.
(But as a most reprehensible part of the seed of the Serpent, the scribes and the Pharisees in first-century Judaism took the lead in persecuting and finally murdering the primary representative of the seed of the woman-{Jesus Christ) Thus, the Serpent {Satan) was able to bruise him {the ”seed” -Jesus Christ) in the heel.” {Genesis 3:15),)
{And take note:In passing judgment on the sinful couple, God said to the serpent(Satan): ”I shall put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed(666ArtWorld) and her seed(God’s spiritual organization in heaven). He will bruise you in the head{When Satan is hurled into lake of fire, he will become as dead as a snake the head of which has been ground under an iron heel} and you will bruise him in the heel{the Messiah Jesus Christ,who would serve as the sacrificial Lamb of God}.” (Genesis 3:1-6,14,15) That prophecy sets the theme for the whole Bible, including Revelation.}
666 ART WORLD PROPHECY! OUR PEOPLES OF THE WORLD SATANIC BEHAVIOR OR DNA! THESE ARE SATANIC DESIRE! Our 666 World Leaders increasing of lawlessness, the love of the greater number will grow cold as ice. There will be great perversion, and i…n one place after another and our good manners shortages! and there will be fearful sights and from heaven great signs of the great tribulation sucker and having an appearance of godliness but proving false to its power its from satanic desire and from these turn away from goodness. Our world religions, politics, and economics turn into betrayers, headstrong, puffed up with pride, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God words, For men of the world 666 will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money with diamond blood, boastful maniac, haughty traitors, blasphemers from sacred things, disobedient to parents and friends, unthankful and traitor-sucker, backbiting, disloyal, adulterous-sucking stink-flesh, fornication, porn obsession and animals sex perversion, sexual immorality, uncleanness, uncontrolled sexual passion, sadism hurtful desire ,profit by fortune-telling and greediness fame-vanity, which is idolatry a demon of divination into satanic obsession. Our world 666 love of money is a root of all sorts of injurious things, that in the last days ridiculers will come with their ridicule, proceeding according to their own satanic desires… WELCOME BONES 666 ART WORLD SURREAL-BLASPHEMY PRISONER!!! Remember according to Ephesians 6:12 because we have a struggle, not against blood and flesh, but against the governments, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the wicked spirit forces in the heavenly places.
Williamsburg Art & Historical Center/ Terrance Lindall Paradise Lost & Satanic Verses of Bones Banez
I am thankful this wonderful messages and truly I say to you we are not anti religions but we are already Satanic Kingdom since Paradise Lost, then that was started to Tower Babel, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, Anglo-American, and United Nation. But remember the Bible tells us that after Jesus was baptized he went into the wilderness where he was tempted by unseen creature called Satan the Devil, ”Again the Devil took him{Jesus) along to an unusually high mountain, and showed him{Jesus) all kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he{Satan) said to him{Jesus): ‘All these things I will give you if you fall down and do act of worship of me.’–Matthew 4:8,9 / We know the Bible is truly messages from God-YHWH but good for us to awakening! – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias_in_the_United_States -{
Remember this according to Ephesians 6:12 because we have a struggle, not against blood and flesh, but against the governments, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the wicked spirit forces in the heavenly places. )
Our world-Wikipedia is biased: Satanic Verses?! but if we analyze, observation, scrutiny and evaluate the Holy Bible for our faith… but the whole world is 666-Satanic System into SURREAL-BLASPHEMOUS -{we’ve already compromised and members in the UNITED NATION-666) and here’s my link: https://www.facebook.com/notes/bienvenido-bones-ba%C3%B1ez-jr/introduction-satanic-verses-of-bones-banez/10152561898933776 -{ Remember this according to Ephesians 6:12 because we have a struggle, not against blood and flesh, but against the governments, against the authorities, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the wicked spirit forces in the heavenly places. )
Major scholar and author to write introduction for the Satanic Verses artist’s monograph
From WAH Center Art World:
“The devil is therefore God’s paintbrush of the world! And Bones dares to take that brush in hand and color the world in revealing the fallen glory, like stained glass windows in hell, of what he, in a bold poetic conceit, calls our “666-World,” the Tribulation Era spoken of in the Bible’s final book, The Revelation of Saint John the Divine.” Professor Horace Jeffery Hodges https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/Bienvenido_Bones_Banez,_Jr. We are pleased to say that Professor Horace Jeffery Hodges, famed author of The Bottomless Bottle of Beer (Novella: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E18KW0K ), has agreed to write a brief introduction to the soon to be released Satanic Verses of Bienvenido Bones Banez. The Verses will also contain a commentary by Terrance Lindall who will discuss in depth the meanings revealed in Bien’s art, especially Bien’s masterworks in the collection of the Yuko Nii Foundation. Terrance has begun the task of taking all of Bien’s works out of storage for examination. He was astounded to find nearly fifteen works in the YNF collection including two major large scale works, a literal treasure trove by this master surrealist. Terrance read the verses of book 7, the book of the damned, aloud on January 25th at the WAH Center (see video below). He was assured of the power and depth of the poetry when he saw an amused crowd become very serious, one or two becoming ashen pale as the verses declared them, “all damned.” Additionally, an excellent writer from the Philippines, Phillip Somozo, is writing The Bienvenido Life Story, as fascinating a document as the paintings and verses themselves.Pre-pubication orders are accepted at the price of $50 for the 8 1/2 x 11 full color glossy paperback, plus $3 shipping. Release March 2014. info: [email protected] payable to WAH Center, 135 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11211….or to the WAH Center’s

Of Surrealmageddon, Emanations: Third Eye, and The 21st Century Encyclopedia of Surrealism

We conceive three personae, all drawing form and substance from distant wells that gush forth as fleet images and liquid myth, revealing our manifold selves: First, the calculus of mechanism in space. Second, living breath drawn from the continuum of eroding time — shifting principle of a vegetating Cosmos. Finally, the third self, the third I, the ocular stage upon which we perceive this enfolding process. Here all aspiration shall find fulfillment in sentient manifestations. Behold, a myriad of ancient shapes in mathematical eternity, mental rebirth, and furious sunbursts of curious ambition: the audacious call of our deep, assured, and long-echoing emanations.

The third anthology to be released by International Authors, Emanations: Third Eye showcases the work of over forty writers and artists from around the world.

Emanations: Third Eye anthology by International Authors introduces Surrealmageddon of Davao surrealist BIENVENIDO BONES BANEZ

Emanations: Third Eye anthology by International Authors introduces Surrealmageddon of Davao surrealist BIENVENIDO BONES BANEZ

By Phillip Somozo

Surrealmageddon (surreal + Armageddon), a term Banez coined to describe his phantasmagoric vision of the final battle between good and evil, was picked up by books author Carter Kaplan who used it as introductory title for his anthology Emanations: Third Eye, third of a series. This reviewer is motivated by Kaplan’s reception of Banez’s Surrealmageddon to scrutinize the former’s introduction to Emanations: Third Eye.

