Expectedness (Sixties)

Jacob Lawrence
Dreams no. 2
1965
tempera on board
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

James Henry Daugherty
Tensions and Rhythms
1968-69
oil on linen
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Sam Byrne
Dust Storm approaching Broken Hill
ca. 1960-65
enamel on board
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Australia

Arthur Osver
The Voyage
1961
oil paint and collage on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Jack Humphrey
Perry Point Ferry
1960
oil on canvas
New Brunswick Museum, Saint John

Perry Nichols
The Desk-Top of Jake Hamon
1966
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

John Hultberg
Monhegan Dock
1961
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

John Hultberg
Plain with Flag
ca. 1960
gouache on board
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

John Fox
Atelier Rouge
ca. 1965
oil on canvas
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

Donald Friend
Mountebanks
1965
lithograph
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Hassel Smith
Mousehole, Cornwall
1962
oil on canvas
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Harry Soviak
Famille Noire
1968
lithograph
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Jan Forsberg
Gust of Wind
1963
etching and aquatint
Art Institute of Chicago

Danny Lyon
Robert Frank and Mary Frank
1969
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Helen Lessore
Portrait of art collector David Wilkie
1967
oil on canvas
Tate Modern, London

Eva Kubbos
The Sudden Wings of Blue
1962
color linocut
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Eikoh Hosoe
Kamaitachi #26
1963
gelatin silver print
National Museum of Asian Art, Washington DC

POE, EDGAR (1809-1849) – The greatest master of original prosodic effect that the United States have produced, and an instinctively and generally right (though, in detail, hasty, ill-informed, and crude) essayist on points of prosodic doctrine.  Produced little, and that little not always equal; but at his best an unsurpassable master of music in verse and phrase. 

PRAED, WINTHROP MACKWORTH (1802-1839) – An early nineteenth-century Prior.  Not incapable of serious verse, and hardly surpassed in laughter.  His greatest triumph, the adaptation of the three-foot anapest, alternately hypercatalectic and acatalectic or exact, which had been a ballad-burlesque metre as early as Gay, had been partly ensouled by Byron in one piece, but was made his own by Praed, and handed down by him to Mr. Swinburne to be yet further sublimated. 

– George Saintsbury, from Historical Manual of English Prosody (1910)

Practical Foreshortening - I

Peter Paul Rubens
Minerva overcoming Ignorance
ca. 1632-34
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Wilhelm Traut after Lucas Kilian
Ecce Homo
ca, 1636
woodcut
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Per Christian Brown
Army Play
2005
C-print
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Francesco Incarnatini
The Drunkenness of Noah
1642
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Max Slevogt
Danaë
1895
oil on canvas
Lenbachhaus, Munich

Vittorio Manini
Study of Recumbent Model
1910
oil on canvas
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Portrait of painter Suzanne Valadon
1884
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Paul Wilhelm
Couple with Fruit
1910
oil on canvas
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Adolph Menzel
Worker Washing
ca. 1872-74
drawing
(study for painting)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)
Group of Figures
ca. 1526-27
drawing
Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

Annibale Carracci
River God
ca. 1593-94
oil on canvas
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

Evaristo Baschenis
Still Life with Musical Instruments
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Anonymous French Artist
Head of Horse
18th century
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Otto Dill
Horsemen
1917
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Friedrich Gauermann
Homeward Bound
ca. 1850
oil on panel
(cabinet miniature)
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Théodore Géricault
Acrobat on Trapeze
before 1824
drawing
Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

Rhodanes and his companion are almost captured in a field by their pursuer, Damas: for there was a fisherman who gave information about the shepherds, who when tortured finally point out the field – Rhodanes found in it gold that had been revealed by the inscription on a leonine stele.  A goatlike specter falls in love with Sinonis.  For this reason Rhodanes and his companion leave the meadow.  Finding Sinonis's garland of wild meadow flowers, Damas sends it to Garmus to console him.  In their flight Rhodanes and his companion come upon an old woman in a hut.  They hide in a cave that is dug right through for over three miles and is blocked at the mouth by a thicket.  Damas suddenly arrives, and the old woman is questioned and faints on seeing the drawn sword.  The horses on which Rhodanes and Sinonis were riding are seized; the troop of soldiers takes up position around the spot where Sinonis and Rhodanes are hiding; the bronze shield of one of the soldiers breaks on top of the cave; disclosure of the fugitives is caused by the empty sound of the echo; holes are dug around the cave, and Damas shouts all over; those within hear and flee to the innermost parts of the cave and make their escape in the direction of its other opening.  Swarms of savage bees come from the cave and attack those who are digging there, and honey drops down onto the fugitives; both the bees and the honey are poisonous because the bees have fed on snakes; attacking those who have turned towards the cave, the bees seriously injure some and kill others.

– Iamblichus, from A Babylonian Story, written in Greek, 2nd century AD.  A summary of the book was composed (also in Greek) in the 9th century by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople.  Except for fragments, the original text by Iamblichus was subsequently lost, but the summary by Photius has survived.  This was translated into English by Gerald N. Sandy (1989).

Writerly People

Boris Artzybasheff
Arnold Toynbee
1947
gouache on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

René Bouché
W.H. Auden
1962
oil on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Boris Chaliapin
Phyllis McGinley
1965
oil on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Boris Chaliapin
Rebecca West
1947
gouache on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

James Chapin
Boris Pasternak
1958
oil on panel
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

John Collier
Karl Marx
1977
pastel on paper
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Mirko Ilic
Anatoly Rybakov
1988
screenprint
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Alex Katz
John Updike
1982
oil on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Douglas Kirkland
Erma Bombeck
1984
C-print
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

R.B. Kitaj
George Orwell
1983
pastel on paper
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Henry Koerner
Sylvia Porter
1960
oil on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

James Marsh
P.D. James
1986
acrylic on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Sidney Nolan
Robert Lowell
1967
watercolor and crayon on paper
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Christopher Ogden
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1974
C-print
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Robert Vickrey
J.D. Salinger
1961
gouache on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Edward Weston
Robinson Jeffers
1932
photogravure
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Samuel Woolf
Thomas Mann
1934
charcoal on paper
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

from Ibis

[A Curse]

Let th'earth deny thee fruit, and stream

    his waters holde from thee:

Let every winde deny fitte blastes

    for thy commoditie.

Let not the Sun shine bright on thee,

    nor glistering Moone by night:

And of thy eyes let glimsing Starres

    forsake the wished sight.

Let not the fire graunt thee his heate,

    nor Ayre humiditie:

Let neither earth nor yet the Sea

    free passage grant to thee.

That banyshed and poore thou mayst

    straunge houses seek in vayne:

That craving too, with trembling voice

    small almes mayst obtaine.

That neither sound of body, nor 

    thy mynde in perfect plight:

This night be worse than passed day,

    and next day than this night. 

That thou mayst still be pitifull,

    but pitied of none:

And that no man nor woman may

    for thy mischaunces mone.

– Ovid (43 BC-AD 17), translated by Thomas Underdown (1569)