MALCOLM PAYNE

PAINTINGS

1. THE MORE BLACKS CHANGE THE MORE WHITES STAY THE SAME

2. IN THE KINGDOM OF THE WHITE THE ONE EYED BLACK IS KING

3. YOU CAN’T TEACH AN OLD WHITE NEW BLACK

4. YOU CAN LEAD A WHITE TO WATER BUT YOU CAN’T MAKE HIM BLACK

SIZES: All are 2200 mm X 1610 mm

MEDIUM: Acrylic on canvas

To keep things simple. With assistance from: Wikipedia.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphorism

An aphorism (literally "distinction" or "definition", from the Greek: ἀφορισμός, aphorismós, from ἀπό + ὁρίζειν, apo + horizein, "from/to bound") is an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphorism - cite_note-0

Uses. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_humour

A laconic phrase may be used for efficiency (as in military jargon), for philosophical reasons (especially among thinkers who believe in minimalism, such as Stoics), or for better disarming a long, pompous speech (the most famous example being at the Battle of Thermopylae). Spartans were expected to be men of few words, to hold rhetoric in disdain, and to stick to the point. Loquaciousness was seen as a sign of frivolity, and totally unbecoming of sensible, down-to-earth Spartan peers.

In humour

The Spartans were especially famous for their dry wit, which we now know as "laconic humour". This can be contrasted with the "Attic salt" or "Attic wit", the refined, poignant, delicate humour of Sparta's chief rival Athens.

Aphoristic collections, sometimes known as wisdom literature, have a prominent place in the canons of several ancient societies, such as the Sutra literature of India, the BiblicalEcclesiastes, IslamicHadith, Hesiod's Works and Days, or Epictetus' Handbook. Aphoristic collections also make up an important part of the work of some modern authors, such as Josemaría Escrivá (compiled from other spiritual authors), Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Montaigne, La Rouchefoucauld, Thomas Szasz, Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, Andrzej Majewski, Mikhail Turovsky, Antonio Porchia, Celia Green, Robert A. Heinlein, Blaise Pascal, E. M. Cioran and Oscar Wilde. A 1559 oil–on–oak-panel painting, Netherlandish Proverbs (also called The Blue Cloak or The Topsy Turvy World) by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, artfully depicts a land populated with literal renditions of Flemish aphorisms (proverbs) of the day.

The aphoristic genre developed together with literacy, and after the invention of printing, aphorisms were collected and published in book form. The first noted published collection of aphorisms is Adagia by Erasmus of Rotterdam. Other important early aphorists were Baltasar Gracián, François de La Rochefoucauld and Blaise Pascal.

Two influential collections of aphorisms published in the 20th century were The Uncombed Thoughts by Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (in Polish), and Itch of Wisdom by Mikhail Turovsky (in Russian and English).^[2]

My series of eighty-four APHROISMS convert well-known English language aphorisms to APHROISMS (a play on Afro) to tease out some of the dynamics embedded in South African word play. I do so without interrupting the laconic style of the genre. The words BLACK OR WHITE replace in all cases the subject specifics of the aphorism. They are of course reversible. My intention is subvert with dark/light humour.

More from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_humor

Black humour (from the French humour noir) is a term coined by Surrealist theoretician André Breton in 1935, to designate a sub-genre of comedy and satire in which laughter arises from cynicism and skepticism, often about the topic of death.

Breton coined the term for his book Anthology of Black Humour (Anthologie de l'humour noir), in which he credited Jonathan Swift as the originator of black humour and gallows humour, and included excerpts from 45 other writers. Breton included both examples in which the wit arises from a victim, with which empathizes, as it's more typical in the tradition of gallows humor, and examples in which the comic is used to mock the victim, whose suffering is trivialized, and leads to sympathizing with the victimizer, as is the case with Sade. Black humour is related to that of the grotesque genre.

Breton identified Swift as the originator of black humour and gallows humour, particularly in his pieces Directions to Servants (1731), A Modest Proposal (1729), A Meditation Upon a Broom-Stick (1710), and a few aphorisms.

The terms black comedy or dark comedy have been later derived as alternatives to Breton's term. In black humour, topics and events that are usually regarded as taboo, specifically those related to death, are treated in an unusually humorous or satirical manner while retaining their seriousness; the intent of black comedy, therefore, is often for the audience to experience both laughter and discomfort, sometimes simultaneously.