Carter Kaplan is an American professor who had taught English and Philosophy for 30 years in many U.S. Colleges and in Scotland. He is a poet and had written a number of novels with philosophical and mythological themes.

Describing Banez as “pioneering philosopher of Surrealmageddon,” Kaplan considers the Dabawenyo’s vision of apocalyptic psychedelia as “a catalytic spec floating in the global crucible of morphing civilizations.” What shapes the future, Kaplan rationalizes, is the global consumerist culture and he admits it doesn’t seem very bright. Self-destruction, he elaborates, is built-in in the Homo s. sapiens because of greediness which, in the civilized world, is considered “not insanity.” Kaplan’s introduction, in effect, also concludes his interpretation of the anthology (subtitled Art of Ecstasy and the Ecstasy of Experiment) in the context of collective human thought deciding its own destiny. It is remarkable Kaplan corroborates Banez’s cataclysmic semanticism.

The union of the terms surreal and Armageddon, a brilliant etymological updating, by Banez, modernized its semantic significance by redefining modernism’s pinnacle to which society prophetically (and now affirmed by Kaplan’s sound psychosocial arguments) is heading. The term could had been invented by Saint John the Apostle two millennia ago, if only John had knowledge of modern behavioral psychology and social dialectics. Bridging the gap between Prophet John and hermeneutic surrealist Bienvenido “Bones” Banez is artistic evolution.

Yet, I am sure not everyone agrees with Kaplan and Banez, not the inventors of artificial life-support systems (e.g. biotech, genetic engineering, transhumanism) who aim to perpetuate human life regardless if they have to alter nature, and the vested corporates who tweaked the nostril of the planetary Tao so that it has been desperately sniffing for the vanishing direction to its future since Modernism dawned.

There is more, much more, all of it somewhat obscure, though discernible with some effort, but I’ve received no website address, so I’ve nothing to link to. Part of my interest is that some of my poetry appears in the anthology, which can be ordered here.

I suppose this is less obscure for me than for some of my readers because I’m familiar with the individuals and their ideas — and also because I’ve been reading a bit about “biotech, genetic engineering, [and] transhumanism” lately . . .

Source: https://wahcenter.wixsite.com/encyclopedia-surreal

Surrealist Meaning of Wikipedia, DESIRE from the Human Imperfection, DNA:666-deoxyribonucleic-satanic-acid into God Complexes

The Original Mother Eve and the Greatest 666 Progenitor, The Human DNA is a ”666-deoxyribonucleic-satanic-acid” These are the results from the Rules & Ruins Policy, some say Survival for the 666 Wild Beast Kingdom!
‘’ TREE OF KNOWLEDGE INTO THE PARADISE LOST’’ ”The tree was good for food and something to be longed for to the eyes, yes, the tree was desirable to look upon.” and the Serpent-{Satan the Angel using the serpent as a puppet) had said she would be like God if she ate. ( Because everything in the world the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the showy display of one’s means of life — does not originate with the Father, but originates with the Satanic world desire-666!)
Genesis 11:4- They now said: “Come! Let us build a city for ourselves and a tower with its top in the heavens, and LET US make a CELEBRATED NAME for OURSELVES, so that we will not be scattered over the entire face of the earth.” -{This is a prophecy our WIKIPEDIA was born and be proud ourselves but full of blasphemous names.)
Genesis 8:21 – For the inclination of the heart of man is bad from his youth up;
James 1:14 & 15 – But each one is tried by being drawn out and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then the desire, when it has become fertile, gives birth to sin; in turn sin, when it has been carried out, brings forth death.

ON THE SURREALIST MEANING OF WIKIPEDIA, DESIRE AND GOD COMPLEXES By Terrance Lindall –http://dictionary.sensagent.com/Ter…

When Wikipedia opened, a swarm of people with many things to say and a need to become important began editing. It filled a need, a subconscious DESIRE, from “the mass of men [who] lead lives of quiet desperation” (Thoreau). Here they could write in the guise of serious editors, creating, destroying, and tampering with the history of mankind. Some created articles about themselves and some defined things in a way to suit their loves, hates and biases. The article on surrealism in Wikipedia is one such article that has been taken over by the sheer number of those desperate men, arguing to put this or that name in the article or remove this or that name, whom they like or dislike for one reason or another. I noted that one such editor was editing one article after the other every few minutes, day in and day out. I realized immediately that this was an obsessive-compulsive disorder. This disorder is rampant today since the invention of personal computers. People spend inordinate hours daily on their computers or cell phones. For this editor it also is attached to a “god complex,” to quote from Wikipedia itself: “A god complex is an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility. A person with a god complex may refuse to admit the possibility of error or failure, even in the face of complex or intractable problems or difficult or impossible tasks, or may regard personal opinions as unquestionably correct.[1][2] The individual may disregard the rules of society and require special consideration or privileges.[1]

Thus has Wikipedia become a questionable source. Wikipedia itself has an article on its reliability, for which I salute them.

From my time in government I know what Wikipedia and the Internet in general is a means to the New World Order. Information is power. But in the case of Wikipedia it is power for the men who must maintain order in a world always on the “the verge.” All of the entries, every single one, is assessed and monitored by a supercomputer to note trends. It is a means of assessing the general attitudes of people with a view to what can be presented to them through media (education, news and entertainment) to modify their behavior for the good of society in general.

”The 666 Wild Beast into the Human Sacrifice to the World 666 Desire” Medium:Oil & Acrylic/ Size: 6′ by 8′ / Creation by Bienvenido Bones Banez / Private Collection Prof.Aida Rivera Ford

Satanic Desire The Original Mother Eve and the Greatest 666 Progenitor, The Human DNA is a ”666-deoxyribonucleic-satanic-acid” These are the results from the Rules & Ruins Policy, some say Survival for the 666 Wild Beast Kingdoms-{ Photo by Bible Student Movement)

Excerpted from Wikipedia:

‘’God complex’’

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A god complex is an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.

Contents

Description

A person with a god complex may refuse to admit the possibility of their error or failure, even in the face of irrefutable evidence, intractable problems or difficult or impossible tasks. The person is also highly dogmatic in their views, meaning the person speaks of their personal opinions as though they are unquestionably correct.[1] Someone with a god complex may exhibit no regard for the conventions and demands of society, and may request special consideration or privileges.[1]
God complex is not a clinical term or diagnosable disorder and does not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
The first person to use the term god-complex was Ernest Jones (1913–51).[2] His description, at least in the contents page of Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis, describes the god complex as belief that one is a god.[3]

In pop culture

God complex is mentioned in Fall Out Boy’s song: Sugar, We’re Going Down. The lyrics go as: “A loaded God complex, cock it and pull it”.

See also

References

  • Kaplan, Harold I.; Benjamin J. Sadock (1972). Modern Group Book, volume 4: Sensitivity through encounter and marathon. J. Aronson.
  • Deep Blue at the University of Michigan umich.edu Retrieved 2012-01-22
  1. Jones, Ernest (15 March 2007). Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis. Lightning Source Inc. p. 472. ISBN 1-4067-0338-9. Retrieved 2012-01-22.

