Nature as violence: Gustav Metzger

I like this flickr photo Gustav Metzger's Flailing Trees at the Manchester International Festival by Pete Birkinshaw aka BinaryApe, especially for the title BinaryApe gave it:   Iä!  Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!

I like this flickr photo Gustav Metzger's Flailing Trees at the Manchester International Festival by Pete Birkinshaw aka BinaryApe, especially for the title BinaryApe gave it:   Iä!  Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!

That reference, along with his link to Wikipedia, confirms him to be a fan of the fantastical writings of H P Lovecraft. This association brings out something scary in  in Gustav Metzger's work. Metzger had described the trees as being the victims: "This piece is all about brutality, the brutality we humans display towards nature."

Seeing it as the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young inverts Metzger's intention. As James Lovelock warns,  it's nature that's soon to turn on us.