Since all sword and sorcery ultimately comes form Howard as the originator of the genre, here's a quote from book 2 of graphic series Roxanne by the French pair of Letendre (writer) and Loisel (artist).
Magic is tearing Akbar apart..seducing us..filling us with illusion..only to better enslave us..
Sorcerers seduce, and in so doing befuddle and obfuscate with signs and signals and incantations. is it possible that the more signs and signals and incantations the more likely it is we live inside a sorcerous illusion? Literally just driving down a double-track highway exposes one to more signs and signals than the entire medieval-Christian era!
Of course, some take less care of these matters than others.
Linda and her mates careering carelessly down the freeway are obviously not that bothered about the modern infrastructure they happen to be using.
This might seem a pop-pugilist's point but is actually of ultimate interest. The infrastructure is all about money (interest rates zzz); capital finances infrastructure and infrastructure is information (algorithm) or ones and zeros. It's clear that the more elaborate the infrastructure becomes (signs and signals), the more it resembles the internet. Next comes 'the internet of things'..then of people.
The problem with that wholesale modern operation is 'the internet of things' graduates to ones and zeros. Everything becomes nothing (the vanishing point of technique) and at the same time convincing to the eye. Capitalism in short, is hyper-realist and full-throttle like the sun beating down on a desert highway down the gay way of modernity.
A car driving down a highway has that vague sense of nothingness owing to the constant presence of the vanishing point. However, it's never more than an illusion that doesn't intrude on your reality - psyche, physique.
The way I'd put it is: money has no value, only things have value (cars, fur coats). Similarly, the internet has no value, but the modern order of severe logic is topsy-turvy: logic and straight-lines rule, while balance and proportion are lost.
The modern order is increasingly made by programmers and made of programs. We may not realize it because, well, the world of logical signals is very convincing to the eye!
A photograph is convincing because after all it's a true observer's eye-view, but if everything is from an observer's perspective there is no balance and proportion.
I was reading of Michelle Roquebrune (the painter/widow of Sean Connery, see P146), who says she is self-taught and in portraits "expresses features with line and colour". Although she can use photographs for ensemble pieces, she simplifies form and crops to fit shapes.
She cited the cloisonné of Gaugain and the arch-draftsman Schiele as major influences. All that you could say is to do with balance and proportion as opposed to perspective observation by an individual. It frees the spirit; it is free-form.
An analogy is with Raducanu's free-form action that is uninhibited by training/routine (see prev Bruce Lee, Jeet Kune Do.)
A photograph - or any technical artefact like a microscope - is inhibitted by perspective observation. It's true in the logical universe, but has no uninhibited expression of free-form action.
The trouble is, this can only occur outside of a photographic world, inside the world of balance and proportion. DNA is known photographically, not in terms of balance and proportion.
They are only known by the end-poduct since that is physique and the accompanying expressive psyche. The finished product is artistically expressive, while the photographic 'illusions' are not. The information contained in DNA is only relevant in terms of activity of the body-in-motion, as previously noted.
The notion of DNA as a panacea of cures is an illusion of the inert labs of acolytes. The illusion is really that psyche and action do not count, whereas that is the actual reality of any natural situation. The entire universe of things that are self-activating and expressive psyche is dismissed by modernity.
The real problem with this is that only things that grow and live and die can revive. The entire area of revival from the underworld of decadence is lacking from a modern perspective.
Roquebrune made the offhand comment that paintings are collectible because "they don't rot like tomatoes." It's a truism, yet that whole universe of living action is denied by a science of inert 'facts'. Where there exist foul-smelling waters (of Maetterlinck, prev), there persist natural forces of revival.
This could easily implicate the symmetrical feuding of the medieval era. Dürer, from the end of that era, in fact is Roquebrune's favourite draftsman! The dark aspects of the life of knightly action (Connery?) and the psyche of a priest are the counters to the sorcerous illusion of a logical order.
To every thing a time (the tragedy of the suspended animation of Michael Schumacher), and the timing has to be obeyed in the natural order of events. Hence, psyche and activity are renewed.
