Helena Almeida, Tela Habitada, 1976

The Furies (1934) by Slavko Vorkapić, opening montage sequence of Crime Without Passion (1934)

Capitalism is the celebration of a cult sans reve et sans merci [without dream or mercy]. There are no “weekdays.” There is no day that is not a feast day, in the terrible sense that all its sacred pomp is unfolded before us: each day commands the utter fealty of each worshiper. And third, the cult makes guilt pervasive. Capitalism is probably the first instance of a cult that creates guilt, not atonement.

Walter Benjamin, Capitalism as Religion (1921)

Man Ray. Les yeux de Lee Miller.

Anna Riwkin (1908-1970). Birgit Cullberg, n/d. 

There are lots of forces today which aim to deny all distinction between the commercial and the creative. The more this distinction is denied, the more amusing, understanding and well-informed people think they are. In fact, they are only translating capitalism’s demand for rapid rotation. […]

When advertising people explain that advertisements are the poetry of the modern world, this shameless proposition forgets that there is no art which aims to compose or reveal a product which corresponds to public expectations. Advertising can shock or want to shock, it corresponds to a presupposed expectation. An art, on the contrary, necessarily produces the unexpected, the unrecognized, the unrecognizable. There is no commercial art; it’s a meaningless phrase. There are popular arts, of course. There are also arts which require more or less financial investment, there is a commerce of arts but no commercial arts.

— Gilles Deleuze, The Brain Is the Screen (1989)

Ballet Mécanique (1924) by Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy