Saturday, October 19, 2024

Uncannily Related

Greek Culture in South Italy
Youth watering Horse
380 BC
painted terracotta fragment
Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam

Yasumasa Morimura
Doublonnage (Marcel)
1988
C-print
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

Etruscan Culture
Winged Lion
540 BC
volcanic stone fragment of funerary sculpture
Menil Collection, Houston

Meissen Manufactory, Dresden
Allegories of the Four Continents
ca. 1750
porcelain
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Nymphenburg Manufactory, Munich
Figures from a Centerpiece
ca. 1754-55
porcelain
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich

Sigmar Polke
Watchtower with Geese
1987-88
resin and acrylic paint on fabric
Art Institute of Chicago

Lucie Dalgarno
Jacket
ca. 1932
painted silk
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Alfred Pellan
Orsino
1971
acrylic paint on plastic mask
Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec

Giuseppe Piamontini
Holy Water Font
ca. 1690
marble and gil bronze
Saint Louis Art Museum

Roman Empire
Ingot
1st century AD
gold
Dallas Museum of Art

Yoko Ono
A Box of Smile
created 1971, edition fabricated 1984
plastic box with mirror
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

George James Morris
A Canal, Venice
ca. 1936
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Andrew Moore
Red Maples, Vassar College Campus
2006
inkjet print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Clifton Monteith
Armchair
ca. 1985
willow
Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin

Ancient Maya Culture in Guatemala
Funerary Urn
AD 500-950
painted terracotta
Menil Collection, Houston

Ancient Maya Culture in Guatemala
Cylinder Vessel
AD 700-900
painted terracotta
Menil Collection, Houston

The Bonfires

Look there! The sunk road winding
To the fortified farm.
Listen! The cock's alarm
In the strange valley.

Are we the stubborn athletes;
Are we then to begin
The run between the gin
And bloody falcon? 

The horns of the dark squadron
Converging to attack;
The sound behind our back
Of glaciers calving.

In legend all were simple,
And held the straitened spot;
But we in legend not,
Are not simple.

In weakness how much further;
Along what crooked route
By hedgehog's gradual foot,
Or fish's fathom.

Bitter the blue smoke rises
From garden bonfires lit,
To where we burning sit:
Good, if it's thorough,

Leaving no double traitor 
In days of luck and heat,
To time the double beat,
At last together.

– W.H. Auden (1931)