Émile-Antoine Bourdelle Head of Apollo 1900 bronze Art Institute of Chicago |
Constantin Brâncusi Danaїde ca. 1918 bronze Tate Gallery |
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound 1914 drawing (study for sculpture) Yale University Art Gallery |
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound 1914 marble National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Gustaw Gwozdecki Head 1915 drawing Yale University Art Gallery |
Alexei von Jawlensky Head of an Angel 1917-18 oil on cardboard Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena |
The Artist's Model, ca. 1912
In 1886 I came apart –
I who had been Mme. Rivière,
whole under flowing silk,
had sat on the grass, naked,
my body an unbroken invitation –
splintered into thousands
of particles, a bright rock
blasted to smithereens;
even my orange skirt dissolved
into drops that were not orange.
Now they are stacking me like a child's
red and blue building blocks,
splitting me down the middle,
blackening half my face;
they tell me the world has changed,
haven't I heard, and give me
a third eye, a rooster's beak.
I ask for my singular name
back, but they say in the future
only my parts will be known,
a gigantic pair of lips,
a nipple, slick as candy,
and that even those will disappear,
white on white or black on black,
and you will look for me
in the air, in the absence of figure,
in space, inside your head,
where I started, your own work of art.
– Lisel Mueller (1978)
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Head of Dr Robert Binswanger ca. 1917-18 woodcut National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Wyndham Lewis Head of Antony (Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra) ca. 1910 drawing Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
Amedeo Modigliani Portrait of Léon Indenbaum 1916 oil on canvas Princeton University Art Museum |
Edvard Munch Head by Head 1905 color woodblock print Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart |
Elie Nadelman Classical Head with Headdress 1908-1909 marble Milwaukee Art Museum |
Max Pechstein Eibedul 1917 hand-colored woodcut Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
Pablo Picasso Study for Head of Nude with Drapery 1907 watercolor and gouache on paper Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Head of a Woman 1915 woodcut Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation) |
Hermann Stemmler Head of a Woman ca. 1916 watercolor Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart |
John Bradley Storrs Head 1917 linocut (proof sheet for exhibition catalogue cover) Yale University Art Gallery |
The Singers
They are not angels
though they have the hollow look
of beings bred on ether. There's an air
of cool removal from your life, the hawk's
indifference to the hare's terror.
You see it in their palms, raised casually
against the fresco's surface, as to glass
of submarine or spacecraft, and you see
it in their eyes, oracular, that let you pass
alone to unknown agony. The song
they sing is merely time.
– Todd Hearon (2005)