Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Rotari - Hollar - Rubens - Motherwell

Pietro Rotari
Young Woman in a Red Dress
ca. 1756-62
oil on canvas
El Paso Museum of Art, Texas

Pietro Rotari
Sleeping Girl
ca. 1750-55
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Pietro Rotari
Portrait of a Young Woman
1756
oil on canvas
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Pietro Rotari
Woman wearing a Blue Scarf
ca. 1760
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Wenceslaus Hollar after drawing by Leonardo da Vinci
Study of Skull
1645
etching
British Museum

Wenceslaus Hollar after drawing by Leonardo da Vinci
Study of Skull - Interior
1651
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Wenceslaus Hollar after drawing by Leonardo da Vinci
Head of Youth
ca. 1644-52
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Wenceslaus Hollar after drawing by Leonardo da Vinci
Woman with Elaborate Coiffure
1648
etching
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Peter Paul Rubens
Design for Pressmak of Jan van Meurs
ca. 1618-20
oil on panel
(print study in grisaille)
Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp

Peter Paul Rubens
Landscape Sketch with MIlkmaids
after 1616
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Peter Paul Rubens
Portrait Study of a Young Woman
ca. 1620-22
drawing
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Peter Paul Rubens
Victory of Henri IV at Coutras
(vignette sketch within heroic frame)
ca. 1628
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Robert Motherwell
Untitled
1966
lithograph
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Robert Motherwell
America/La France Variations II
1984
lithograph and collage
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Robert Motherwell
The Hollow Men
1983
acrylic paint and charcoal on canvas
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Robert Motherwell
The Golden Bough
1986
acrylic paint and charcoal on canvas
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

from Part Three of The Age of Anxiety

     They lose altitude, they slow down, they arrive at the city, having completed the third stage of the journey, and are united once more, greet each other:

Emble says:
     Here we are.

Malin says:
                            As we hoped we have come
     Together again.

Rosetta says: 
                               I am glad, I think.
     It is fun to be four.

Quant says:
                                     The flushed animations
     Of crowds and couples look comic to friends.

They look about them with great curiosity. Then Malin says:
     
     The scene has all the signs of a facetious culture,
     Publishing houses, pawnshops and pay-toilets;
     August and Graeco-Roman are the granite temples
     Of the medicine men whose magic keeps this body
               Politic free from fevers,
               Cancer and constipation.

     The rooms near the railroad station are rented mainly
     By the criminally inclined; the Castle is open on Sundays;
     There are parks for plump and playgrounds for pasty children;
     The police must be large, but little men are hired to
               Service the subterranean
               Miles of dendritic drainage.

     A married tribe commutes, mild from suburbia,
     Whose ritual rules protect against raids by the nomad
     Misfortunes they fear; for they flinch in their dreams at the scratch
     Of course pecuniary claws, at crying images,
               Petulant, thin, reproachful,
               Destitute shades of dear ones.

     Well, here I am but how, how, asks the visitor,
     Strolling through the strange streets, can I start to discover
     The fashionable feminine fret, or the form of insult
     Minded most by the men? In what myth do their sages
               Locate the cause of evil?
               How are the people punished?

     How, above all, will they end? By any natural
     Fascination of frost or flood, or from the artful
     Obliterating bang whereby God's rebellious image
     After thousands of thankless years spent in thinking about it,
               Finally finds a solid
               Proof of its independence?

– W.H. Auden (1944-46)