External links

Characteristics
Cultural phenomena
Related articles

‘Alien’ Artist H.R. Giger’s Work to be Featured in Queens Exhibit

QUEENS—With a pointy head, razor sharp teeth and a proclivity to wreak havoc on humans and spaceships, the double-jawed aliens in Ridley Scott‘s blockbuster “Alien”have thrilled, shocked and repulsed movie-goers for decades.

Fans of the 1979 film will now be able to get inside the head of the man who created cinema’s most notorious alien—surrealist Swiss artist H.R. Giger.

A new exhibit titled Visionaries: The Art of the Fantastic, which opens this month at Queensborough Community College, features work not just by Giger but by fellow surrealists like Isaac Abrams and Bienvenido Bones Banez Jr., curator Olga Spiegelsaid.

“A lot of artists’ work encompasses magic realism, psychedelic art and symbolism,” explained Spiegel, whose own work is on display at the exhibition.

“Visionary art had not been accepted until recently, but that is changing now,” she added. Close to 40 artists’ work will be on display at the QCC Art Gallery starting July 10 and running through Sept. 20, 2012.

The main draw, however, is expected to be Giger, who won an Academy Award in 1980 for his visual arts work in “Alien,” Spiegel said.

Giger’s work at the QCC exhibition includes recent paintings, sculptures and a silkscreen. Fans can take a closer look at a marble bust of what looks like an alien princess and admire the artist’s other sculptures like “Nubian Queen.”

Calling his work “dark” and “fantastic,” Spiegel added the artist “attracted a certain crowd.”

Recalling “Alien’s” phenomenal success, Giger’s longtime friend and agent Leslie Barany said the Swiss painter and sculptor had paintings of the legendary alien, ‘Necronom IV’ and ‘Necronom V’ in a art book called ‘Necronomicon’ long before the famous movie was even conceived.

When Director Ridley Scott saw the paintings, Barany said Scott exclaimed “Why look further, that’s the monster. I have never been so sure of anything in my life.”

Visionaries: The Art of the Fantastic opens July 12 and runs through Sept. 20, 2012.

For more information, go to www.qcc.cuny.edu/artgallery

Dr. Robert J. Wickenheiser’s Commentary for the Elephant Folio

The Robert J. Wickenheiser Collection of the seventeenth-century English poet John Milton (1608-1674) brought to the Thomas Cooper Library of the University of South Carolina its first major seventeenth-century research collection, to join the earlier acquisition of major collections from subsequent periods. It was acquired for Thomas Cooper Library in 2006 with leading support from William L. Richter and The William L. Richter Family Foundation.

The Wickenheiser Collection, built up over a thirty-five year period, has more than 6,000 volumes. It includes more than sixty first and other seventeenth-century editions of Milton’s own writings, and significant holdings also of 17th century Miltoniana. Its special focus on illustrated editions make it perhapsthe most comprehensive collection ever of Milton illustration.

Synopsis and Illustrations in

Folio Edition by

Terrance Lindall of

Paradise Lost by John Milton

 

 Commentary by Robert J. Wickenheiser, Ph. D.

 

Without a doubt, Terrance Lindall is the foremost illustrator of Paradise Lost in our age, comparable to other great illustrators through the ages, and someone who has achieved a place of high stature for all time.

Throughout almost four centuries of illustrating Milton’s Paradise Lost, no one has devoted his or her life, artistic talents and skills and the keenness of the illustrator’s eye more fully and few as completely as Terrance Lindall has done in bringing to life Milton’s great epic.  He has also devoted his brilliant mind to studying Milton, his philosophy, and his theology in order to know as fully as possible the great poet to whom he has devoted his adult life and to whose great epic he has devoted the keenness of his artistic eye in order to bring that great epic alive in new ways in a new age and for newer ages still to come.

From virtually the outset Milton has been appreciated as the poet of poets.  It was John Dryden who said it first and best about Milton shortly after Milton died in 1674:

 

Three Poets in three distant Ages born ––

Greece, Italy and England did adorn.

The First in loftiness of thought Surpass’d;

The Next in Majesty: in both the Last.

The force of Nature could no further goe;

To make a Third she joyn’d the Former two.

 

Milton’s use of unrhymed iambic pentameter verse in a manner never used before raises the lofty goals of his epic to a level never before achieved in the English language.  Moreover, the poet who said at age 10 that he intended to write an epic which will do for England what Homer had done for Greece and Virgil for Rome, accomplished masterfully the goal he set himself and more than has ever been achieved before or since.

This is by no means to say that there are no great poets who have achieved high goals after Milton, and in doing so have joined Milton and even rivaled him.   But Milton is the giant who stands at the door to English poetry urging all who would enter to master their art, to write with the highest respect for language and a passionate recognition of what language is capable of achieving.

In Milton’s Paradise Lost we see, too, that in great poetry there is always great passion, clarity of voice in support of the purpose at hand, and at its best, with the prophetic and the visionary joined to compel the reader to rise to new heights in what is read and seen through the poet-prophet.

Milton’s Paradise Lost challenges everyone to achieve goals beyond any they might have dreamed possible before, and to take from his own great epic, goals which help define all that is worthy of sustaining while providing English poetry with what it did not yet have.  To declare at age 10 that he would become the greatest English poet is one thing, and a quite spectacular thing at that, but to go on then and fulfill this goal shows not only the great vision Milton had as a poet, but also his tremendous confidence in becoming that great poet.

Milton sings with the voice of the visionary poet and so he becomes the poet for those who see in him clarity of voice and of vision; poets like William Blake who, in the early 19th century thought he was Milton (stretching the point a bit as Blake was wont to do) and who therefore relied very much on Milton and even wrote a poem entitled “Milton” designed and hand-colored as with other of Blake’s great works.  While Blake openly admired Milton, William Wordsworth, a few decades later, was calling out for Milton in an age that had need of him, proclaiming: “Milton!  Thou should’st be living at this hour.”

As the visionary poet Milton was, he had acute interest in such monumental issues as the relationship between God and man, free will and its vital importance to all of mankind along with the responsibility that goes with it, the relationship between man and woman, divorce and the need for acceptance of it, definition of “monarchy” along with important issues related thereto, and a great deal more.  Milton defined many issues at a time when England was engaged in a Civil War precisely because of those very significant issues, issues which Milton helped not only to define but also to defend.

His life spared after the Civil War and his reputation as a poet and writer of important treaties reasserted, Milton retired to the country, to Chalfont St. Chiles, where he dedicated himself to completing Paradise Lost, and ultimately, Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes.  What a profound loss it would have been had Milton not been allowed to write his greatest poetical works!

Yet how did the poet write his monumental works, especially given the loss of his eyesight while writing significant treatises both before and during the Civil War?  Here we have the blind poet dictating to an amanuensis (his daughters, as many preferred to believe for a long time, but in reality his nephew), whole passages defining important relationships and memorable scenes which are themselves of epic proportion: the creation of man in Adam and of woman in Eve; Eve seeing herself in the pond for the first time and likewise our seeing Eve at the same time she sees herself; Adam seeing Eve for the first time; the moving depiction of the “bower of bliss” and then of the creation; the war in heaven; the depiction of Satan and hell, with Satan rallying his troops in passages that take poetry to new heights; the temptation of Eve and then Adam, in equally powerful scenes, and the departure of Adam and Eve from Eden.

