Tuesday, February 24, 2026

Freeze

Richard Misrach
Untitled (#553)
2007
inkjet print
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Hans Konrad Escher von der Linth
View of Lauteraar Glacier at Grimsel
1794
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Hans Meyboden
Seehorn (Davos)
1934
oil on canvas
Kunsthalle Mannheim

Émile Friant
Young Woman of Nancy in a Snowy Landscape
1887
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy

Louis Oppenheim
S. Adam - Winter Sports Clothing
1911
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Kasimir Malevich
Winter Landscape
1929
oil on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Johan Wilhelm Bergström
Garden in Snow
ca. 1845
daguerreotype
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Jacques d'Arthois
Winter Landscape with Figures
ca. 1650
oil on panel
private collection

Jules Laurens
Ruins of the Blue Mosque in Tabriz
1872
oil on canvas
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Alfred Sisley
La Place du Chenil à Marly - effet de neige
1876
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot
Skaters on the City Moat
1622
oil on panel
Clemens-Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

Willem Witsen
Forest in Snow
1894
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Gustave Courbet
Landscape with Snow
1862
oil on canvas
Musée de Grenoble

Adolf Karpellus
Moravia Meteor
1910
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Kåre Kivijärvi
My Brother's House
ca. 1980
gelatin silver print on plastic
Stortingets Kunstsamling, Oslo

Todd Hido
Untitled #2431
1999
C-print
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

I am Thespis, who first modelled tragic song, inventing a new diversion for the villagers, at the season when Bacchus led in the triennial chorus whose prize was still a goat and a basket of Attic figs. Now my juniors remodel all this; countless ages will beget many new inventions, but my own is mine.  

Do not wonder at seeing on Myro's tomb a whip, an owl, a bow, a grey goose and a swift bitch. The bow proclaims that I was the strict well-strung directress of my house, the bitch that I took true care of my children, the whip that I was no cruel or overbearing mistress, but a just chastiser of faults, the goose that I was a careful guardian of the house, and this owl that I was a faithful servant of owl-eyed Pallas. Such were the things in which I took delight, wherefore my husband Biton carved these emblems on my gravestone.

Come let us see who lies under this stone. But I see no inscription cut on it, only nine cast dice, of which the first four represent the throw called Alexander, the next four that called Ephebus – the bloom of youthful maturity – and the one the more unlucky throw called Chian. Is their message this, that both the proud sceptered potentate and the young man in his flower end in nothing, or is that not so? – I think now like a Cretan archer I shall shoot straight at the mark. The dead man was a Chian, his name was Alexander and he died in youth. How well one told through dumb dice of the young man dead by ill-chance and the life staked and lost!

We the six sons of Iphieratides – Eupylidas, Eraton, Chaeris, Lycus, Agis and Alexon – fell before the wall of Messene, and our seventh brother Gylippus having burnt our bodies came home with a heavy load of ashes, a great glory to Sparta, but a great grief to Alexippa our mother. One glorious shroud wrapped us all.

In thy first youth thou didst perish too, Machatas, grimly facing the Aetolians in the portion of thy fathers. It is hard to find a brave Achaean who hath survived till his hairs are grey. 

We lie, stranger, in the rough woodland, Mantiades and Eustratus of Dyme, the sons of Echellus, rustic woodcutters as our fathers were; and to shew our calling the woodman's axes stand on our tomb. 

– from Book VI (Sepulchral Epigrams) of the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)