Thursday, July 4, 2024

Busy Interiors - I

Brunswick Monogrammist
Brothel Scene
ca. 1540-50
oil on panel
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Jacob Ochtervelt
Musical Company in a Brothel
ca. 1668
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Étienne de Lavallée
Figures in Opera Boxes
ca. 1760
drawing
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Noel Counihan
At the Moscow Ballet, Warsaw
1949
drawing, with gouache
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Mariano Fortuny
The Choice of a Model
1874
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Charles-Joseph Natoire
Life Class at the Royal Academy
1746
drawing, with watercolor
Courtauld Gallery, London

Jacques Gamelin
Life Class
1779
engraving and letterpress
(cutting from a title page)
Wellcome Collection, London

William Roberts
The Model
ca. 1956
watercolor on paper
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

W. Eugene Smith
Carnegie Tech Art Students with Model
ca. 1955-57
gelatin silver print
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Jacques Lavallée after Jacques Gamelin
Ancients studying Anatomy
1779
etching
Wellcome Collection, London

Henri Gervex
Study for Autopsy at the Hôtel Dieu
1876
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

James Ensor
Skeletons Warming Themselves
1889
oil on canvas
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

John Swope
Giacometti Tall Figure IV
Norton Simon Museum

1976
gelatin silver print
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena

Anonymous British Artist
Interior of the National Gallery of Scotland
(on a day reserved for copyists and closed to the public)
ca. 1868-72
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Thomas Struth
Louvre I
1989
C-print
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Melozzo da Forlì
Sixtus IV della Rovere appoints Bartolomeo Platina
as Prefect of the Vatican Library

ca. 1477
detached fresco
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

 from Letters from Amherst

Letters from Amherst came. They were written
In so peculiar a hand, it seemed
The writer might have learned the script by studying
The famous fossil bird-tracks
In the museum of that college town. Of punctuation
There was little, except for dashes: 'My companion
Is a dog,' they said. 'They are better 
Than beings, because they know but do not tell.'
And in the same, bird-like script: 'You think
My gait "spasmodic". I am in danger, sir. 
You think me uncontrolled. I have no tribunal.'
Of people: 'They talk of hallowed things aloud
And embarrass my dog. I let them hear
A noiseless noise in the orchard. I work
In my prison where I make
Guests for myself.' The first of these 
Letters was unsigned, but sheltered
Within the larger package was a second,
A smaller, containing what the letter lacked –
A signature, written upon a a card in pencil . . .

– Charles Tomlinson (1966)

Made in 1964

Lawrence Schiller
Walt Disney, Anaheim, California
1964
C-print
Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California

Garry Winogrand
American Legion Convention, Dallas, Texas
1964
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Wolfgang Sievers
Double-Gob Glass-Forming Machine
1964
C-print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Ben Talbert
Ubu Roi at Coronet Theatre, Los Angeles
(a play by the famous Alfred Jarry)
1964
offset print (poster)
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Robert von Sternberg
Palisades Park, Santa Monica
1964
gelatin silver print, rendered later as inkjet print
Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California

Barbara Kasten
Untitled
1964
cyanotype
Art Institute of Chicago

William Christenberry
31-cent Gasoline Sign near Greensboro, Alabama
1964
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

Leonard Baskin
Bartleby
(opera by Walter Aschaffenburg)
1964
lithograph (poster)
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Louise Nevelson
Tide Garden IV
1964
painted wood
Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock

Bea Maddock
Head Study (The Apprentice)
1964
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Arthur Boyd
Ram and Bull Dancing
1964
pastel on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Robert Rauschenberg
Story
1964
mixed media on panel
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Joseph Francis Plaskett
The Painter
1964
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia

Pietro Sarto
Rimbaud
1964
lithograph
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Clyde Seavey
The Bright Vermilion Door
1964
acrylic on canvas
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia

Ossip Zadkine
Lovers
1964
lithograph
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia

from In Memory of Sigmund Freud

Of course they called on God, but he went his way
down among the lost people like Dante, down
          to the stinking fosse where the injured
     lead the ugly life of the rejected,

and showed us what evil is, not, as we thought,
deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith,
          our dishonest mood of denial,
     the concupiscence of the oppressor.

If some traces of the autocratic pose,
the paternal strictness he distrusted, still
          clung to his utterance and features,
it was a protective coloration

for one who'd lived among enemies so long:
if often he was wrong and, at times, absurd,
          to us he is no more a person
    now but a whole climate of opinion

under whom we conduct our different lives:
Like weather he can only hinder or help,
          the proud can still be proud but find it
     a little harder, the tyrant tries to

make do with him but doesn't care for him much:
he quietly surrounds all our habits of growth
          and extends, till the tired in even
     the remotest miserable duchy

have felt the change in their bones and are cheered,
till the child, unlucky in his little State,
          some hearth where freedom is excluded,
     a hive whose honey is fear and worry,

feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape,
while, as they lie in the grass of our neglect,
          so many long-forgotten objects
     revealed by his undiscouraged shining 

are returned to us and made precious again;
games we had thought we must drop as we grew up,
          little noises we dared not laugh at,
     faces we made when no one was looking.

