...इथे डायनोसार नुस्ता जिवंतच नाही तर तारुण्याने मुसमुसलेला आहे. ...The Comet Isn’t Coming, It Has Arrived

Wendy Doniger, LRB, February 1999:

“...A more compelling metaphor, it seems to me, is offered by the capitalist implications of ‘a Stegosaurus made of money’, a dino at the Smithsonian that was rumoured to be ‘made from worn money withdrawn from circulation’. This image of extinct money also has the advantage of placing the dino saur where it belongs, as not the symbol but the product of capitalism; as Mitchell himself notes, it is ‘a cross between an idol and a cash cow’....”

Kevin McGuire in a Facebook comment: ".... "Spank me!" she screams,but the T-Rex couldn't reach with his little arms so he ate her entire body in one bite...."
 

लंडन रीव्हयू ऑफ बुक्स (LRB) मध्ये फेब्रुवारी २२ २०१८च्या अंकात फ्रांसीस गुडींग (Francis Gooding) यांनी
'Palaeoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past' by Zoë Lescaze या पुस्तकाचे परिक्षण लिहले आहे.  

१९७०च्या दशकांपासून मी डायनोनवर प्रेम केलय आणि त्यांना 'follow ' केलय. माझ्या आयुष्यातच डायनो कसे दिसायचे यावर प्रचंड उलथापालथ झाली आहे. रंगीत का पाली सारखे? पिसे का बिनपिसे? वगैरे..... 

"What colour was a Tyrannosaurus rex? How did an Archaeopteryx court a mate? And how do you paint the visual likeness of something no human eye will ever see? Far from bedevilling the artists who wanted to depict prehistoric creatures and their lost worlds, Zoë Lescaze’s book shows that such conundrums have in fact been invitations to glorious freedom. For nearly two hundred years the resulting genre – now known as palaeoart – has been a playground wherein tyrannosaurids, plesiosaurs and their fellows have not only illustrated scientific knowledge, but acted as scaled and feathered proxies for the anxieties of contemporary life. Lescaze argues that they should be seen as ‘roads to understanding our relationship to the past and our place within the present’. Despite these garish images of dinosaur combat and primeval cataclysm having held at best the status of kitsch, it is impossible to deny the extraordinary success of the genre. None of us has ever seen one, but who doesn’t know what a dinosaur looks like?"

भारतात या दोनशे वर्षात पेलिओ आर्ट (palaeoart) निर्माण झाल्याचे  दिसत नाही. १९व्या शतकातील मराठी लेखनात डायनो चे उल्लेख तरी आहेत का? मी तरी वाचले नाहीयेत. सर्वसामान्य भारतीय माणसाला डायनोसार परिचित केंव्हा झाले याची मला माहिती नाही. शालेय अभ्यास क्रमात ते केंव्हा आले हे ही माहित नाही. 

६.५ कोटी वर्षांपूर्वी पृथ्वीवर आदळलेल्या लघुग्रहामुळे (asteroid) डायनासोर यांचा नाश झाला असे म्हणतात. आपल्या काळात असा सर्वनाशी लघुग्रह पुन्हा येणार का? त्याचे उत्तर परीक्षणात दिले आहे. 

".... Lescaze doesn’t bring us all the way to modern palaeoart. Instead, she ends with the 1970s work of Ely Kish, whose painting is unusual in its focus on extinction. Featuring decayed corpses, dried-out skeletons, and parched creatures dying in the desert, and drawing on an increasing anxiety about environmental damage, Kish’s work showed the great dying of the dinosaurs. It’s a pertinent note to end on, and it’s the one thing that’s beyond debate: however they were feathered, furred or coloured, and whether they were sluggish or nimble, dim-witted or highly intelligent, all these dinosaurs are utterly dead, for ever. Prey or predator, they are all extinct. Adorno suggests that the dream of a living dinosaur signals the hope, born in guilt, that other living things might survive the disaster humankind is inflicting on the natural world, even if we don’t. If the cosmic memento mori provided to us by these strange paintings of resurrected ancient creatures was once oblique, it is not any more. We are already well into the sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history, and it is being caused by us. The comet isn’t coming, it has arrived."

सर्वनाशी  धूमकेतू पोचला आहे-  ६वे मास एक्सटिन्क्शन जोरात चालू आहे आणि ते आपणच करतोय! ते सुरु असतानाच वर उल्लेखलेली 'the dream of a living dinosaur' नावाची आशा, इच्छा अद्भुतात (fantasy) बदलते आणि Dinosaur Beast Erotica होते.   इथे डायनो नुस्ता जिवंतच नाही तर तारुण्याने मुसमुसलेला आहे. म्हणजे ही इरोटिका सुद्धा पेलिओआर्टचाच भाग आहे. 

courtesy: copyright holders