Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Figures of the 1970s

Robert Rauschenberg
Tanya (Tatyana Grosman)
1974
lithograph
Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

David Hockney
Reclining Figure
1975
etching
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Telemachos Kanthos
Four Captives
1976
woodcut
National Museum, Athens

Agnus Gastmans
Four Lawyers
1976
oil on panel
Museum Gouda

Salvador Dalí
Ten of Swords
(Assassination of Julius Caesar)
1971
gouache and collage on paper
Musée d'Art Classique de Mougins

Francis Bacon
Three Studies of the Male Back (George Dyer)
1970
oil on canvas
Kunsthaus Zürich

Ivor Abrahams
Figure with Path
(series, Oxford Gardens)
1977
screenprint
National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne

Philip Pearlstein
Female Model on Platform Rocker
1977-78
oil on canvas
Brooklyn Museum

Joe Brainard
Nude with Tattoo
1974
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Georg Eisler
Station Waiting Room
1970
oil on canvas
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Wieland Förster
Torso of Falling Man
1974
sandstone
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

Lucian Freud
Portrait of Ib
1977-78
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Ralph Goings
Walt's Restaurant
1978-79
oil on canvas
Yale University Art Gallery

Jörg Immendorff
Untitled
1979
acrylic on canvas
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Theodoros Manolidis
The Cocktail
1973
oil on canvas
National Gallery, Athens

Serge Lutens
Parfums Christian Dior
1979
lithograph
(advertising poster)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly fisher's wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;
A Helen of social welfare dream
Climb on a wagonette to scream.
Some think it matter of course that chance
Should starve good men and bad advance,
That if their neighbours figured plain,
As though upon a lighted screen,
No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort,
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell
And that no better can be had
Know why an old man should be mad.

– W.B. Yeats (1939)

Höch - Italy - Ferrari - Guercino

Hannah Höch
Creatures
ca. 1926-29
oil on canvas
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Hannah Höch
Cut with the Kitchen Knife
1919
collage of printed papers
Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hannah Höch
Liebe
1931
collage of printed papers
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Hannah Höch
Man and Machine
1921
oil on canvas
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Anonymous Italian Maker
Toilette Mirror
ca. 1750
painted and gilded wood with mirror
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Anonymous Italian Maker
Vitrine
ca. 1750
painted and gilded poplar and glass
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Anonymous Italian Maker
Vitrine
18th century
painted and gilded wood and glass
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Anonymous Italian Maker
Frame
17th century
ebony veneer, ivory, lapis lazuli, flint
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Luca Ferrari (Luca da Reggio)
Arria and Paetus
1645
oil on canvas
private collection

Luca Ferrari (Luca da Reggio)
Farewell of Hector and Andromache
before 1654
oil on canvas
Palazzo Pisani Moretta, Venice

Luca Ferrari (Luca da Reggio)
Incarnation of God the Father
ca. 1630-40
oil on canvas
(altarpiece)
Basilica di Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome

Luca Ferrari (Luca da Reggio)
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Museo Civico di Modena

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Two Women with Children
before 1666
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Half-Length Study of Young Woman
before 1666
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
Penitent Magdalen
ca. 1645-50
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri)
St John the Evangelist meditating the Gospel
ca. 1645-50
drawing
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Gemini

There is a soul in me
It is asking
to be given its body

It is asking 
to be given blue eyes
a skull matted

with black hair
that shape
already formed & detaching

So the past put forth
a house filled with 
asters & white lilac

            *

a child
in her cotton dress
the lawn, the copper beech –

such of my own lives
I have cast off – the sunlight
chipping at the curtains

& the wicker chairs
uncovered, winter after winter,
as the stars finally

thicken & descend as snow

– Louise Glück (1975)

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

One Side Busier and Heavier

Rosalyn Drexler
Lovers
1963
acrylic paint and collage on canvas
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Édouard Vuillard
On the Sofa
ca. 1890-93
oil on cardboard
Pushkin Museum, Moscow

attributed to Hans von Aachen
The Deposition
ca. 1605
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

