Suggestive Presences

Bror Utter
Presence
1947
watercolor and gouache on paper
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Woman curling her Hair
1891
oil on cardboard
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

George Romney
Figure Study
ca. 1770
drawing
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Roman Empire
Torso - Male Figure wearing Chlamys
1st century BC - 1st century AD
marble
Musée d'Art Classique de Mougins

Alfred Rethel
Faux-Medieval Marginal Ornaments
ca. 1840-50
drawing
(colored ink on leaf of printed incunabulum)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Jacques Lipchitz
Study for a Statue
1919
drawing
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Ida Kerkovius
On Dark Blue
1961
pastel on paper
Städtisches Museum, Braunschweig

Hannah Höch
Creatures
ca. 1926-29
oil on canvas
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Barbara Hepworth
Three Figures
1952
oil paint and graphite on panel
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Jean Hélion
Standing Figure
1935
oil on canvas
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Ancient Greek Culture
Female Figure
125-100 BC
marble
(excavated at Pergamon)
Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Max Ernst
Dada Gauguin
1920
gouache on paper
Art Institute of Chicago

José Luis Cuevas
Procuress with Meat
1966
lithograph
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Heinrich Campendonk
Two Nudes
1913
gouache and watercolor on paper
Clemens-Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

Brassaï
Shoe-Leather Drying
1933
gelatin silver print
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Anonymous Photographer
Harry Blanchard
ca. 1900
albumen silver print
(cabinet card)
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Danaus:  You can't send out a naval expedition quickly, and you can't bring one in quickly either.  Nor is it a speedy job running stern cables ashore to keep the ship safe, and their custodians don't immediately feel secure when they've dropped anchor, especially when they've come to a harborless coast as the sun is departing and night approaching – night tends to breed travail in the mind of an expert helmsman.  So even to land an army would not be a good idea until the fleet was secure in its anchorage.  But as you're afraid, be sure not to forget the gods; I will come back form town as soon as possible, having secured assistance.  The city will find no fault in a messenger who is old in years, but young in his eloquent intellect.

[Danaus departs for the city]   

Chorus of the daughters of Danaus:  

O hilly land that we rightly revere,

what is going to happen to us? Where in the land of Apia

can we flee in the hope that there is somewhere a dark hiding-place?

O to become black smoke

up among the clouds of Zeus,

to fly up without wings, invisible, imperceptible,

like dust, and end my existence altogether!

The evil will no longer be escapable;

my heart within is shaken, its flesh turned black.*

My father's lookout has trapped me – I am perishing with terror!

I would wish to meet my fate

in a plaited noose

before an abominable man could touch this flesh!

Before that, may I die and Hades become my lord!

Where can I find a seat in the sky,

near where the moist clouds turn into snow,

or a slippery crag, where no goat climbs,

lonely, overhanging, impossible to point out,

the haunt of vultures, which could testify

to my long fall,

before, against the determination of my heart,

I meet a killer marriage?

Thereafter, I do not refuse to become

prey for the dogs, a dinner for the native birds:

for he who dies is freed

from evils that cry to be bewailed.

Let death come and get me

before the marriage-bed does!

What path of escape can I yet cleave

that will release me from wedlock?

 – Aeschylus, from Suppliants (ca. 470-460 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

*the heart and other internal organs could be spoken of as turning black when affected by powerful emotions because blood flowed inwards from the surface regions, which went pale