“Art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed.” -Banksy

I’m thinking of begging for money, opening up a Go Fund Me page or something to be able to make it to Vilnius before March 6th when the following exhibit will end. Here are a few of the milder images:

Image from Nacionalinė Dailės Galerija. 

Image from delfi.lt. 

I first encountered the paintings and visual art of Šarūnas Sauka while wandering the streets of Vilnius in 2006. I walked past a small gallery with a modest glass door and was struck by a portrait of a woman that seemed to recall the work of Ivan Albright, another of my favorites. When I went inside, I was completely transfixed. The gallery contained only a few paintings by Sauka, but each one slaughtered me. It was the kind of painting I had waited my whole life to discover.

If you’ve never seen his art before, be warned: he’s not Monet. I feel his work is more intense than Egon Schiele’s or even Joel Peter Witkin’s. This video presentation of the exhibit will give you more than a solid introduction. That it’s set to the music of Massive Attack only confirms all the feelings of synchronicity I sense whenever I engage the art of Sauka.

If anyone would like to donate a few dollars to send me out to Vilnius before March so that I might write a long essay about why his work should be required in all the world’s high schools, please PayPal me.