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| Gabriele Münter Portrait of a Young Woman 1909 oil on canvas Milwaukee Art Museum |
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| Pierre Bonnard Portrait of Monsieur Monteux 1915 oil on canvas San Diego Museum of Art |
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| Randall Davey Portrait of painter John Sloan ca. 1917 oil on canvas Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington |
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| Arvid Fougstedt Young Man with a Violin 1919 oil on canvas Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm |
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| Charles Sheeler Self Portrait ca. 1924 charcoal and pastel on paper Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Berenice Abbott Portrait of writer Philippe Soupault ca. 1926 gelatin silver print Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas |
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| Henrietta Mary Shore Portrait of painter Jean Charlot ca. 1927 oil on canvas Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| Durr Freedley Portrait of painter Denman Ross ca. 1930 gouache on canvas Harvard Art Museums |
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| Jack Humphrey Boy with Red Hair (Fred Smith) ca. 1941 oil on panel Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick |
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| Alice Neel Phil 1954 ink and gouache on paper Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Robert Hyndman Portrait of Justice James Duncan Hyndman 1955 oil on canvas Ottawa Art Gallery, Ontario |
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| Don Donaghy Untitled ca. 1960 gelatin silver print Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| Alex Katz Edwin: Blue Series 1965 oil and acrylic on board Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Sergei Bongart Portrait of arts administrator Walser S. Greathouse ca. 1966 acrylic on panel Frye Art Museum, Seattle |
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| David Armstrong Chris Wool at Elizabeth Street, NYC 1980 gelatin silver print Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Susan Unterberg Untitled Diptych from Father-Son Series 1989 Polaroids Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
Prism
a paperweight
Having lately taken up residence
In a suite of chambers
Windless, compact and sunny, ideal
Lodging for the pituitary gland of Euclid
If not for "a single gentleman (references),"
You have grown used to the playful inconveniences,
The floors that slide from under you helter-skelter,
Invisible walls put up in mid-
Stride, leaving you warped for the rest of the day.
A spoon in water; also that pounce
Of wild color from corner to page,
Straightway consuming the latter
Down to your very signature,
After which there is nothing to do but retire,
Licking the burn, into – into –
Look: (Heretofore
One could have said where one was looking,
In or out. But now it almost –) Look:
You dreamed of this:
To fuse in borrowed fires, to drown
In depths that were not there. You meant
To rest your bones in a maroon plush box,
Doze the old vaudeville out, of mind and object,
Little foreseeing their effect on you,
Those dagger-eyed insatiate performers
Who from the first false insight
To the most recent betrayal of outlook,
Crystal, hypnotic atom,
Have held you rapt, the proof, the child
Wanted by neither. Now and then
It is given to see clearly. There
Is what remains of you, a body
Is what remains of you, a body
Unshaven, flung on the sofa. Stains of egg
Harden about the mouth, smoke still
Rises between fingers or nostrils.
The eyes deflect the stars through years of vacancy.
Your agitation at such moments
Your agitation at such moments
Is all too human. You and the stars
Seem both endangered, each
At the other's utter mercy. Yet the gem
Revolves in space, the vision shuttles off.
A toneless waltz glints through the pea-sized funhouse.
The day is breaking someone else's heart.
– James Merrill (1962)