Friday, January 26, 2018

Made in 2000 or Later (Art)

Seamus Nicolson
Jason
2000
photograph
Tate Gallery

Shopping for One

Waving at everyone who honked,
thinking how uncommonly friendly
complete strangers had become,
she found her sack of groceries
atop the car when she got home,
potato chips and cookies blessed
with a balance she couldn't explain
except to say the ice cream
and cans of frosting on the bottom
held fast at each turning
to counteract her absent-mindedness.

Not wanting this token of luck
after all the times luck had failed her,
she smashed a jar of olives in the street,
splattering the air with sourness
and freeing the random green wobble
that made the world seem right again.

– Neal Bowers (2003)

Jeff Wall
A Sapling held by a Post
2000
chromogenic print
Tate Gallery

Valeska Soares
Fainting Couch (Prototype)
2002
fibreboard, perspex, fabric, polyfibre, flowers
Tate Gallery

John Bellany
Homage to David B
2002
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

De Piscatione

Fishing, if I a fisher may protest,
Of pleasures is the sweetest, of sports the best,
Of exercises the most excellent.
Of recreations the most innocent.
But now the sport is marred, and wote ye why?
Fishes decrease, and fishers multiply.

– Thomas Bastard (1598)

Paula Rego
War
2003
pastel on paper, mounted on aluminum
Tate Gallery

Stan Douglas
Barbacoa Vedado
2004
chromogenic print
Tate Gallery

Andreas Gursky
Bahrain I
2005
photograph
Tate Gallery

Richard Hamilton
Beatles
2007
digital print
Tate Gallery

from The Singers

They are threatening to leave          but you may still catch them
          saying goodbye          stealthed in the cedar and cypress
at dawn          in the dark clarity between sleep and waking
          A run of five notes on a black flute
another          and another          buried deep in the mix
          how many melodies can the air hold
And what they sing          so lovely and so meaningless
          may urge itself upon you          with the ache
of something just beyond the point of being remembered
          the trace of a brave thought in the face of sadness

– Craig Arnold (2007)

Albert Oehlen
Loa
2007
acrylic paint and oil paint and spray paint and paper collage on canvas
Tate Gallery

Gillian Carnegie
Black Square
2008
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Henry Wessel
Incidents 026
2012
gelatin silver print
Tate Gallery

John Riddy
Palermo (Piazza Marina)
2012
photograph
Tate Gallery

My Radiant Eye

Or is it on account of my radiant eye
I have lived so long? – I never slept

in the study hall, or called anyone
by an improper name. I never urinated in

a desolate synagogue.  I never ate or drank
in a desolate synagogue or picked my teeth.

I did not walk into a desolate synagogue
in the summer just because of the heat,

nor in winter just because of cold rain.
Also, I know one may not deliver a eulogy

for an individual inside a desolate synagogue.
But you can read scripture inside a desolate

synagogue, or you can teach in a desolate
synagogue, or deliver eulogies for the community.

When synagogues are deserted they are
to be left alone and weeds allowed to grow.

One should not pick the weeds, lest there be
anguish that the synagogue is in ruins.

When are the synagogues to be swept
so that weeds do not grow inside them?

When they are in use. – When synagogues are
in ruins, weeds are not to be picked there.

Because I know these things I was approved,
although unworthy, after a three-day oral

examination before the king of Sicily
to whom by custom the power of approval

is entrusted. Thereafter, I have worn the
laurel crown – my eye radiant to this day.

– Allen Grossman (2007)

John Riddy
Palermo (Giardini Inglese)
2013
photograph
Tate Gallery

John Riddy
London (Garrick)
2008-2009
photograph
Tate Gallery

Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)