Tuesday, May 14, 2024

Warhol - Michals - Quilty - Cassab

Andy Warhol
Boot
ca. 1955
ink, gouache and collage on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Andy Warhol
Elvis I and II
1963-64
screenprints, with added acrylic and spraypaint
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Andy Warhol
Henry Gillespie
1985
screenprint, with added acrylic
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Andy Warhol
Campbell's Soup II - Cheddar Cheese
1969
screenprint
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Duane Michals
I Saw You
(series, Homage to Cavafy)
1978
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Duane Michals
He Was Unaware
(series, Homage to Cavafy)
1978
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Duane Michals
I Could Read It Clearly
(series, Homage to Cavafy)
1978
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Duane Michals
Just to Light his Cigarette
(series, Homage to Cavafy)
1978
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Ben Quilty
Self Portrait - The Executioner
2015
oil on linen
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Ben Quilty
New Bird
2017
oil on linen
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Ben Quilty
The Last Supper
2017
oil on linen
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Ben Quilty
Khodayar Amini
2017
oil on linen
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Judy Cassab
L'Homme au Mouton, Musée Picasso, Paris
1989
drawing
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Judy Cassab
Musée Picasso, Paris
1994
etching and aquatint
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Judy Cassab
Renoir Bust and Shadow
1991
hand-colored etching
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Judy Cassab
Portrait of Judy Barraclough
1955
oil on panel
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

from For the Time Being 

     But then we were children: That was a moment ago,
Before an outrageous novelty has been introduced
Into our lives. Why were we never warned? Perhaps we were.
Perhaps that mysterious noise at the back of the brain
We noticed on certain occasions – sitting alone
In the waiting room of the country junction, looking
Up at the toilet window – was not indigestion
But this Horror starting already to scratch Its way in?
Just how, just when It succeeded we shall never know:
We can only say that now It is there and that nothing
We learnt before It was there is now of the slightest use,
For nothing like It has happened before. It's as if
We had left our house for five minutes to mail a letter,
And during that time the living room had changed places
With the room behind the mirror over the fireplace;
It's as if, waking up with a start, we discovered 
Ourselves stretched out flat on the floor, watching our shadow
Sleepily stretching itself at the window. I mean
That the world of space where events re-occur is still there,
Only now it's no longer real; the real one is nowhere
Where time never moves and nothing can ever happen:
I mean that although there's a person we know all about
Still bearing our name and loving himself as before,
That person has become a fiction; our true existence
Is decided by no one and has no importance to love.

– W.H. Auden (1941-42)

Monday, May 13, 2024

Selected Sinuosities - I

Nicolai Abildgaard
Adrastos slays himself at the Tomb of Atys
(from the story of King Croesus, as told by Herodotus)
ca. 1774-75
drawing
(study for painting)
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Nicolai Abildgaard after Michelangelo
Figure from Sistine Chapel Last Judgment
1774
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Jean-Robert Ango
Ascending Figure
ca. 1759-70
drawing
Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Dutch Artist after Jean Lepautre
Laocoön Group
ca. 1688-98
color etching, printed à la poupée
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jean Arp
Doll without Head
1964
color woodblock print
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Jacques Coelemans after Valentin de Boulogne
St Sebastian bound to a Tree
before 1735
engraving
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

Richard Cosway
Venus and Mars
ca. 1790
drawing
Yale Center for British Art

Giovanni Battista Crespi (il Cerano)
Baptism of Christ
1601
oil on canvas
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Arthur Crowquill
Cover Design for Pictures of Life
at Home and Abroad
by Albert Smith

ca. 1850-60
drawing, with watercolor
Morgan Library, New York

Jacques-Louis David
Distraught Woman
ca. 1775-80
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Robert Delaunay
Political Drama
1914
oil paint and collage on cardboard
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Phyllis Dolton
Design for Ballet Costume
ca. 1935
drawing, with watercolor
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Henry Fuseli
River God Skamandros
shielding Trojan Warriors from Achilles

