Behold!!! The Protong

(Click on thumbnails for enlargement) I want all the world to know about the artist Stanlislav Szukalski. Born in Poland in 1893, he was called "Poland's greatest living artist." In 1936, the Szukalski National Museum was filled with his highly-detailed, emotionally-extreme sculptures.

(Left, Szukalski in Glendale, drawn by Jim Woodring) Shortly after the Nazis bombed his museum out of existence, Szukalski came to the United States, where he toiled away in obscurity, living in a small apartment in Glendale, California, until he died at the age of 93.

He was chiefly occupied with his self-made science of "Zermatism," a grand theory that explained the origins of humans and culture. He drew over 40,000 illustrations to accompany his research. One of the most interesting things about Zermatism was Szukalski's dead-serious belief that Yetis had at once time mated with human beings, producing two races -- pure and superior humans, and inferior, troublemaking Yeti-human hybrids. The two races have been at war with each other, culturally and politically, for thousands of years. (For an excellent article about Szukalski, read "The neglected genius of Stanislav Szukalski," by Jim Woodring, which appeared in the Fall 1988 issue of Whole Earth Review)

(Left, a young Szukalski. "Ben Hecht in his 1954 autobiography A Child of the Century describes the twenty-year-old Szukalski he met in 1914 as starving, muscular, aristocratic and smoldering with disdain for lesser beings than himself.") I do not believe in Zermatism, and I don't like the racist overtones, but the artwork that Szukalski drew to illustrate his ideas is just about the most mind-blowing use of india ink and paper I've ever seen. Szukalski's interpretations of ancient Indian, Mayan, and Polynesian stone sculptures are gorgeous and bizarre.

This book, Behold!!! The Protong, is a part of Zermatism that attempts to find the roots of language, or the "proto-tongue." (Is it any surprise that Szukalski thinks Polish is the ur-language?) Szukalski's writing in the book is fascinating:

Could it be possible that human society would tolerate Manape halfbreeds and continue to further inbreed with them? Not intentionally! But there are always irresponsible drunks and men of low mentality who, when sexually pressed, are willing to copulate with a hole in a fence or to rape, despite protests from period-best females.

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