Saturday, October 19, 2019

Drawings and Prints from the Long Twentieth Century

Vaughan Trowbridge
The Forge, Limoges
1902
etching
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Anders Zorn
Portrait of Betty Nansen
ca. 1905
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Edward Gordon Craig
Hecuba
1908
woodcut
Victoria & Albert Museum

John Singer Sargent
Figure of Pan
(sketches for the rotunda mural at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
ca. 1917-21
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Lovis Corinth
Apocalyptic Rider
1917
drawing, with gouache
Art Institute of Chicago

Eschatology

I accompany this life's events like a personal journalist:
"Little did she know when she got in the car that afternoon . . ."
or "Despite inauspicious beginnings,
this was to be their happiest year."

Little did I expect that our horoscopes would prove true.
And how could we foresee an answer to
that frankly secular prayer, we with so little faith
as to be false prophets to our most fortunate gifts.

I am glad when doom fails. Inept apocalypse
is a specialty of the times: the suffering of the rich
at the hand of riches; the second and third comings of wars.

Shouldn't we refuse prediction
that the untried today is guilty, that immeasurable
as this child's hope is, it will break tomorrow?

– Sandra McPherson (1970)

Lovis Corinth
Portrait of Charlotte Berend Corinth
1920
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Lovis Corinth
Self-Portrait
1924
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Lovis Corinth
Bust of Sophocles with Animal Skull
ca. 1923-25
drypoint
Art Institute of Chicago

Henri Matisse
Portrait of Léonide Massine
1920
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Leonard Baskin
Thomas Eakins
1964
etching and aquatint
Art Institute of Chicago

David Ligare
Drapery Study
1979
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Elisabeth Frink
Bird Man
1961
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Andy Warhol
The Kiss (Bela Lugosi)
1963
screenprint
Art Institute of Chicago

Willem de Kooning
Studies - Women's Torsos
1952
charcoal and pastel
Art Institute of Chicago