Surely Milton deserves not only our gratitude for the prose treatises he wrote, but also for the poetry, much of it written under the most dire of circumstances (some thought he might be put to death for his part in the Civil War and his service to Cromwell, and also more specifically because of his treatise in defense of “beheading a King”).

Here is a poet to be reckoned with: for standing up in defense of eternal values, something Milton not only did himself, but something he expected his readers to do as well; and then to appreciate his poems, his epic verse and organ voice, his epic vision, and his bringing to life, despite (or perhaps because of) his blindness, something so unique that Dryden and others long after him have recognized in Milton the genius that “Surpass’d” Homer and Virgil before him.

As Milton left his supreme poetic gifts for mankind to appreciate in reading his great works during the centuries following him, so, too, he used his blindness to bring to life visions befitting the dynamic scope and epic dimensions of his great epic; visions undertaken in the first, and still one of the greatest illustrated editions of Paradise Lost published not long after Milton died, in a folio format in 1688.  Medina’s illustrations, primarily, are those which appear in the 1688 folio edition of Paradise Lost, but aside from the significance of what his stature brought to this publishing venture, the 1688 folio remains a highly sought after book today because it is England’s first grand publication and therefore holds its own place for the first time with books printed on the Continent where books had long been praised for their publishing distinction and artistic design and success.

Through the centuries John Milton’s Paradise Lost has continued to inspire artists, which tells us much about Milton and about his great epic, a poem which readily lends itself to the eye of the artist, and in this, affords all of us a visual perspective, a visual capturing of the poet’s vision, which words alone can seldom achieve.  Commentary and criticism certainly have their place, but seldom does the written word adequately capture the poet’s vision or replace the illustration or illustrations of the artist’s view of a poem and his capturing that view on a canvas.  The aspirations of each, however, critic and artist/illustrator, need not be pitted against one another; indeed should not.  Rather, they should be welcomed for the manner in which each complements a view or views of a poem thereby bringing together two significant disciplines: that of the writer/poet together with that of the artist/illustrator.

Poets who aspire to lofty goals lend themselves most readily to being illustrated, providing us with the opportunity of looking at how a poem or group of poems is seen by the eye of an artist.  Instead of learning about the themes and poetry of a given age or period as seen only through the eyes of writers and critics, we are privileged to have the views of the artist to help us see and appreciate the poetic vision of the poet, sometimes in great variation from one period to the next or as viewed by one generation to the next.

Obviously, given the monumental issues in Paradise Lost as well as Milton’s portrayal of them, it should be no surprise to say that Paradise Lost may well be the most illustrated of poems and epics.  I intend no controversy by saying this, but wish simply to call attention to how epic scenes have been brought to life for viewers by master artists capable of depicting grand visions within grand poems; by artists capable of capturing with visionary view what words alone can never do.  The painter/illustrator, in capturing moments which might otherwise have been given less recognition than they deserve, provides a vital service in bringing to life scenes or moments, images or views depicted in poetic form by the poet, thereby enabling the viewer to appreciate all the more what the poet has achieved and how he has achieved it.

Lindall has himself said about Milton’s epic: “With Paradise Lost, the written word in its greatest form, Milton was able to evoke. . .immense space and project spectacular landscapes of both heaven and hell, and create also the monumentally tragic character of Satan, courageous yet debased, blinded by jealousy and ambition, heroic nonetheless.  The blind poet brings powerful visionary life to one of the world’s greatest stories, id est, the Western legend of man’s creation and fall, a story encompassing philosophical concepts of free will, good and evil, justice and mercy, all presented with the greatest artistry to which the written word can aspire.”

Lindall also believes “that insight into Milton and the aesthetic and intellectual pleasures of Paradise Lost can elevate every individual’s experience in education, thought, and human endeavor. . .through the inspiration of the written word.”

It is this cherished belief, which has compelled Lindall to want to bring Paradise Lost alive to others, to urge all to see in Milton, as he does, the power of the word and image, and to want to illustrate Milton’s epic for others to see in relation to the eternal truths and values captured by Milton and conveyed in his great epic poem.

Lindall has synopsized the story of Paradise Lost with genuine care in order to bring Milton’s great epic alive to young and old.  His synopsis is poetic in its own beauty, with each word carefully chosen to be true to Milton while maintaining integrity with his great epic and the rendering of it into a readily understandable format.  Lindall’s synopsis maintains the spirit of Milton’s epic while revealing the genius of the poet in telling “Of Man’s first disobedience and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste / Brought death into the world and all our woe, / With loss of Eden, till one grater Man / Restore us and regain the blissful seat, / Sing heav/nly Muse. . .”

Terrance Lindall has spent decades perfecting his painting skill and illustrating technique in order to capture all that is best and visionary about Milton, providing illustrations of Milton’s great epic, early on, e.g., along with his synopsis in a fold-out brochure in order to bring Milton’s epic alive to students in schools.  Lindall’s first edition of his synopsized version of Paradise Lost along with his illustrations (1983) were designed to encourage young readers to look into the brilliance and eloquence of Milton’s visionary poetic landscape and his great organ voice.

More recently he has gone beyond illustrating Paradise Lost by capturing the essence of Milton’s epic and its meaning down through the centuries and beyond in a “Gold Illuminated Paradise Lost Scroll” (size with border 17” x 50”), with nine panels to be read from right to left, as with Hebrew; the Scroll is Lindall’s “tribute to his love [of] and sincere gratitude for Milton’s great contribution to humanity.”  He finished the “Gold Illuminated Paradise Lost Scroll” in 2010.

He has also brought Milton’s epic alive in a very large “Altar Piece,” called “The Paradise Lost Altar Piece” (oil on wood), consisting of two large panels, each 24” x 40”.  When opened, the panels might be seen as pages from an illuminated manuscript of the Renaissance.  One panel shows the gates to the “Garden of Eden.”  The second panel shows the “Gates to Hell.”  In both panels, pages from the epic poem Paradise Lost lie revealed in the foreground at the center of the illustration.  “The Paradise Lost Altar Piece” was completed in 2009.

Lindall’s passion for Milton and his desire to bring the poet and his great epic alive to modern readers reveal themselves over nearly four decades.  During this same period, from the late 1970s to 2012, Lindall’s “love of Paradise Lost” and his “sincere gratitude for Milton’s great contribution to humanity” grew enormously.

To get a sense of this as well as of Lindall’s broader artistic background and its influence on his illustrations of Paradise Lost, there is his large cover illustration of the comic book Creepy (now considered a classic – both the comic book and Lindall’s “creepy” cover illustration of “Visions Of Hell (6/79).”  Likewise his cover to Creepy (#116, May 1980), entitled “The End of Man” (again, the comic book and Lindall’s cover illustration now considered classic).

