Monday, June 18, 2018

Sincere Oil Paint (1628-1958)

Peter Paul Rubens
The Triumph of Venus
1628
oil on panel (grisaille)
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Peter Paul Rubens
Design for Title-page
ca. 1638
oil on panel (grisaille)
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Eustache Le Sueur
Bacchus and Ariadne
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Eustache Le Sueur
Meekness
1650
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Inches

I wondered if we weren't lonely for the golden dark smiles
That returned to us during the month of September causes

I wondered if their enslavement to a dark ruler
That counted the inches of their lives together

I wondered if we weren't orphans
Who returned those smiles to others

I wondered what those golden dark smiles said to one another

I wondered of the gold on the moon
I wondered of the golden key I held in my hand
That unlocked the moon for ourselves

I wondered of our freedoms
We'd rather have been orphans

Guercino
The Vocation of St Aloysius (Luigi) Gonzaga
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Benedetto Luti
Christ and the Woman of Samaria
ca. 1715-20
oil on copper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg
Lake Scene, Evening
1792
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Walter Sickert
La rue Pecquet, Dieppe
ca. 1908-1909
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Walter Sickert
Envermeu, Normandy
ca. 1924
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Eventful Angels

We lived under a dark moon
How a chain is being wound
through our lives
That counted the seconds eerily
during time

We lived during darkness
We shall have been further enchanted
during a chain of events
That added our lives differently
during time

We lit candlelight on another star
We explored another kind of darkness
during our lives
We explored other kinds of angels
during time

We lived during an enchanted forest
We re-discovered our own star
during a trail of events
That reasoned our lives differently
during time

But we lived during a wilderness
That mysteriously wound the chimes
through our lives
That counted the eventful angels
during time

Walter Sickert
The Rural Dean
(self-portrait of Sickert with his third wife, Thérèse Lessore)
ca. 1932
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

John Maxwell
Fish Market
1934
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

John Maxwell
Landscape with houses and ancient bridge
ca. 1934
oil on canvas mounted on panel
National Galleries of Scotland

John Maxwell
Falling Vase
1941
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Mark Rothko
Black on Maroon
1958
oil paint, acrylic paint, and glue tempera on canvas
Tate Gallery

Spring Lake

Ironically, thank your iron stars, bub
Ever to think a link, to have linked seaweed, bub
At length, At strength – for lock and key,
Oh, how hard! Oh how hard at the bottom of the Lake,
I have survived an iron sea bubble, for a cushion,
To have peeped through a keyhole at salt and spray and silver stars


– poems are from A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: the Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (Brooklyn : The Song Cave, 2013)