Utopian Visionaries Dostoevsky & Le Guin

Utopian Visionaries
Dostoevsky & Le Guin

February 10 2024

After the last post about Biosphere 2, I would like to linger a little longer in utopian realms of thought. These two visionary tales are written hundred years apart, under very different conditions by very different authors yet they make a great match.

I’ve previously shared these two short stories in the newsletter, but I think they deserve a post, so people can discover them when browsing the archive.

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Fyodor Dostoevsky
1877

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Ursula K. Le Guin
1973

Caio Reisewitz
The Changing Brazilian Landscape

Reisewitz’ photographs, most of all large formats, explore the changing relation of the city and the countryside in a period of feverish economic development.

Jean Delville
The Age Of Splendor

Jean Delville was a Belgian painter who painted heavily symbolic scenes with a occult oriented spiritual perspective.

Sasha Shulgin’s
Notebooks and lab records

Alexander Shulgin’s lab books were scanned in 2007 and made available online.

Kirlian Photography
The blaze of the force

Kirlian believed that images created by Kirlian Photography might depict a conjectural energy field or aura, that surrounds all living things.

Stanislav Grof
The Cosmic Game

My appreciation for this lecture is beyond words. Grof’s thoughts basically touch all the areas that I want to explore right now.

Zone Patcher
Psychoactive fractal art

The works of Zone Patcher are the very definition of digital psychedelic art.

Roger Dean
Floating Dreamlands

Roger Dean is best known for his work on posters and album covers for musicians, which he began painting in…

Moebius
Color work

It’s been a long time since the last post on Moebius. Back then I presented a selection of his black and white work…

Thomas Shearer
Galaxies frozen in time

Thomas Shearer’s main focus is on agate and I spent hours browsing his vast collection. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Lawren Harris
Summit of the Soul

Lawren Harris was born into one of Canada’s wealthiest families and was destined for a life in aristocratic circles, yet he always felt more at home in the great outdoors.

David Attenborough
The Tribal Eye

This series from 1975 takes us on a journey around the world to reveal the making and use of tribal art in some of the few places on earth where the traditions are intact.

Selvesportrait
A Remembrance of Beauty

The person behind the name Selvesportrait is a nomadic seeker, a nature worshipper and a naked mirror to the infinite beauty.

Étienne-Louis Boullée
The Temple of Death

Étienne-Louis Boullée is the master of monumental cenotaphs. His most emblematic project is his cenotaph designed for Isaac Newton.

Walter Spies
The Edge of Heaven

The image of Bali as a place of great physical beauty laced with a mysterious spirituality has its origins in the works of a small circle of bohemian expats in the 1930, of whom Spies was the most influential.