About this same time some of Lindall’s earliest illustrations for Paradise Lost in the late 1970s appeared in comic book form, Heavy Metal Magazine (1980).  Appearance in Heavy Metal enabled Lindall’s illustrations to reach a very large audience.  That issue in 1980 of Heavy Metal Magazine became an acquisition proudly reported by the Bodleian Library in 2010 (with one of Lindall’s paintings, Visianry Foal, appearing at the top of the acquisitions page), alongside such other acquisition listings at the same time as Philip Neve’s A Narrative of the Disinterment of Milton’s Coffin. . .Wednesday, 4th of August, 1790 (1790) and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (1995-2000), a rewriting of PL by “a modern master,” among others.  The oil painting by Lindall from the Nii Foundation collection was used by the Oxford University major exhibit “Citizen Milton” at the Bodleian Library in its celebration of the 400th anniversary of Milton’s birth in 2008, thereby recognizing Lindall’s contribution to the continuing Miltonian artistic legacy.

Joseph Wittreich, esteemed Milton scholar and friend of both Lindall and me, has kindly given a copy of the 1980 issue of Heavy Metal Magazine to the Huntington Library.  My own collection has several copies along with the other acquisitions listed above by the Bodleian Library in 2010.

Shortly after the appearance of a portion of Terrance Lindall’s illustrations of Paradise Lost in Heavy Metal Magazine (1980), there appeared in 1983 his synopsis of Paradise Lost along with his illustrations of Milton’s epic, privately published together in a small book (5 ½” x 8 ¼”) in a limited number of copies, entitled: John Milton’s Paradise Lost synopsized and with illustrations by Terrance Lindall.  The color print illustrations, inspiration now taking real form and mature character, were tipped in across from the printed synopsis of the illustrated lines of Milton being illustrated.

The whole was a wonderful success and Lindall’s reputation as an artist and as someone committed to illustrating Milton’s great epic were growing in stature, while his illustrations were gaining recognition for the artistic achievement they represented.  The surrealist provocateur was moving in a direction that suited his own goals as an artist and a scholar, an illustrator of Paradise Lost and someone even more strongly committed to continuing his illustrating of the poet’s great epic.  The World Wide Web has long since given access to Lindall’s paintings by millions, making Lindall’s illustrations among the best known of Paradise Lost.

Lindall’s attention to Milton’s epic and to details in the epic, ever from the eye of the dedicated and committed artist/illustrator, grew beyond his early attention to detail.  From a small-size private publication with tipped-in cards measuring 3 ½” x 4 ¼” or sometimes 4 ½”, Lindall moved to a quarto-sized publication in 2009, again done in a very limited number of copies (this time 20) and with each illustration measuring 5 ¾” x 7 5/8” and signed and dated by the artist.

The quarto edition has been followed by his massive and richly triumphant elephant folio illustrating Paradise Lost (No. 1 completed in 2011 and No. 2 in 2012), the remarkable edition we celebrate here.  All concepts that were growing in meaning and stature during the nearly forty years before now were drawing themselves into place for this ultimate expression of Lindall’s interpretation of Paradise Lost in this one final work, his Elephant Folio.  Like his other works before him, this large edition is also being done in a very limited number of copies (10), all by hand, a vast expansion in size and scope over his quarto edition, with 64 pages, each page measuring 13” x 19”, illustrations mostly measuring 9” x 12”, title page measuring 11” x 11”.  The binding of each folio is intended to be leather bound by the renowned binder Herb Weitz, hand tooled & gilt-decorated, unique, and each personally dedicated to the owner.  The covers will be identified by different motifs, such as the “The Archangel Michael Folio” or “The Lucifer Folio,” etc.  Each copy will have one original conceptual drawing at the front.

I use “being done” in describing both instances, the quarto and the folio editions, because both editions have been (and will continue to be) “done” by hand, with loving care, and with each illustration printed on the highest quality paper stock available anywhere and signed and dated by the artist.  Both the quarto and the folio editions have been, and will be, done as “originals, as signed prints,” and in the case of the Elephant Folio, as prints with original paintings surrounding them.

In itself, the quarto edition is superb, truly one of a kind, and distinctive now and for years to come.  “The Paradise Lost Elephant Folio,” however, is amazing and goes far beyond the quarto edition in untold ways; it is the culmination of Terrance Lindall’s life’s devotion to Milton, to Paradise Lost, and to all that Milton represents and his great epic means.  Because of Lindall’s supreme dedication and artistic achievements, Milton will live in yet another new age, brought to life in refreshingly new ways, made “relevant” in remarkably profound ways.  Because of Terrance Lindall, great new numbers of readers will be attracted to Milton and his profound epic than would otherwise, most assuredly, have been the case.

“The Paradise Lost Elephant Folio,” in particular, is a hand-embellished and gold illuminated 13 x 19 inch book containing 14 full-page color 1000 dpi prints with 23.75 carat gold leaf edging on Crane archival paper.  Each illustration is signed by Terrance Lindall, some pages with hand-painted illustrated or decorated borders and large, carefully embellished head- or tail-piece illustrations, others with historiated initials with 23.75 carat gold leaf embellishments.  All add to the depth and meaning of a given illustration of Lindall’s synopsized Paradise Lost(1983) appearing across from an illustration.  For the Elephant Folio, Terrance Lindall is also providing a final painting, The Celestial Orbit, as a frontispiece.  It is Lindall’s “ultimate statement” as an artist’s interpretation of Milton’s great epic.  This painting will only be produced as a print for the Elephant Folio and will not be reproduced for collectors as a signed print in any other format.

And while Lindall may now think that he has finished his work with Milton, he hasn’t, because Milton lives within Lindall in a special way, as surely as Lindall remains dedicated to bringing Milton alive to new generations in fresh and vibrant new ways, doing the same for countless generations in centuries to come.

In his folio edition and the illustrations in it, Terrance Lindall shows the influence by certain great master illustrators of Paradise Lost through the centuries before him, especially with the inclusion of richly illustrated margins for each color illustration, the margins colored in 23.75 carat gilt and consisting of brightly colored details drawn from the epic in order to advance the meaning of the given illustration.  Moreover, again in the tradition of certain great master illustrators of Milton‘s Paradise Lost through the centuries, historiated initials, in imitation of the initial letter in an illuminated manuscript, each in rich gilt and bright colors, are used as the first initial of a section and decorated with designs representing scenes from the text, in order to heighten the intensity of the cumulatively related details in each component part: illustration, border, and historiated initial.

The illustrated borders in the elephant folio are complete paintings in themselves.  Although the border art focuses principally on elements of design, they also sometimes tell stories or make commentary about what is illustrated in the featured central painting.  The borders likewise pay tribute to both humanity’s great achievements, such as music, dance and architecture, as well as tribute to those individuals and institutions and friends who have had important influences on Lindall’s ideas, or who have shown substantial support or affinity.   For example, the Filipino surrealist artist Bienvenido “Bones” Banez, Jr., discovered Lindall’s repertoire during the world renowned “Brave Destiny” exhibit in 2003, an exhibit to which Bienvenido had been invited to display one of his works.  Thereafter, a friendship and mutual admiration between the two great artists grew, to the benefit of each.

