As he likes to introduce himself, Ranko Bon writes and paints. His writings can be found on his Residua website (www.residua.org). They are titled and dated texts, the bulk of which are on the short side. The site currently stretches over forty-five years and contains close to four-million words. He has also come up with a large number of selections on various topics, which he calls books. They can be found on his Ca’ Bon Gallery site (www.cabongallery.org), where they are available for free in Portable Document Format. Photographs of some of his paintings can be found on this site, as well. They are simple geometric compositions painted on both sides of smallish wooden boards over twenty-four years. There are more than three-hundred of them. Arranged on narrow wooden battens, they can cover walls of any size.

Now, reading a few of Bon’s writings is like reading them all. And this is hardly an exaggeration. Covering all sorts of subjects, they go on and on without any rhyme or reason. Although some of the writings are on the funny side, most of them are pretty tiresome. He appears to spend most of his time ruminating about himself and the world surrounding him. Unfortunately, his views of his fellow humans are nothing if not dismal. For instance, he never tires of likening them to primates, such as chimpanzees and gorillas. Technological development that marks this epoch does not impress him at all. He does not see any glorious future for this civilization, either. After a short while, one gets the whole picture. And it is far from bearable, let alone appealing.

The same holds for Bon’s paintings: seeing a few of them is like seeing them all. The geometric compositions come in black, white, and red only, for he refuses to use any other colors. Also, there is little variation from painting to painting. Grids, parallel lines, and squares are everywhere. Although he has come up with a book about his paintings, which goes under the name of Cave Art Now, his writings on this subject are difficult to follow. Once again, most of them are rather uninspiring. The main conclusion of the book is that art is dying, if it is not stinking already. As it happens, this is the very first sentence of the book’s lackluster preface, and it says it all. Seeing a bunch of Bon’s paintings appears to prove his point about art in general.

At their best, Bon’s writings and paintings are worth reading and seeing once and only once. Every effort to comprehend either of them is bound to end in discomfort and disillusion. Even worse, it can also lead to depression. For entering into Bon’s world is like entering an endless labyrinth. Or living someone else’s life, but only as an observer bereft of power to change a single thing. The only optimism that Bon offers in his writings and paintings awaits the human species in the murky future, when the survivors of many a disaster awaiting this civilization will return to some kind of heaven. This is his term for tribal life of hunters and gatherers of times long past. As well as the world of shamans, their spiritual leaders. For all its worth, Bon’s optimism outstrips every imaginable pessimism. Whence this guarded foreword—that is, candid warning. Simply put, Bon’s writings and paintings are best shunned.

To Niccolò Machiavelli