skulls

I was just reading an article on trepanation and came across this funny illustration. It looks like some sort of macarb game of knots and crosses.

The man who brought this trepaned peruvian skull( now dated between 1400-1530)  to world wide attension was Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888) a self taught archaeologist and at the time the US commisionar to Peru at the behest of Lincoln. He said of it:

...the most important relic in Senora Zentino's collection is the frontal bone of a skull, from the Inca cemetery in the valley of Yucay, which exhibits a clear case of trepanning before death. The senora was kind enough to give it to me for investigation, and it has been submitted to the criticism of the best surgeons of the United States and Europe, and regarded by all as the most remarkable evidence of a knowledge of surgery among the aborigines yet discovered on this continent; for trepanning is one of the most difficult surgical processes. The cutting through the bone was not performed with a saw, but evidently with a burin, or tool like that used by engravers on wood and metal. The opening is fifty-eight hundredths of an inch wide and seventy hundredths long.

all 'n' all pretty amazing. It for obvious reasons reminds me of Gabriel orozcos work "Black Kites"

The game that springs to mind here is chess and everyone knows death is the captian of the metaphysical chess team. Black Kites is one of those annoying pieces of work that you can't really sum up quickly in a blog post it's one of those neatly tied art puzzles where you take two simple elements: a skull and a checkered board pattern and combine them. It has been said to be a readymade, which it kind of is. Duchamp was a chess player, and someone who at least pretended or was accused of trying to bring about painting or it could be some sort of day of the dead celebration type thing because after all the guys mexican, probaly not. I missed out a significant element its name, black kites whats the significance there? Once the winds stop in the silence at the opening of the seventh seal the kites stop flying and fall to the ground. I am just going to take the easy way out of this work and keep with the bored game theme of this blog post and think of it as a chess board. Orozco has used chess symbolism before in Horses riding endlessly so its not an absolutly bad theory.  

The knight in The Seventh Seal shouldn't have played chess he should have played knots and crosses you can keep on drawing for ever in that game. You could graffeti all the skellintons in the world.
 I don't know whether or not death would play knots and crosses with me or whether God plays dice but if he dose it won't be in a simple game like snakes and ladders it probaly be some strange mysterious game no man could ever fathom perhaps dungons and dragons. The two above skulls both show the creativity of mankind don't they kids? but I'm not going to patronise you by continuing to spell it out I just can't believe the ancient Incas perfored brain surgery. people are amazing, in what we achieve to escape death and the things we create to try and reconcile it. 

To end on a cherry note Death is eventible. No matter how rich you are you can't buy immortality . sorry damian.