Bienvenido communicated to Lindall the idea of how “Satan brings color to the world.”  Lindall thought the idea to be an insightful and original “affinity,” and so in the elephant folio plate, “Pandemonium,” which is a tribute to art, architecture, construction, sculpture, painting, and the like, he especially honors the Filipino surrealist artist by placing Bienvenido’s name on the artist’s palette at the very top of the border, the palette in flaming colors.

Like the great illustrators of Milton‘s Paradise Lost before him, Lindall uses many and various techniques and styles to bring Milton’s great epic alive.  As with Medina, e.g., in the first illustrated edition of Paradise Lost in 1688, Lindall has mastered how to use the synopsized scenic effect to focus our attention on an important moment in the epic while capturing all around it other significant moments or scenes in the epic related to that important central one.

As with the illustrators James Thornhill and Louis Chéron in the 1720 edition by Jacob Tonson and edited by Thomas Tickell, Terrance Lindall draws upon the use by Thornihill and Chéron of the historiated or illustrated initial along with their use of head- and tail-piece illustrations or vignettes – this latter translated to the marginal illustrations or vignettes in Lindall, all to underscore the main theme of the central illustration of a given Book.  As the manner of illustration has changed dramatically in the 18th century from that of the 1688 illustrated edition, so too has the manner of the great contemporary artist changed in his illustrations of Paradise Lost from those in the several centuries before him.

On through other 18th-century greats, Francis Hayman, whose illustrations seem almost marvelous embellishments for the first variorum edition of Paradise Lost in 1749, which focuses attention primarily on the copious notes of that great edition, although Hayman’s illustrations became the most repeated illustrations in reduced form in editions of Paradise Lost for the next 40 or more decades, through to Francis Burney at the end of the century, in whose illustrations can be seen most powerfully the influence of the classics upon artistic interpretation of significant moments, scenes or figures, as with Satan appearing as an Achilles figure in Book I as he rallies his troops.

At the end of the 18th century, too, artists like Henry Richter began to shed the trappings of the 18th century in his 1794 illustrations of Milton’s great epic, and his illustrations give a look that bodes seriously of things to come.

With John Martin, Terrance Lindall has much in common: Martin presents his illustrations of Paradise Lost in various sizes, from his rare folio parts, to his even rarer elephant folio, to his large quarto and also his octavo editions, both in two versions, with “proof plates” and without, including sale of individual illustration plates along the way, between 1825 (when the parts began to be distributed) on through to the quarto and octavo editions, published in 1826.  But not only did Martin and Lindall share a sense of entrepreneurship in passing along their perceptions of key moments and scenes in Paradise Lost, but they shared a sense of searching for a new style in bringing Milton to life anew: Martin via the mezzotint, and Lindall as surrealist provocateur; Martin with a brilliant effect of black and white in each of his illustrations, Lindall with the use of brilliant colors which bring vibrancy and life to his illustrations.  Each in his own way moved Milton and the understanding of Milton light years ahead from where they were in their time.

So, too, William Blake, whose perception of poignant and meaningful moments in Paradise Lost is not only uncanny, but unique, and not because he felt a kinship with Milton that no one else has ever emphasized having (he believed that he was Milton and even wrote a poem entitled Milton, designed and hand-colored as with other of Blake’s great works), but because he brought to life, as did Martin his near-contemporary, Milton’s epic in a new way for many generations to follow.  Certain artists, like Blake, worked painstakingly to make each illustration an original or as close to what the artist intended as possible; Lindall has been like that as well.

Gustave Doré, later in the century, followed in the footsteps of Martin and brought Milton’s epic alive for every generation after him, as did Blake; the two being among the most popular and most known of 19th century artists and illustrators of Paradise Lost.  Doré and Blake so dominated the scene that most illustrated editions of Paradise Lost or of Milton’s poems make use of their illustrations in one way or another.  Only later, when moving into the 20th century, did Martin become something of the same icon, with his illustrations of Paradise Lost used more regularly and more and more often with editions of Paradise Lost or of Milton’s poems.

Along that great continuum of highly regarded and well-known artists who have illustrated Paradise Lost, belongs the remarkable Terrance Lindall, taking second place to no one in his love and knowledge of, or devotion to Milton, or in his capacity to bring alive in remarkably vibrant new ways and in a new age, the poet for all ages, whose epic stands next to and even above that of Homer and Vergil.

His illustrations incorporate “the artist’s [Lindall’s] concepts. . .the best since Blake and Doré” (Nancy Charlton), with, in my view, John Martin hovering strongly in the background, especially in certain of Lindall’s illustrations where space and dimension allow the conjuring up of landscapes, colors, sensations, and artistic visions without confining them.  If nothing else, although there is more, so very much more, Martin and Doré, along with Lindall now, show us that the use of space helps to accomplish all of the above and more, seen in the brilliant colors and breadth of vision in Lindall and in Blake before him.

 

“Eerie, magical, dreamlike, devastating, jarring. . .Lindall’s illustrative style is magnificent!,” declared Julie Simmons, Heavy Metal Editor in Chief, 1980.

“Lindall’s striking and unique visionary fantasy art is breaking new ground in the field, ” exclaimed David Hartwell, Pocket Books Senior Editor, 1980.

“Lindall’s use of color & detail to achieve effect, his dramatic compositions, but most of all his totally unique vision make him a new wave artist to be reckoned with,” according to Louise Jones (now Louise Simonson), Warren Communications Senior Editor, 1980.

 

Such early rave reviews continue today, as Lindall continues to assert his stature as illustrator and singular visionary illustrator of Milton’s Paradise Lost.

 

“My reward for the purchase of a Lindall masterwork has been a cover that draws raves.  It is a very valuable addition to my collection of fine art,” claims Stuart David Schiff, winner of the Hugo Award, twice winner of the World Fantasy Award, editor of the acclaimed Whispersanthologies.

 

Lindall’s art is also in the collections of both Stephen Schwartz, the famous lyricist for Broadway and films and winner of three Academy Awards, and Michael Karp, whose music is perhaps the most performed on television.

Mark Daniel Cohen, critic for Review Magazine and NY Arts Magazine, states that “Clearly avoiding the view that Pop imagery is inherently a sign of trauma, Terry Lindall employs the cartoon elements of style with a charming and often unnerving directness and simplicity, frequently aimed at causing a trauma all his own.  This is particularly the case with his illustrations of Milton’s Paradise Lost, with which he reaches a hyper-intensified and nearly hysterical verve.”

“I love these!  There is a wonderful Bosch-meets-Blake quality combined with something wholly modern. . .,” Professor Michael E. Bryson, Associate Professor of English, California State University, Northridge, proclaimed recently in open admiration of Lindall’s illustrations.

In using one of Lindall’s paintings from the Nii Foundation collection for the major exhibit “Citizen Milton” at the Bodleian Library, honoring Milton’s 400th birthday in 2008, Oxford University recognized Lindall’s contribution to the continuing Miltonian artistic legacy.  And indeed Lindall’s contribution is great and virtually immeasurable!

