Monday, January 20, 2025

Hirn - Höfer - Hodgkin - Hickel

Jean-Georges Hirn
Bunch of Grapes
1815
oil on copper
private collection

Jean-Georges Hirn
Bouquet of Roses
1820
oil on canvas
Musée Unterlinden, Colmar

Jean-Georges Hirn
Bouquet on Marble Ledge
1822
oil on canvas
Musée Unterlinden, Colmar

Jean-Georges Hirn
Bouquet with Books and Spectacles
ca. 1820-25
oil on canvas
Musée Unterlinden, Colmar

Candida Höfer
Deichmanske Bibliothek, Oslo II
2000
C-print
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Candida Höfer
Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Düsseldorf
2012
C-print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Candida Höfer
Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires
ca. 2006
C-print
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Candida Höfer
WiSo-Bibliothek, Köln I
1989
C-print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Howard Hodgkin
After Degas
1990
hand-colored etching
Art Institute of Chicago

Howard Hodgkin
David's Pool at Night
1985
hand-colored etching and aquatint
Art Institute of Chicago

Howard Hodgkin
Large Flower
1985
screenprinted cotton
(furnishing fabric, produced by Designers Guild)
Art Institute of Chicago

Howard Hodgkin
Moonlight: Diptych
1980
hand-colored lithograph
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Anton Hickel
Portrait of politician Charles James Fox
1794
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

Anton Hickel
Portrait of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
ca. 1788-91
oil on canvas
private collection

Anton Hickel
Portrait of Marie Thérèse Louise of Savoy, Princesse de Lamballe
1788
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Anton Hickel
Engagement by Candlelight
ca. 1790-95
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

The New Life

I slept the sleep of the just,
later the sleep of the unborn
who come into the world
guilty of many crimes.  
And what these crimes are
nobody knows at the beginning.
Only after many years does one know.
Only after long life is one prepared
to read the equation.

I begin now to perceive
the nature of my soul, the soul
I inhabit as punishment.
Inflexible, even in hunger.

I have been in my other lives
too hasty, too eager,
my haste a source of pain in the world.
Swaggering as a tyrant swaggers;
for all my amorousness,
cold at heart, in the manner of the superficial.

I slept the sleep of the just;
I lived the life of a criminal
slowly repaying an impossible debt.
And I died having answered for
one species of ruthlessness.

– Louise Glück (1999)