'Lord, when shall we be done growing? As long as we have anything more to do, we have done nothing... let us add Moby Dick to our blessing... Leviathan is not the biggest fish; — I have heard of Krakens.'
Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851
all I want for Christmas is Albert the pantomime lion to come romping in through the door
is it possible to fall in love with a five-hundred-year-old artist in a lion suit?
that mane, those eyes, his paws
Today's Dürer is a single lapwing, the loneliest image in all of art...
Today's Dürer is his fan, Oscar Wilde, in on the melancholic act, all sewn up in silk and seal and otter fur, utterly aesthetic. He even wears his hair the same way.
To succeed, he says, you must have only five letters to your name.
Albert & Oscar, trademarks of themselves.
Today's Dürer is his leaping lion - a self portrait if ever there was one. No wonder he heightened the gouache with gold, as glittering as any piece of jewellery.
These lionhearts with their curly locks need no Venetian pillar to pose upon. They're roaring and raring to go.
Today's Dürer is a magnificent horse, all muscle and blow. But check out that weird winged thing behind him. Is it a man or a moth, or both?
And what is that pot burning behind? We've seen similar in Melencolia I. Something alchemical, I shouldn't wonder.
We're too far away
Today's Dürer is himself, peered at by James Joyce.
Albert's dog barks at his portrait, disconcerted by its stare. Joyce's dog wanders along the beach, 'looking for something lost in the past, suddenly making off like a bounding hare'.
It's a melancholic, 400 year old affair.
Today's Dürer is his elk, stalking out of Eden, a noble antlered spirit of the woods. If he looks a little lugubrious, it's because he was said to supply the cure for melancholy.
It was sympathetic magic, but not for him.