Those contributions and Lindall’s monumental illustration have inspired Peter Dizozza to prepare “Incidental music to Milton’s Paradise Lost” in 2008, “Composed for Terrance Lindall,” honoring Milton, first and foremost, but thereby honoring Lindall as well.

A short time later, famed Lutheran hymn writer Amanda Husberg composed a requiem mass for Terrance Lindall in recognition of his contributions to the understanding of and earthly resurrection of John Milton’s “glorious” Paradise Lost.  Noted Lutheran hymn text writer and poet Richard Leach wrote a new text for the requiem mass.  The Requiem in honor of Lindall was published by Concordia Publishing House in 2010, receiving high praise from David Johnson, Head of the Publishing House, as being “totally enthralling, engaging the heart, the mind, and the spirit with absolute beauty, balance and integrity.  About his Requiem, Lindall commented, “It will be the final act of my Paradise Lostproject and acknowledgement of my own resurrection.  The ‘two handed engine of truth and justice’ will prevail in resurrecting the spirit of John Milton!”

Lindall’s illustrations have been called “surrealistic” in the manner of André Masson, Salvador Dali, and Max Ernst, but he takes his art to another level as “surrealist provocateur. “  He is highly regarded for the powerful effect his illustrations have and will continue to have by the juxtaposition of images within the context of a given illustration, for the lasting achievement of an artist who combines surrealism with his interpretation of how that best applies to Milton, allowing him to bring together richly woven tapestries of illustrations which capture poignant moments in Milton’s powerful epic.

Lindall’s art speaks to us freely, openly, and sometimes loudly; it does so in magnificence of design and depth of vision; it sometimes uses brilliant, other times subtle, colors to heighten key elements in important scenes.

Such is the case in “The Infernal Serpent,” chosen as the central illustration in the recent publication of the important Modern Library Edition of The Complete Poetry And Essential Prose of John Milton (2007).  “Lindall’s image appears on the covers of Random House’s 2008 Essential Milton (2007)” as well.

For William Kerrigan, renowned Milton scholar and one of the editors of the these editions, “the new cover is WONDERFUL. . . .The black/white division captures the dividing of light from dark at the beginning of Creation, which underlies the entire universe (just as it underlies the entire cover) as Milton understood it and, through his blindness, experienced it.  Lindall’s image is, of course, the star.  It seems to me at once unmistakably modern and yet just as unmistakably archaic: exactly the doubleness I was hoping for on our cover.”

Holt Rinehart & Winston used another of Lindall’s illustrations of Paradise Lost in a 2009 high school textbook, which was purported to have a first run of 370,000.

Professor Karen Karbiener of New York University, one of the first to use Lindall’s art as an educational tool to interest students in Paradise Lost, says, “Radical artist and nonconformist Terrance Lindall has channeled Milton’s spirit into a modern context, in a provocative series of illustrations to Paradise Lost.  His visual celebration of Milton reveals his remarkable affinity for the radical English poet, and his ability to create a fitting tribute to Milton’s enduring influence in the arts” (June 2007).

Terrance Lindall’s artistic accomplishments as illustrator of Paradise Lost, along with his burning desire as foremost Milton aficionado of our or perhaps any day, is second to none in his great enthusiasm for the poet and his lifelong goal of bringing Milton alive in vibrant and new ways to generations for many of whom the classics and the liberal arts and Milton himself have been passed over as no longer “relevant,” useful, or important.

Lindall has had the dual task of bringing to life key scenes and moments in the greatest English epic and one of the greatest epics ever written to whole generations who not only have never read Paradise Lost, but haven’t cared about it or about epics, unless that means “epic” as in “epic dimension” and “epic colossal” on the big screen: Thor & Iron Man, for example.  Unlike illustrators before him, Lindall has had to work against tremendously difficult odds, but that has only meant that he has worked harder to win over his audience, to bring his illustrations of Paradise Lost to generations used to the visual and the dramatic and the “epic” in the broadest sense of each of these terms.

Lindall’s illustrations are all of this and more, and those excited by movies like Thor, Iron Man, and Real Steel will feel a kinship with Lindall because of the excitement, remarkable movement, inspired use of color, and sometimes haunting grandeur he brings to his illustrations and they in turn to Milton’s epic.

Lindall opens up whole scenes for us to see in fresh and exciting new ways; his illustrations compel us to read Milton’s epic, or at least key scenes and moments in the epic, in bold new ways.  They bring to life, as only an artist-illustrator can, and indeed as only this surrealist provocateur can, the quality of poetry, visual effect, poetic vibrancy, and so much more, that are captured on each page, in each Book, and in each line of Paradise Lost.

What does it matter that the epic begins in medias res (“in the middle of things”) – not unlike many movies and programs today that begin with a captivating scene and then exert: “six hours earlier” or “three weeks before,” and the like.

Now, in the grandeur and size of Lindall’s elephant folio, as with the 1688 first illustrated folio, the elephant folio of John Martin, and the folio editions of William Blake and Gustav Doré, all choosing this size before him, Lindall has taken his illustrations, as did they, to new heights of splendor and achievement.  Their size demands attention anew to the elements, figures, and depth of the image or scene illustrated, because with increased size comes grandeur of color and focus of the artist’s eye.  Largeness of size also clearly demonstrates how genuinely fresh, remarkable, and stunning his illustrations are, brilliant and often very bold in their interpretations.  Likewise, the occasional head- and tail-piece illustrations and the margins which have been added for the first time here, along with the historiated initials which capture the central theme or image of the illustration and are intended to embellish the page while complementing the illustration.

As a collector of John Milton for 40 years, my focus has been on illustrated editions particularly illustrated editions of Paradise Lost and original illustrations whenever and wherever I might find them, there is no doubt in my mind that our age is fortunate, very fortunate indeed, to have one of the all-time great illustrators of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

In Terrance Lindall we are also most fortunate to have someone who has dedicated his life to celebrating Milton’s Paradise Lost and all that this great poet represents, believed, and stood for, through illustrations and synopsis intended to help students discover Milton’s great epic, through the vehicle of Heavy Metal magazine designed to bring Milton’s epic to a much larger audience on their terms, to various forms and formats of illustrating Milton’s Paradise Lost for generations now and in the future, in events so noteworthy in size and scope that they bring Milton to life in full celebration of the great poet that he was, such as the 2008 “Grand Paradise Lost Costume Ball and Exhibition,” organized by Lindall to celebrate John Milton’s 400th birthday and acclaimed around the world for its enormous achievement and success, culminating in his elephant folio edition of Paradise Lost with illustrations in size and artistic design and use of illustrated borders and historiated initials that ensure that this magnificent edition will “stand the test of time,” as Samuel Johnson said is true of any great work.  And great work indeed is Terrance Lindall’s Paradise Lost Elephant Folio.