(illustration to The Iliad)
c1790-
drawing-
Morgan Library, New York

Giambologna
River God
ca. 1580
terracotta modello
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Corrado Giaquinto
Triumph of Galatea
1733
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum

Luca Giordano
Bacchus and Ariadne
(Ariadne's pose derived from Michelangelo's tomb figures, Night and Day)
ca. 1685-86
oil on canvas
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Adam

Adam, on such a morning, named the beasts:
     It was before the sin. It is again.
An openwork world of lights and ledges
     Stretches to the eyes' lip its cup:
Flower-maned beasts, beasts of the cloud,
     Beasts of the unseen, green beasts
Crowd forward to be named. Beasts of the qualities
     Claim them: sinuous, pungent, swift:
We tell them over, surround them
     In a world of sounds, and they are heard
Not drowned in them; we lay a hand
     Along the snakeshead, take up
The nameless muzzle, to assign its vocable
     And meaning. Are we the lords or limits
Of this teeming horde? We bring
     To a kind of birth all we can name
And, named, it echoes in us our being.
     Adam, on such a morning, knew
The perpetuity of Eden, drew from the words
     Of that long naming, his sense of its continuance
And of its source – beyond the curse of the bitten apple – 
     Murmuring in wordless words: 'When you deny
The virtue of this place, then you
     Will blame the wind or the wide air,
Whatever cannot be mastered with a name,
     Mouther and unmaker, madman, Adam.'

– Charles Tomlinson (1968)

Nolan - Weegee - Sisley - Wedgwood

Sidney Nolan
Rosa Mutabilis
1945
enamel on board
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Australia

Sidney Nolan
Desert
1986
acrylic on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Sidney Nolan
The Camp
1946
enamel on panel
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Sidney Nolan
Lublin, or, Baroque Exterior
1944
enamel on board
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Weegee
Hedda Hopper in Winged Hat
ca. 1950
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Weegee
Public Library Hatchet Attack
ca. 1945
gelatin silver print
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

Weegee
New York Jail
ca. 1944
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Weegee
Weegee's Naked City
1945
offset-print
(paperback cover)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Alfred Sisley
Aqueduct at Louveciennes
1874
oil on canvas
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

Alfred Sisley
Path at Les Sablons
1883
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Alfred Sisley
The Loing at Moret
1891
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Alfred Sisley
Washerwomen near Champagne
1882
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Josiah Wedgwood & Sons
Plate
1883
tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica)
Newport Mansions Preservation Society, Rhode Island

Josiah Wedgwood & Sons
Vase
ca. 1935
glazed earthenware
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Josiah Wedgwood & Sons
Sugar Bowl
ca. 1885
tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica)
Newport Mansions Preservation Society, Rhode Island

Josiah Wedgwood & Sons
Writing Case
ca. 1860
calamander wood veneer over wooden body
embellished with jasperware medallions
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

from For the Time Being

Narrator:

If, on account of the political situation,
There are quite a number of homes without roofs, and men
Lying about in the countryside neither drunk nor asleep,
If all sailings have been cancelled till further notice,
If it's unwise now to say much in letters, and if,
Under the subnormal temperatures prevailing,
The two sexes are at present the weak and the strong,
That is not all unusual for this time of year.
If that were all we should know how to manage. Flood, fire,
The desiccation of grasslands, restraint of princes,
Piracy on the high seas, physical pain and fiscal grief,
These after all are our familiar tribulations,
And we have been through them all before, many, many times.
As events which belong to the natural world where 
The occupation of space is the real and final fact
And time turns round itself in an obedient circle,
They occur again and again but only to pass
Again and again into their formal opposites,
From sword to ploughshare, coffin to cradle, war to work,
So that, taking the bad with the good, the pattern composed
By the ten thousand odd things that can possibly happen
Is permanent in a general average way.

