Turn off your Tv set ⚡ Turn up your Lightning Bolt!!!

Sadly, this song ⚡  is truly a song of our times, a hellbound mini epic, about the ravages of endless war.

⚡ VIDEOGRAPHY is a crash course in the fresh rogues of art history ⚡

Peace and Anti-War Artivists. Goya to Steadman.

Artivist is an Artist and Activist.

Artivists are rare and shine through the gloom by capturing the essence of the human spirit in all its myriad forms.

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. -Goya. The dream of reason produces monsters. -Steadman.

Ralph Steadman is one of very few artists, in all of time memorium, to meaningfully address the horrors of war.
Steadman is famously known as Hunter S. Thompsons, flash, brash, Gonzo style, visual axeman.
I was thrilled to see his retrospective ‘Drawing breath’ at the Art Institute Boston.
This mindbendingly rad show gave me some insight into the complex compassionate point blank brutal abstract poignant rage,screaming straight at the viewer, poetically embodying our doomed, enchanted and macabre world.

Francisco de Goya was, and is, in my opinion, the premiere Artivist and social critic. Perhaps, the first modern painting was Goya’s ‘The third of May’ 1808. Which he painted to protest against the violence of the bloody second of may uprising in Madrid, Spain. Two years later Goya started the horrifyingly grim ‘The Disasters of War’ 1810-1820. Also, the earlier ‘Los Caprichos’ 1799, offered a scathing social critique of all strata of spanish society. Much of this work was not shown publicly until after his death.

Other genius War and Peace Artivists include Billie holiday singing Strange fruit 1929 :: Jerzy Kosinski book ‘the Painted bird’ 1965 :: Akira Kurosawa film ‘Seven samurai’ 1954 :: Jimi Hendrix song ‘Machine Gun’ 1970 :: Otto Dix painting ‘The War’ triptych 1929-32 :: Cormac McCarthy book ‘Blood Meridian’ 1985:: Winsor Mcray film the ‘Sinking of the Luisitania’ 1918, animation of the 1915 stragedy :: Niel Young song Ohio 1971 :: Banksy :: Picasso painting Guernica 1937 :: Wu Tang Forever A Better Tomorrow 1997 :: Louis DeBernieres’ book Señor Vivo and the Coco lord 1991 :: Noam :: Bob Dylan song Masters of war 1963 :: Louis ferdinand Celine book Death on the installment plan 1936 :: Public Enemy record Takes a nation of millions to hold us back 1988 :: e.e. Cummings poem ‘147’ 1926 :: Pink Floyd, the Wall 1979-1982 :: Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007 :: Slayer, Seasons in the abyss 1990 :: Apocalypse Now, Coppola 1979 :: War Pigs, Black Sabbath 1970 :: William Blake & Chris Hedges ‘War is a force that gives us meaning’ 2002.

Hedges book is a raw testament to the complex psychology of war; pre-War propaganda fervor, the addictive power of raging War and post War collective War drug crash and collective amnesia amnesia. War is a force also breaks down, in gory detail, much of worlds recent military barbarism. The Saddest, most Brilliant book.

Blessed Be the Creator.
Arts ability to heal and reveal is ancient modern medicine of the mythic realms.

⚡ Seth West 2014 aka Rich Space 2020 ⚡

⚡ Audio Visual maximalist ecstatic art history lesson ⚡