Sunday, December 28, 2025

Conspicuous Brushwork - IV

Joseph Beuys
King's Daughter Sees Iceland
1960
gouache on paper, mounted on felt over board
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Alan Davie
Study for The Key
1960
oil on canvas
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Richard Diebenkorn
Black Table
1960
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Per Erik Hagdahl
Branches II
1963
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Knut Rumohr
Landscape
1963
tempera on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Karel Appel
Rocking in a Boat
1964
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Arne Ekeland
Parnassus
1964
acrylic on paper
Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Norway

Asger Jorn
You Dog
1965
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Bram van Velde
Composition
1970
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Jurjen de Haan
Paaseiland
1978
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Sigrid Burton
Frenesi
1979
acrylic on canvas
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art,
Sarasota, Florida

Runi Langum
Situation II
1981
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Georg Baselitz
Die Verspottung (The Mocking)
1984
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Tina Juretzek
June Women
1987
mixed media on cardboard
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Helmut Pfeuffer
Stierfeld
1989
oil on canvas
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Johanne Hansen-Krone
Double Spiral
1996
oil on canvas
Stortingets Kunstsamling, Oslo

[Enter a Herald]

Herald:  I have to announce the opinion and the decision of the people's council of this city of Cadmus.  It has been resolved that Eteocles here, on account of his loyalty to his country, shall be buried in the loving recesses of the earth; for he found death while keeping out the enemy at the gates, and in pious defence of the temples of his fathers he has died blamelessly where it is honourable for the young to die.  That is what I have been instructed to say about him, but his brother, the dead Polynices here, is to be cast out unburied, a prey for the dogs, as one who would have been the destroyer of the land of Cadmus, had not some god stood up to hinder his armed attack.  Even in death he shall bear the pollution and curse of his ancestral gods, whom he insulted when he tried to capture the city, bringing a foreign army to attack it.  So it is decided that he should get his due reward by receiving a dishonourable funeral from the flying birds; that he should neither lie under a laboriously raised burial-mound nor be dignified with high-pitched musical wailings; and that he should not have the honour of a funeral procession from his family.  Such is the decision of the aforementioned Cadmean authorities. 

Antigone:  And I say to the leaders of the Cadmeans: if no one else is willing to join in burying this man, I will bury him, I will brave the danger of burying my brother, and I will not be ashamed to display such disobedient insubordination to the city.  The power of the common womb from which we are sprung, children of a wretched mother and a miserable father, is a formidable thing.  Therefore, my soul, with a sister's heart, living with dead, share willingly in the sufferings that he endures unwillingly.  His flesh shall not be eaten by dogs or birds nor torn by hollow-bellied wolves – let no one think it will; for I shall myself, woman though I am, contrive to provide him with a funeral and burial, carrying it* in the fold of my fine linen robe, and myself cover him up – and let no one think otherwise.  Courage will find a means to do it.

– Aeschylus, from Seven Against Thebes (467 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

*i.e. the earth to throw over the body