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)