Mariotto Albertinelli
Incident from Genesis
ca. 1513
oil on panel
National Gallery, Athens

Arthur Devis
Portrait of Richard Moreton, Esq.
with niece and nephew, Susanna and John Weyland

1757
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Jan Brueghel the Elder (landscape)
and Hendrick de Clerck (figures)
Diana and Actaeon
ca. 1610
oil on panel
Národní Galerie, Prague

Anonymous Flemish Artist
Landscape with Courtly Figures
ca. 1700-1720
oil on copper
Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg (seascape)
and Pierre-Antoine de Machy (architecture)
Scene of Shipwreck
1771
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ivan Aivazovsky
Blowing-Up of the Arkadi Monastery on Crete
1867
oil on canvas
National Gallery, Athens

Claude Monet
Low Tide at Pourville near Dieppe
1882
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Hendrik Goudt after Adam Elsheimer
Tobias and the Angel
ca. 1613
drawing
(after now-lost Elsheimer painting and preparatory to engraving)
Morgan Library, New York

Jacob van der Ulft
Roman Ruins with Herdsman
ca. 1670
drawing
National Museum, Athens

Francesco Trevisani
Penitent Magdalen
ca. 1710
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ernesto Parmeggiani
Orpheus
1902
oil on canvas
Museo Civico di Modena

Jan van Goyen
The Blasted Oak, or, The Fortune-Teller
1638
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

René Magritte
The Secret Life
1928
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

I call upon Persephone, queen of the dead,
And upon Hades, king of night, I call;
Chain all the Furies up that he may tread
The perilous pathways to the Stygian hall
And rest among his mighty peers at last,
For the entanglements of God are past.

Nor may the hundred-headed dog give tongue
Until the daughter of Earth and Tartarus
That even bloodless shades call Death has sung
The travel-broken shade of Oedipus
Through triumph of completed destiny
Into eternal sleep, if such there be.

– Sophocles, chorus from Oedipus at Colonus (405 BC), translated by W.B. Yeats (1934)

Affinities

Louis Faurer
New York City
ca. 1947
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Louis Faurer
New York City
ca. 1949
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Murray Walker
Untitled
1983
collage with watercolor and ink on postcard
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Australia

Murray Walker
Untitled
1983
collage with watercolor and ink on postcard
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Australia

Ferdinand Tietz 
Bust of Apollo
ca. 1764-65
sandstone
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich

Ferdinand Tietz
Bust of Mercury
ca. 1765
sandstone
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich

Vicki Varvaressos
Portrait of Frank Watters
1980
acrylic on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Vicki Varvaressos
Six-Foot Caucasian with Beard
1976
acrylic and collage on paper, mounted on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Anonymous British Maker
Stomacher
17th century
silk embroidery on silk
Art Institute of Chicago

Anonymous British Maker
Stomacher
ca. 1700-1730
silk lined with linen
Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

Andy Warhol
Mick Jagger
1975
screenprint
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Andy Warhol
Unidentified Waiter resisting Photography
1982
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Jacopo Tintoretto
Portrait of Woman in Mourning
ca. 1550-55
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Jacopo Tintoretto
Young Man with Sculpture of Lucretia
ca. 1555
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Johann Friedrich August Tischbein
Portrait of a Lady
1796
oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague

Johann Friedrich August Tischbein
Portrait of Christiane Caroline Mesmer
1804
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

The School Children

The children go forward with their little satchels.
And all morning the mothers have labored
to gather the late apples, red and gold,
like words of another language.

And on the other shore 
are those who wait behind great desks 
to receive these offerings.

How orderly they are – the nails
on which the children hang
their overcoats of blue or yellow wool.

And the teachers shall instruct them in silence
and the mothers shall scour the orchards for a way out,
drawing to themselves the gray limbs of the fruit trees
bearing so little ammunition.

– Louise Glück (1975)