Roman Empire Emperor Commodus as the Infant Hercules strangling Serpents AD 183-192 marble Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
Kingdom of Gandhara Figure of Mourner 2nd-3rd century AD schist Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
Francesco Salviati Allegorical Figure of Victory ca. 1550-55 drawing National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa |
Anonymous Artist Psyche (copy of antique fragment) 18th century marble National Trust, Castle Ward, Downpatrick, Northern Ireland |
Reidel Glass Works Venus ca. 1900 pressed glass Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
Raymond Duchamp-Villon Torso of Young Man 1910 plaster Art Institute of Chicago |
Alexander Archipenko Reclining Torso 1922 glazed ceramic Art Institute of Chicago |
Gerhard Henning Female Torso 1923 terracotta Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen |
Leon Golub Figure 1958 lacquer on linen Gemäldegalerie, Dresden |
Joan Eardley Study of a Child in Jumper and Shorts ca. 1960 drawing (colored chalks) Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh |
Francesca Woodman Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island ca. 1975-78 gelatin silver print Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh |
R.B. Kitaj Actor (Richard) 1979 drawing (colored chalks) Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh |
Magdalena Abakanowicz Standing Figure 1981 burlap, resin and sand Denver Art Museum |
Maria Kuczynska Samurai 1986 stoneware National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne |
Georg Baselitz Torso 1989 drawing (colored chalks) Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstmuseum, Basel |
Tip Toland The Whistlers 2005 painted stoneware Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
from The Atlantic
Unravelled now
And the shore, under its lucid pane,
And the shore, under its lucid pane,
Clear to the sight, it is spent:
The sun rocks there, as the netted ripple
Into whose skeins the motion threads it
Glances athwart a bed, honey-combed
By heaving stones. Neither survives the instant
But is caught back, and leaves, like the after-image
Released from the floor of a now different mind . . .
– Charles Tomlinson (1960)