Beautiful Ruins

"Architecture, it's what makes beautiful ruins"

Auguste Perret

quoted in Jean Kerisel - Pierres et hommes - 2005

Tullio Crali - Cityscape - 1939

Erich Kettelhut - Sketch for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis - 1927

Edmond Van Dooren - City with Machines - ca 1930

Heart of Stone

"His heart is like ice, he feels no pain

... For the creatures downtrodden by destiny...

The tears of those unfortunates thrown in the bustle

His heart of stone knows no warmth."

Nella in Alexander Bogdanov, Engineer Menni. A Martian Stranded on Earth, 1913

Lazar Khidekel - Black suprematism circular - ?

Alexander Rodchenko - Logo design for Dobrolet - 1923

Mária Balážová - Serpent Geometry 2 - 1994

Literary syphilis

"A manifesto is a communication made to the whole world, whose only pretension is to the discovery of an instant cure for political, astronomical, artistic, parliamentary, agronomical and literary syphilis. It may be pleasant, and good-natured, it's always right, it's strong, vigorous and logical. "

Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto on Feeble Love and Bitter Love, 1920

Sara Murphy and Pablo Picasso - Plage de la Garoupe - 1926

Moving towards a Ghost

"What would we be without the succor of what does not exist? (…) The myths are the souls of our actions and of our loves. We may only act while moving towards a ghost. We may only love what we have created.”

Paul Valery, Petite lettre sur les mythes, 1928

Attributed to Michelangelo - Detail from the 

unfinished Manchester Madonna - ca. 1497

Henri Matisse - Blue Nude IV - 1952

Theo van Doesburg - Archer (design for poster) - 1919

Stretching his Hand to the Master of Things

“In place of a romantic, an idealist, an aristocratic dreamer about pure symbol, about abstract aesthetics of the word, in place of symbolism, futurism and imaginism, arrived a living poetry of the word-object, and its creator is not an idealist-dreamer Mozart, but a rigorous and severe artist-master Salieri, stretching his hand to the master of things and materialistic values, to the builder and producer of the material (reified) world.“ 
Ossip Mandelstam, O prirode slovaб 1922, 
quoted and translated in Edward Możejko, “Tracing the Modernist Paradigm” 
in Modernism, ed. Astradur Eysteinsson, 2007 vol.1

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy - Unnown Photographer - 1937

via moholy-nagy.org