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| George Tooker Singer 1961-62 tempera on masonite Brooklyn Museum |
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| Robert Vickrey The Spider 1968 tempera on masonite Brooklyn Museum |
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| Oscar Bluemner Color Study for the painting Moonlight on a Creek ca. 1928-29 tempera on paper Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation) |
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| Paul Klee Animal Terror 1926 tempera on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art |
Memoir
I was born cautious, under the sign of Taurus.
I grew up on an island, prosperous,
in the second half of the twentieth century;
the shadow of the Holocaust
hardly touched us.
I had a philosophy of love, a philosophy
of religion, both based on
early experience within a family.
And if when I wrote I used only a few words
it was because time always seemed to me short
as though it could be stripped away
at any moment.
And my story, in any case, wasn't unique
though, like everyone else, I had a story,
a point of view.
A few words were all I needed:
nourish, sustain, attack.
– Louise Glück, from The Seven Ages (Ecco Press, 2001)
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| Byron Kim Emmett at Twelve Months 1994 tempera on wooden panels Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut |
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| Eliot Hodgkin Study of Asparagus 1975 tempera on panel Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| David Hillhouse Levens Hall, Cumbria - Topiary ca. 1995 tempera on gesso panel Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead |
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| Merton Clivette Rocks, Sea and Sky before 1929 tempera on paper Harvard Art Museums |
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| Michael Murfin The Farrier 1985 tempera on canvas Colchester and Ipswich Museums |
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| Leslie Lerner Cometa 1986 tempera and polymer on cardboard Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation) |
from Averno
Later we sat in the kitchen
watching the evening start and then the snow.
First one, then the other.
We grew silent, hypnotized by the snow
as though a kind of turbulence
that had been hidden before
was becoming visible,
something within the night
exposed now –
In our silence, we were asking
those questions friends who trust each other
ask out of great fatigue,
each one hoping the other knows more
and when this isn't so, hoping
their shared impressions will amount to insight.
Is there any benefit in forcing upon oneself
the realization that one must die?
Is it possible to miss the opportunity of one's life?
Questions like that.
The snow heavy. The black night
transformed into busy white air.
Something we hadn't seen revealed.
Only the meaning wasn't revealed.
– Louise Glück, from Averno (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006)
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| Pavel Tchelitchew Portrait of Serge Lifar ca. 1928 tempera and watercolor on paper Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut |
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| Brian Taylor Stonehenge - Wiltshire, England 1985 cyanotype, gum bichromate, tempera Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University |
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| Giorgio de Chirico Set Design for the ballet Bacchus and Ariadne, Scene 1, Storm with Jupiter ca. 1931 tempera on paper Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut |
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| Giorgio de Chirico Set Design for the ballet Bacchus and Ariadne, Scene 2, After the Storm ca. 1931 tempera on paper Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut |