Eric Basso

Eric Basso is a poet who brings his skills of vision and word into the realms of visual art and literature in his powerful book: "Decompositions: Essays on Art and Literature 1973-1989." For Basso great works of art aren't locked up in a dusty display case in an attic of a museum. Instead the works of art Basso presents are spread out upon an operating table ready for a transfusion of new blood or at times ready for a critical vivisection. This is powerful stuff, not for the faint of heart, but for those who want to dig deep into the marrow of art.… (more)

Like a Surrealist magician pulling tragically beautiful dead rabbits out of a hat one after another, Eric Basso presents us with twelve essays on works from the fantastic worlds of art and literature in the late 18th through the early 20th century. The thread - or more appropriately, sinew - that unites these pieces is the subject of death. And horror, gore and filth, sadism, wild invention and lecherous ecstasy. And back, as always, to death.

Andre Breton said in Nadja, “The world of language is a world of death.” And seemingly for Basso, that language could also be a brushstroke, a movement, a thought or a glance. This book is not for everyone. Not everyone will want to know how Théodore Géricault acquired the severed body parts he painted in obvious preparation for his masterpiece The Raft of Medusa. But for those of us who do, this collection is a fascinating dissection of the brain, bowels, psyche and works of the most wild and creative artists of the time... James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Paul Valéry, Francisco Goya, Victor Hugo, of the more well known.

As Eugene Delacroix said of Jean-Louis Andre Theodore Gericault’s work: “...no subject is so forbidding it cannot be made beautiful...” And presented in Basso’s slyly knowing and playful tone, one cannot help but feel they are participating in something akin to peeking under Frida Kahlo’s skirts.… (more)