Contrivances

Henri Bevan
Le Pont de Saint-Cloud after the Franco-Prussian War
1871
albumen print
Dallas Museum of Art

 

Edward Biberman
The White Fire Escape
ca. 1956
oil on panel
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths
Alice and Leaping Fairy
ca. 1920
silver chloride print
(accepted by many contemporaries as a factual image)
Art Institute of Chicago

Jay Wolke
World War II Watchtower, Salice, Italy
2005
inkjet print
Art Institute of Chicago

John Baldessari
Two Sets (One with Bench)
1989-90
photogravure and aquatint
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Tina Barney
Lady with Poodles - Big Apple Circus
2008
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Hanuman Vjasa
Portrait of the Bikaner family of Rajasthan
(males only)
ca. 1900
hand-colored gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Cornelis Vermeulen
Trompe l'oeil Still Life - Letter Rack
1673
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Miles Coolidge
Police Station, Kids R Us, McDonald's
(Safetyville - a miniature outdoor town in Sacramento)
1994
C-print
Gugenheim Museum, New York

Miles Coolidge
Industrial Buildings
(Safetyville - a miniature outdoor town in Sacramento)
1994
C-print
Gugenheim Museum, New York

Ruth Thorne-Thomsen
Levitating Man, Wisconsin
1983
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mark Thompson
U-Plant Explodes
ca. 1977-79
screenprint
(anti-nuke poster with fictitious disaster)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Marcel Duchamp
The Marcel Duchamp Art Medal
1964
bronze
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Mitch Epstein
Warehouse
2000
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Karel van der Pluym
St Matthew and the Angel
ca. 1655-60
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Judy Pinto
Skin Tent for a Backbone
1978
watercolor, graphite and crayon on paper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Saint Joan

When I was seven, I had a vision:

I believed I would die. I would die

at ten, of polio. I saw my death:

it was a vision, an insight –

it was what Joan had, to save France.

I grieved bitterly. Cheated

of earth, cheated

of a whole childhood, of the great dreams of my heart,

which would never be manifest. 

No one knew any of this.

And then I lived.

I kept being alive

when I should have been burning:

I was Joan, I was Lazarus.

Monologue

of childhood, of adolescence.

I was Lazarus, the world given to me again.

Nights I lay in my bed, waiting to be found out.

And the voices returned, but the world

refused to withdraw.

I lay awake, listening.

Fifty years ago, in my childhood.

And of course now.

What was it, speaking to me? Terror

of death, terror of gradual loss;

fear of sickness in its bridal whites –

When I was seven, I believed I would die:

only the dates were wrong. I heard

a dark prediction

rising in my own body.

I gave you your chance.

I listened to you. I believed in you.

I will not let you have me again.

– Louise Glück (2001)