Sculpted Personalities

Anonymous German Artist
Lady with a Mirror
ca. 1750
ivory (partly painted)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous Chinese Artist
European Male reclining on a Couch
ca. 1720-40
painted earthenware and wood
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

attributed to Bastiano Torrigiani
The Ludovisi St Peter
ca. 1590
Roman marble body, 2nd century AD,
modified with gilt-bronze extremities
and a marble throne
Minneapolis Institute of Art

William Theed
Prince Albert and Queen Victoria in Saxon Garb
ca. 1863-67
plaster modello
for marble mausoleum group at Frogmore
(commissioned by Queen Victoria)
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Avon Pottery (France)
Monk carrying a Woman
ca. 1600-1625
lead-glazed earthenware
Art Institute of Chicago

Anonymous French Artist
Ornamental Mask
ca. 1700
gilt bronze
(component of fountain)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Leonard Baskin
John Donne in his Winding Cloth
ca. 1955
bronze
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
Portrait Bust of Louisa Turner
1871
marble
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Lucas Faydherbe
Bust of Hercules
ca. 1640-50
terracotta
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Ridolfo Sirigatti
Bust of the artist's mother, Cassandra Sirigatti
1578
marble
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Per Palle Storm
Seated Athlete
1942
bronze
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Auguste Rodin
The Young Convalescent (The Farewell)
ca. 1906-1907
marble
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Anonymous Spanish Artist
St Teresa of Avila
ca. 1730
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous Dutch Artist
The Beheading of St John the Baptist
ca. 1600
boxwood
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Guillaume Coustou the Elder
Bust of Samuel Bernard
ca. 1727
marble
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

attributed to Manuel Pereira
Ecce Homo
ca. 1650
carved and painted wood
Yale University Art Gallery

from Weeper in Jalisco

A circle of saints, all
hacked, mauled, bound, 
bleed in a wooden frieze
under the gloom of the central
dome of gold. They
are in paradise now
and we are not –
baroque feet gone
funnelling up, a blood-
bought, early resurrection
leaving us this
tableau of wounds, the crack
in the universe sealed 
behind their flying backs.

– Charles Tomlinson (1965)

Oldenburg - Roberts - Brassaï - Jillposters

Claes Oldenburg
The Letter Q as Beach House with Sailboat
1972
lithograph
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Claes Oldenburg
Geometric Mouse
1969-71
painted aluminum and steel
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Claes Oldenburg
Ice Cream Soda with Cookie
1963
painted plaster and glass with found objects
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Claes Oldenburg
Ice Bag (scale B)
1971
mixed-media construction
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Tom Roberts
Madame Hartl
1909-1910
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Tom Roberts
Smike Streeton, age 24
1891
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Tom Roberts
Study of Lena Brasch
ca. 1893
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Tom Roberts
Eileen
1892
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Brassaï
English Showgirl, Folies Bergère
1932
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Brassaï
Stagehand Asleep, Folies Bergère
ca. 1932
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Brassaï
Masked Women in Carnival Sideshow
ca. 1933
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Brassaï
Women on Parade in Carnival Sideshow
ca. 1933
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jillposters (feminist collective in Melbourne)
Stop Uranium Sales to France
ca. 1983-87
screenprint (postcard)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jillposters (feminist collective in Melbourne)
Agitate for Nuclear-free Fish
ca. 1983-87
screenprint (postcard)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jillposters (feminist collective in Melbourne)
No Child Need Ever Worry
1983
screenprint (poster)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jillposters (feminist collective in Melbourne)
Direct from Grower to You
1984
screenprint (poster)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

from A Walk after Dark

A cloudless night like this
Can set the spirit soaring:
After a tiring day

The clockwork spectacle is

Impressive in a slightly boring

Eighteenth-century way.

It soothed adolescence a lot

To meet so shameless a stare;

The things I did could not

Be so shocking as they said

If that would still be there

After the shocked were dead.

Now, unready to die

But already at the stage

When one starts to resent the young,

I am glad those points in the sky

May also be counted among

The creatures of middle age.

It's cosier thinking of night

As more an Old People's Home
Than a shed for a faultless machine,

That the red pre-Cambrian light
Is gone like Imperial Rome

Or myself at seventeen.

Yet however much we may like
The stoic manner in which

The classical authors wrote,

Only the young and the rich

Have the nerve or the figure to strike
The lacrimae rerum note.

