As a footnote to
Hyborian Bridge 65 I read on the stackexchange
that Hegel was not fond of Newton and the empirical method.
"There is a fundamental delusion in all of
scientific empiricism. It employs metaphyisical categories of matter, force,...
generality, infinity, etc.; following the clue given by these categories it
proceeds to draw conclusions... And all the while it is unaware that it
contains metaphysics - in wielding which it makes use of those categories and
their combinations in a style utterly thoughtless and uncritical (§38)...
Newton gave physics an express warning to beware of metaphysics, it is true;
but to his own honor, be it said, he did not obey his own warning (§98)...
Physical mechanics is steeped in an unspeakable metaphysics, which, contrary to
experience and the Notion, has the said mathematical determinations alone as
its source (§270)." (Encyclopedia)
Empiricism was
not worthy of “pure thought” and the “science of logos” (spirit). What I
suggest happens is that Hegel identifies thought with the sun (ordered logic),
which happens to be the perspective system of Newton’s mirrors (C5). The
Enlightenment cannot escape its own sense of order and even Hegel, no fan of
Newton, is a prisoner of the mirrors, which he identifies with logos or
thought.
The ordered mind
(thought) has no reason to deny so convincing an illusion as a mirror, and it’s
only when the existentialists and expressive guys like Nietzsche came along
that disorder can rule, outside of the perspective order (of the mirrors).
Enter Weird
Tales and specifically the covers of Margaret Brundage, all billowing folds
and frieze-like clarity.
It’s figurative
art but with an expressive line with a charm all its own, no prisoner of any
mirror nor any perspective dogma.
This one’s a
pretty accurate depiction of Yasmina’s desperate gamble in freeing Conan from
her own master’s tender clutches. Brundage draws in a very limited background
and the focus is again on the lithe female line.
In the first one
there is more than a hint of exposed nipples as the two females tussle. Nipples
classically add luster to a picture of free-flowing female action (see Hyborian
Bridge 31) and Brundage is nothing if not classical.
Clair Noto, as I
probably already mentioned, has a lot in common with Weird Tales with
her focus on fierce females and rites of blood in “Red Lace” (Hyborian
Bridge 32)
Red Sonja #11 (c) Marvel
Thorne must be
the sword and sorcery artist least concerned with perspective and the sense of
primitivism is palpable in the macabre beasts and bestial priestesses baying
for blood.
I happen to have
this print by Frank of Ghita with an exposed nipple.
