Carpe Diem

The shortness of life cannot dissuade us from its pleasures, nor console us from its pains.

Marquis de Vauvernagues, Reflexions and Maxims, 1746



Better a thousand times even a swiftly fading, ephemeral moment of life than the epoch-long unconsciousness of the stone.

Edwin Way Teale, Autumn Across America, 1956

Reflecting on Life

The life force is vigorous. The delight that accompanies it counter-balances all the pains and hardships that confront men. It makes life worth living.
William Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938



The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

Henry Miller, "Creative Death," The Wisdom of the Heart, 1941

Life imitates art more than art imitates life.

Oscar Wilde, "The Decay of Lying," Intentions, 1891

Cool Slideshows

Picture peel mirror, by Akermariano (Mariano Akerman). Copyright 1988-2006. All rights reserved. See also the Picture puzzle "In the Spirit of Linnaeus."

The Rose

When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long
And you feel that love is only
For the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snow
Lies the seed that with the sunshine
In the spring becomes the rose.

The Wisdom of Kandinsky

"Painting is an art, and art [...] is a power whose goal must be to develop and refine the human soul."


A mixed media work by Mariano Akerman (Recuerdo/Recollection).

"All methods are sacred if they are internally necessary."


A sanguine by Mariano Akerman (Sheba, 1995).

"The true work of art is born from the artist: a mysteryous, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being."


A digital work by Mariano Akerman.

Twenty First Century: Must the Show Go On?

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Let nothing be called natural
In an age of bloody confussion
Ordered disorder, planned caprice,
And dehumanized humanity.

Bertold Brecht, The Exception and the Rule, 1937.

From Goethe to Metaphasia

"I confess myself as belonging to the linage of those
That from darkness to light aspire." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



„Ich bekenne mich zu dem Geschlecht,
das aus dem Dunkel ins Helle strebt."



Me confieso del linaje de aquellos
Que de lo oscuro a lo claro aspiran.


Mariano Akerman, Oro y Cenizas (Gold and Ashes), 2001

Metaphasia. An inability to perceive metaphor.
Douglas Coupland, Generation X, 1991.

The Way I love You / ¡Cómo te quiero!

"Art is a lie that make us realize the truth. At least the truth that it is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies" ("Picasso Speaks," The Arts, New York, May 1923). "The essential thing in our period of weak morale is to create enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is what we need most, we and the younger generation" (Picasso, interview, 21 September 1958).


Mariano Akerman, ¡Cómo te quiero! (The Way I love You), watercolor, 1989.

"El arte es una mentira que hace que nos demos cuenta de la verdad. Al menos la verdad que nos es dada a comprender. El artista debe conocer la manera de convencer a otros acerca de la veracidad de sus pinturas" ("Picasso Speaks," The Arts, 1923). "Lo esencial en nuestro período carente de moral es crear entusiasmo. Entusiasmo es lo que necesitamos más, nosotros y la generación más joven" (Picasso, entrevista, 21 de septiembre de 1958).