     Till lately we knew of no other, and between us we seemed
To have what it took – the adrenal courage of the tiger,
The chameleon's discretion, the modesty of the dove,
Or the fern's devotion to spatial necessity:
To practice one's peculiar civic virtue was not
So impossible after all; to cut our losses
And bury our dead was really quite easy.  

– W.H. Auden (1941-42)

Sunday, May 12, 2024

Static Faces (Painted)

Sofonisba Anguissola
Portrait of the Artist's Sister, Minerva
ca. 1564
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum

George Frederic Watts
Portrait of Agathonike Ionides
1880
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous Artist working in Britain
Portrait of a Noblewoman
ca. 1550
oil on panel
Minneapolis Institute of Art

attributed to Santi di Tito
Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1560-75
oil on panel
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Agostino Carracci
Portrait of a Boy
ca. 1593
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

Abraham Ragueneau
Portrait of a Man
1663
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Rembrandt
Woman holding a Pink
1656
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Philippe de Champaigne
Marie-Madeleine de Vignerod, duchesse d'Aiguillon
(niece of Cardinal Richelieu)
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Collection of Franco Maria Ricci, Fontanellato

Aelbert Cuyp
Portrait of Anna Blocken
1649
oil on panel
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Antonis Mor
Portrait of a Gentleman
1569
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Henry Raeburn
Portrait of Miss Eleanor Urquhart
ca. 1793
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of Frances Susanna, Lady de Dunstanville
ca. 1786
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Frans Hals
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1648-50
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Christen Købke
Portrait of Cecilia Margaret Købke, the Artist's Mother
1829
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Christian Krohg
Portrait of Lucy Parr Egeberg
1876
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

René Magritte
The Spirit of Geometry
1937
gouache on paper
Tate Gallery

Prometheus

Summer thunder darkens, and its climbing
     Cumulae, disowning our scale in the zenith,
Electrify this music: the evening is falling apart.
     Castles-in-air; on earth: green, livid fire.
The radio simmers with static to the strains
     Of this mock last-day of nature and of art.

We have lived through apocalypse too long:
     Scriabin's dinosaurs! Trombones for the transformation
That arrived by train at the Finland Station,
     To bury its hatchet after thirty years in the brain
Of Trotsky. Alexander Nikolayevitch, the events
     Were less merciful than your mob of instruments.

Too many drowning voices cram this waveband.
     I set Lenin's face by yours –
Yours, the fanatic ego of eccentricity against
     The systematic son of a schools inspector
Tyutchev on desk – for the strong man reads
     Poets as the antisemite pleads: 'A Jew was my friend.'

Cymballed firesweeps. Prometheus came down
     In more than orchestral flame and Kérensky fled 
Before it. The babel of continents gnaws now
     And tears at the silk of those harmonies that seemed
So dangerous once. You dreamed an end
     Where the rose of the world would out like a close in music. 

Population drags the partitions down
     And we are a single town of warring suburbs:
I cannot hear such music for its consequence:
     Each sense was to have been reborn
Out of a storm of perfumes and light
     To a white world, an in-the-beginning.

In the beginning, the strong man reigns:
     Trotsky, was it not then you brought yourself
To judgment and to execution, when you forgot
     Where terror rules, justice turns arbitrary?
Chromatic Prometheus, myth of fire,
     It is history topples you in the zenith.

Blok, too, wrote The Scythians
     Who should have known: he who howls
With the whirlwind, with the whirlwind goes down.
     In this, was Lenin guiltier than you
When, out of a merciless patience grew
     The daily prose such poetry prepares for?

Scriabin, Blok, men of extremes,
     History treads out the music of your dreams
Through blood, and cannot close like this
     In the perfection of anabasis. It stops. The trees
Continue raining though the rain has ceased
     In a cooled world of incessant codas:

Hard edges of the houses press
     On the after-music senses, and refuse to burn,
Where an ice-cream van circulates the estate
     Playing Greensleeves, and at the city's
Stale new frontier even ugliness
     Rules with the cruel mercies of solidities. 

– Charles Tomlinson (1968)