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Back home, Carpenter Shi saw the tree in a dream. It said to him, “What do you want to compare me to, one of those cultivated trees? The hawthorn, the pear, the orange, the rest of those fructiferous trees and shrubs—when their fruit is ripe they get plucked, and that is an insult. Their large branches are bent; their small branches are pruned. Thus do their abilities embitter their lives. That is why they die young, failing to fully live out their natural12 life spans. They batter themselves with the vulgar conventions of the world— and all other creatures do the same. As for me, I’ve been working on being useless for a long time. It almost killed me, but I’ve finally managed it—and it is of great use to me! If I were useful, do you think I could have grown to be so great?
annabelle, an uncarved block
a gridded sphere texture, pink with a purple background, found on https://textures.neocities.org/ a quote from max beckmann: Just now, even more than before the war, I feel the need to be in the cities, among my fellowmen — this is where our place is. We must take part in the whole misery that is to come. We must surrender our hearts and our nerves to the dreadful screams of pain of the poor, disillusioned people.




Series 2 No. 6, Fang Lijun, 1991-92, oil on canvas, 200 x 230 cm