– W.H. Auden (1939)

Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Mythological Figures

Giovanni Francesco Rustici
Dancing Faun
ca. 1515
bronze
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous Italian Artist
Jupiter
ca. 1550
bronze
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Antico (Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi)
Venus Caritas
ca. 1520-23
bronze
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Bartolomeo Ammanati
Hercules and the Nemean Lion
before 1597
marble
(antique torso modified and extended)
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Anonymous Flemish Artist
Mercury
1639
ivory
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Michel Anguier
Neptune with Hippocamp
1652
bronze
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous Italian Artist after Romulo del Tadda
Hercules and the Erymanthian Boar
17th century
terracotta
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Robert Le Lorrain
Galatea
1701
marble
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

François Coudray
Daphne
1726
marble
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

Chantilly Porcelain Manufactory
Crouching Venus
ca. 1740-45
porcelain
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Vincennes Porcelain Manufactory
River God
ca. 1750
porcelain
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory
Sphinx
ca. 1750-52
porcelain
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Augustin Pajou
Calliope
ca. 1763
marble
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Derby Porcelain Factory
Neptune
ca. 1800-1810
porcelain
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Antonio Canova
Terpsichore Lyran (Muse of Lyric Poetry)
1816
marble
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Alexandre Falguière
Diana
1882
bronze
Clark Art Institute,
Williamstown, Massachusetts

In Longfellow's Library

Sappho
and the Venus de Milo
gaze out past
the scintillations from 
the central
candelabrum
to where 
(on an upper shelf)
plaster Goethe 
in a laurel
crown, looks
down divided
from a group 
dancing a
tarantella, by
the turquoise butterfly
that Agassiz
brought back 
dead: below
these, the busts of 
Homer, Aeschylus
and Sophocles still
pedestalled where
they ambushed Hiawatha.

– Charles Tomlinson (1966)

Chifflart - Gillray - Craig - Feint

François-Nicolas Chifflart
Persée
1867
etching
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

François-Nicolas Chifflart
Salvator Rosa amongst the Brigands
1863
etching
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

François-Nicolas Chifflart
The Surprise
1865
etching
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

François-Nicolas Chifflart
Triumph of Truth and Justice
1866
etching
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

James Gillray
The Apotheosis of Hoche
(anti-Jacobin satire)
1798
hand-colored etching
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

James Gillray
Pylades & Orestes
(Boswell and Johnson)
1797
hand-colored engraving
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

James Gillray
The Great South Sea Caterpillar
transformed into a Bath Butterfly

(satire on the Prince Regent)
1795
hand-colored etching
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

James Gillray
Uncorking Old Sherry
(satire on British politicians)
1805
hand-colored engraving
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Sybil Craig
Study of a Cast of the Dancing Faun
ca. 1924
drawing
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Sybil Craig
Interior
ca. 1935
gouache and ink on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Sybil Craig
Protea Flower Piece
1965
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Sybil Craig
Flowers
ca. 1942
linocut
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Adrian Feint
Flower Piece
1940
oil on canvass
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Adrian Feint
Ex Libris - Edward, Prince of Wales
1934
wood-engraving
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Adrian Feint
Strange Shore
1948
watercolor on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Adrian Feint
The Green Hen
1931
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

from In Memory of Sigmund Freud 

Only Hate was happy, hoping to augment
his practice now, and his dingy clientele
          who think they can be cured by killing
     and covering the gardens with ashes.

They are still alive, but in a world he changed
simply by looking back with no false regrets,
          all he did was to remember
     like the old and be honest like children.

He wasn't clever at all: he merely told
the unhappy Present to recite the Past
          like a poetry lesson till sooner
     or later it faltered at the line where

long ago the accusations had begun,
and suddenly knew by whom it had been judged,
          how rich life had been and how silly,
     and was life-forgiven and more humble,

able to approach the Future as a friend
without a wardrobe of excuses, without
          a set mask of rectitude or an
     embarrassing over-familiar gesture.

No wonder the ancient cultures of conceit
in his technique of unsettlement foresaw
           the fall of princes, the collapse of
     their lucrative patterns of frustration:

if he succeeded, why, the Generalised Life
would become impossible, the monolith
          of State be broken and prevented
     the co-operation of avengers.

– W.H. Auden (1939)