Monday, July 15, 2024

Johns - Dawson - Cézanne - El Lissitzky

Jasper Johns
Alphabet
1969
lithograph
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jasper Johns
Color Numeral Series: Figure 3
1969
lithograph
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Jasper Johns
Color Numeral Series: Figure 8
1969
lithograph
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jasper Johns
Voice
1964-67
oil on canvas, with found objects
Menil Collection, Houston

Janet Dawson
Hamlet on Ice
1971
screenprint (poster)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Janet Dawson
Self Portrait
ca. 1965
Ektachrome slide transparency
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Janet Dawson
St George and the Dragon
1964
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Janet Dawson
The Origin of the Milky Way
1964
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Paul Cézanne
Three Bathers
ca. 1876-77
oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Paul Cézanne
L'Après-midi á Naples
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Paul Cézanne
Still Life with Skull
ca. 1890-93
oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Paul Cézanne
Un Coin de Table
ca. 1895
oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

El Lissitzky
Proun 3A
ca. 1920
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

El Lissitzky
Six Stories with Easy Endings
1922
lithograph
(cover of book by Ilya Ehrenburg)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

El Lissitzky
The Nameless Bird: Collected Verse
1922
lithograph
(cover of book by Aleksandr Kusikov) 
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

El Lissitzky
Notes of a Poet: a Tale
1928
lithograph
(cover of autobiography of Ilya Selvinsky
but with the face of artist Hans Arp)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

from New Year Letter

Great masters who have shown mankind
An order it has yet to find,
What if all pedants say of you
As personalities be true?
All the more honour to you then
If, weaker than some other men,
You had the courage that survives
Soiled, shabby, egotistic lives,
If poverty or ugliness,
Ill-health or social unsuccess
Hunted you out of life to play
At living in another way;
Yet the live quarry all the same 
Were changed to huntsmen in the game,
And the wild furies of the past,
Tracked to their origins at last,
Trapped in a medium's artifice,
To charity, delight, increase.
Now large, magnificent, and calm,
Your changeless presences disarm
The sullen generations, still
The fright and fidget of the will,
And to the growing and the weak
Your final transformations speak,
Saying to dreaming "I am deed,"
To striving "Courage, I succeed,"
To mourning "I remain, Forgive,"
And to becoming "I am, Live."

– W.H. Auden (1940)