When Terrance Lindall completed the first Paradise Lost Elephant Folio and presented it to Yuko Nii for the Nii Foundation, he said to me in words that were perhaps intended to be private, but which demand sharing with the world: “I have to say that I think it is the greatest illustrated book ever done [for many reasons, but especially] for all the imagination, thought, and work I have put into Paradise Lost all my life that is summed up in this folio.  This is my supreme work.  There is nothing else I need to achieve.  Everything was moving toward this object all my life, but I did not know it.  The folio is everything I had hoped and imagined it could be.”

A short while later in a hand-written note to me, he reiterated sentiments I share, that “I know now that the Elephant Folio will be one of the greatest printed and embellished books ever produced!”

Lindall’s elephant folio with the grandeur of size given each illustration, accompanied by clarity of text through his own synopsis of Paradise Lost, affords Milton’s great epic the quality of scope and epic design it deserves and brings Paradise Lost to life in exciting new ways that are as new to Milton’s epic as Milton’s epic itself must have been to his own generation and others that followed.  With the publication of his illustrated Paradise Lost Elephant Folio, Lindall claims a stature as illustrator par excellence of Milton’s Paradise Lost for our age and for all ages to come.  His illustrations stand second to none and rank among the best-known paintings for Milton’s epic, and as the epic will live on because of its intrinsic and unique celebration of the state of man, so will the illustrations of it by Lindall, enabling everyone in every age to recognize and appreciate what makes Milton’s epic so timeless and for all ages.  Milton’s epic together with Lindall’s illustrations, have become intertwined for every age and for all ages to come.

 

 

***************************************

 

From being a Benedictine monk in ND in the mid-1960s, the state in which he grew up, Robert J. Wickenheiser went on to earn his MA and PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1969 &1970.  He then moved on to teaching Milton on the faculty in the English Department of Princeton University.  At the age of 34 he became the 21st

president of Mount St. Mary’s University (MD), where he served for 16 years from 1977 to early 1993 and is recognized as President Emeritus; very shortly later he became the 19th president of St. Bonaventure University (NY) and first lay president, where he served from 1994 to 2003, rounding out 25 years of service as a university president.  During all this time he maintained his passion for collecting the poets John Milton and George Herbert, from the 17th to the 21st centuries.

Wickenheiser has written for a number of scholarly journals and spoken widely to various audiences, scholarly and other; he edited a two-issue edition of The Princeton University Library Chronicle in 1977 devoted to the 50th anniversary of highly regarded collector, Robert H. Taylor, and his renowned collection of English Literature in the Robert H. Taylor Collection at Princeton University, providing a key introduction and overview of the collector and his collection.

After his retirement in 2003, Wickenheiser devoted himself to writing and his recent publication in 2008 of his book on his Milton collection, The Robert J. Wickenheiser Collection of John Milton at the University of South Carolina By Robert J. Wickenheiser (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008), a collection of over 6,000 editions and related books and items from the 17th to the 21st century, now bearing his name and permanently housed at the Thomas Cooper Library of the University of South Carolina, is much heralded and praised for its content and book design.  The collection is considered one of the great Milton collections in the world.

He is presently completing his book on his extensive collection of the 17th-century poet, George Herbert, ranging, as with Milton, from the 17thto the 21st century.

 

 

*********

The following are comments on Wickenheiser’s Milton book and Milton collection.

*********

 

Wickenheiser’s Milton book is much heralded as a “grand collecting and cataloguing achievement,” with “devotion to purpose. . .[and] attention to bibliographical detail.  Future Miltonists will be forever obliged to [him] for all phases of [his] extremely rewarding work” (Arthur Freeman, former Harvard faculty member, now residing and writing in London after being with Quaritch Antiquarian Booksellers for many years).

Others have said about the book:

“What a wonderful book, both in content and in book production!  There are a great many items here –– particularly some of the illustrative materials –– that I have never seen before.  The reproductions of art work and other materials are outstandingly fine.  Anyone who looks at the catalogue has to be pleased and astounded at the presentations and important information that every page offers.  It is a great contribution to Milton studies, to bibliography, and to art history –– the Fuselis and Martins are especially magnificent” (John Shawcross, renowned Miltonist, immediately upon the publication of the book).

Shawcross had earlier said of the collection itself: Wickenheiser’s collection is one of the major collections of materials related to John Milton, editions and studies and artworks, in the world, indicating the breath and nature of Milton’s position in the literary, political, religious, and sociological world over the nearly three and a half centuries since his death.”

Noted Miltonist Al Labriola wrote of the collection and book: “A sumptuous catalogue of the Wickenheiser Collection at the Thomas Cooper Library of the University of South Carolina, superb down to the last detail with illustrations which are breathtaking.  The book is a milestone in Milton studies, and the Wickenheiser Collection is a treasure trove for archival research.”

 

 

***************************************

 

BIENVENIDO ‘’BONES’’ BANEZ, JR. 666 ART WORLD WIKIPEDIA

Life and work

Banez was born on June 7, 1962 in Davao City, Philippines.[3] He studied at the Learning Center of the Arts (now Ford Academy of the Arts) in that city, where one of his tutors was Victorio C. Edades, Jr.[4]Revisiting the Art of Victorio Edades., M Magazine: Life and Living in Mindanao, Issue No. 2, July 2008, p. 44. Margot Marfori writes: “Edades and Aida Ford encouraged talent to flourish and flower further. Evidence of this is seen in one of the students of the very first group under his tutelage in the Center. Ben Banez, for example, who is now based in New York City was recently conferred as one of the foremost surrealist painters of the world.”
In 2002 he won the Asian Fellowship Painting Competition of the Vermont Studio Center in Vermont, USA.[1]:47
In 2004, Bañez went to New York where he now lives. In 2010, he was included in Lexikon der phantastischen Künstler.[1]:47https://books.google.com.pe/books?r…
Between 2009 and 2014 several drawings and paintings were acquired for the Robert J. WickenheiserJohn Milton collection at the University of South Carolina.
In 2017 a portrait of John Milton was added to the Milton’s Cottage collection-http://wahcenter.net/2016/12/milton…, and he was named to the editorial board of Emmanations, a print anthology of poetry, fiction and essay published by International Authors.http://internationalauthors.info/ed…

Honors

In 2016 Banez was named an official full member of the Williamsburg Circle of International Arts and Letters, among several other highly regarded scholars, artists, writers and performers.[6] https://sites.google.com/site/willi…

Themes

Banez’s work revolves around the theme “666”, the “reign of evil in the world”, which he expresses through psychedelic depictions of “human and sub-human figures.”[7]http://www.oovrag.com/gallery/galle… To Bañez, “Satan brings color to the world,”[8]http://wahcenter.wixsite.com/wah-ce… which is his interpretation of the felix culpahttps://www.revolvy.com/main/index…. theodicy.[9]https://sites.google.com/site/inter…
This proposition stems from his strong belief in Christianity and in the “Judeo-Christian metanarrative” where the Devil’s “rebellious power” is prevailing in the world. Using jewel-toned colors, Bañez depicts Evil as beginning to take over as exemplified by the wars, environmental degradation, injustice, and the proliferation of crimes against humanity.[10]https://sites.google.com/site/inter…