– W.H. Auden (1948)

Reverent European Renderings of Antiquities

Pseudo Pacchia
Antique Sculpture Group -
Romulus and Remus with She-Wolf
ca. 1530
drawing
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Study after the Antique
ca. 1533
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

workshop of Jacopo Tintoretto
Studies of Antique Sculpture
ca. 1570
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Willem Panneels
The Belvedere Antinoüs
ca. 1628-30
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst,
Copenhagen

Anonymous Italian Artist
Study of Antique Torso
ca. 1650
drawing
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Luis Paret y Alcázar
Roman Military Trophies
ca. 1770
drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Anonymous Italian Artist after Polidoro da Caravaggio
Roman Military Trophies
ca. 1775-1800
drawing
Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Felice Giani
Ancient Sacrifice and Head of Satyr
ca. 1790
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Theodor Kittelsen
Classical Torso
ca. 1875
drawing
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Thorolf Holmboe
Classical Torso
1890
drawing
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Jerry Uelsmann
Untitled
1964
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

John Skippe
Classical Figure holding Salver aloft
ca. 1781-83
chiaroscuro woodcut
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Nicolas Beatrizet
Antique Sculpture of Oceanus
1560
engraving
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Clodion
Minerva
1766
terracotta
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Artist
Crouching Venus
ca. 1697
lead cast of antique sculpture
National Trust, Knole, Sevenoaks, Kent

Jacob van der Kool
The Spinario
(pastiche of antique sculpture)
ca. 1725-40
faience
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Logic

A trailed and lagging grass, a pin-point island
Drags the clear current's face it leans across
In ripple-wrinkles. At a touch

It has ravelled the imaged sky till it could be

A perplexity of metal, spun

Round a vortex, the sun flung off it

Veining the eye like a migraine – it could

Scarcely be sky. The stones do more, until we say

We see there meshes of water, liquid

Nets handed down over them, a clear

Cross-hatching in the dance of wrinkles that

Re-patterns wherever it strikes.

So much for stones. They seem to have their way.

But the sway is the water's: it cannot be held

Though moulded and humped by the surfaces

It races over, though a depth can still

And a blade's touch render it illegible. 

Its strength is here: it must

Account for its opposite and yet remain

Itself, of its own power get there. 

Water is like logic, for it flows

Meeting resistance arguing as it goes:

And it arrives, having found not the quickest

Way, but the way round, the channel which

Entering, it may come to a level in,

Which must admit, in certain and crowding fusion,

The irrefutable strength which follows it. 

– Charles Tomlinson (1967)

Binns - Michals - Malevich - Crane

Vivienne Binns
Untitled
1966
gouache and felt pen on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Vivienne Binns
Untitled
1966
gouache and felt pen on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Vivienne Binns
Vag Dens
1967
acrylic and enamel on board
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Vivienne Binns
Repro Vag Dens
1975-76
vitreous enamel on steel
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Duane Michals
There Was Something Between Them
(series, Homage to Cavafy)
1978
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Duane Michals
The Son Came Home
(series, Homage to Cavafy)
1978
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Duane Michals
Two Friends Are Playing Cards
(series, Homage to Cavafy)
1978
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Duane Michals
When He Was A Young Man
(series, Homage to Cavafy)
1978
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Kasimir Malevich
Red Square on Black Ground
ca. 1922
oil on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Kasimir Malevich
House under Construction
ca. 1915-16
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Kasimir Malevich
A Game in Hell
1914
lithograph (book cover)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Kasimir Malevich for Dulevo Manufactory (Soviet Union)
Cup and Saucer
ca. 1925-30
porcelain
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Walter Crane for Minton Hollins & Co. (Staffordshire)
A Little Cock Sparrow sat on a High Tree
ca. 1880
glazed ceramic tile
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Walter Crane for Minton Hollins & Co. (Staffordshire)
Jack and Jill
ca. 1880
glazed ceramic tile
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Walter Crane for Minton Hollins & Co. (Staffordshire)
The North Wind Doth Blow
ca. 1880
glazed ceramic tile
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Walter Crane for Minton Hollins & Co. (Staffordshire)
Sur le Pont d'Avignon
ca. 1880
glazed ceramic tile
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

from For the Time Being

O where is that immortal and nameless Centre from which our points of
     Definition and death are all equi-distant? Where
The well of our wish to wander, the everlasting fountain
     Of the waters of joy that our sorrow uses for tears?
O where is the garden of Being that is only known in Existence
     As the command to be never there, the sentence by which
Alephs of throbbing fact have been banished into position,
     The clock that dismisses the moment into the turbine of time?

O would I could mourn over Fate like the others, the resolute creatures,
     By seizing my chance to regret. The stone is content
With a formal anger and falls and falls; the plants are indignant
     With one dimension only and can only doubt
Whether light or darkness lies in the worse direction; and the subtler
     Exiles who try every path are satisfied
With proving that none have a goal: why must Man also acknowledge
     It is not enough to bear witness, for even protest is wrong?

Earth is cooled and fire is quenched by his unique excitement,
     All answers expire in the clench of his questioning hand,
His singular emphasis frustrates all possible order:
     Alas, his genius is wholly for envy; alas,
The vegetative sadness of lakes, the locomotive beauty
     Of choleric beasts of prey, are nearer than he
To the dreams that deprive him of sleep, the powers that compel him to idle,
     To his amorous nymphs and his sanguine athletic gods.

How can his knowledge protect his desire for truth from illusion?
     How can he wait without idols to worship, without
Their overwhelming persuasion that somewhere, over the high hill,
     Under the roots of the oak, in the depths of the sea,
Is a womb or a tomb wherein he may halt to express some attainment?
     How can he hope and not dream that his solitude
Shall disclose a vibrating flame at last and entrust him forever
     With its magic secret of how to extemporise life?

– W.H. Auden (1941-42)