Probing

Josef Wawra
Portrait of a Woman
1914
drawing
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Arne Bendik Sjur
The Skeptic
1966
drypoint
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Lucas Cranach the Younger
Portrait of Maurice, Duke of Saxony
ca. 1545-50
tempera on paper
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Inta Ruka
Marija Matvejuka
2005
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Johan Rohde
Self Portrait
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen

Paula Modersohn-Becker
Self Portrait
ca. 1898
oil on board
Kunsthalle Bremen

Giambattista Moroni
Portrait of Don Gabriel de la Cueva
(Spanish Governor of Milan)
1580
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Ferdinand Hodler
Portrait of Madame de R.
1893
mixed media on panel
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Scott Gentling
George Frideric Handel
1993
watercolor and gouache on paper
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Axel Fridell
Self Portrait VII
1927
drypoint
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Uno Falkengren
Berlin
1924
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Jean Morin
Portrait of Antoine Vitré, Royal Typographer
1645
etching
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Marie-Antoinette, future Queen of France
1762
watercolor on paper
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève

Philipp Otto Runge
Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1805
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Domenico Tintoretto
Portrait of an Artist
ca. 1590
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Eva Schulze-Knabe
Self Portrait
1929
oil on board
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Clytemnestra:  Now you judge me to have incurred exile from the city, the hatred of the community, and loud public curses; but you didn't show any opposition at all to this man at that former time, when, setting no special value on her – treating her death as if it were the death of one beast out of large flocks of well-fleeced sheep – he sacrificed his own child, the darling offspring of my pangs, as a spell to soothe the Thracian winds.  Shouldn't you have driven him from this land in punishment for that unclean deed?  But when you are a spectator of my actions, you judge them harshly.  Well, I tell you, if you make such threats, to make them on the understanding that I am prepared to fight the matter out.  I am content for you to rule, if you defeat me by force in fair fight; but if god decides the issue the other way, then you will be taught, and learn, good sense – though rather late in the day. 

Chorus:

Your cunning is great,

and your words are very proud, just as your mind

is driven mad by your experience of flowing blood –

the flecks of blood show clearly on your eyes.

In time you must pay the price and, stripped of friends,

suffer stroke in return for stroke. 

– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

Yves Klein

Yves Klein
Untitled Blue Monochrome (IKB-82)
1959
pigment in synthetic resin on panel
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Yves Klein
Untitled Red Monochrome (M-63)
1959
pigment in synthetic resin on panel
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Charles Wilp
Yves Klein painting a Mural
Gelsenkirchen Opera House
1959
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Charles Wilp
Yves Klein painting a Mural
Gelsenkirchen Opera House
1959
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Charles Wilp
Yves Klein painting a Mural
Gelsenkirchen Opera House
1959
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Yves Klein
Anthropometrie
1960
pigment in synthetic resin on paper, mounted on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Yves Klein
Requiem (RE-20)
1960
pigment in synthetic resin
over sponges and pebbles, mounted on panel
Menil Collection, Houston

Harry Shunk
Yves Klein saut dans la vide, Paris
1960
gelatin silver print
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Georges Véron
Yves Klein painting with Fire
after 1961
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC 

Anonymous Photographer
Yves Klein with his Mur de Feu
at Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld
1961
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Yves Klein
Le Monochrome at Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles
1961
offset print (exhibition announcement)
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Yves Klein
Mondo Cane Shroud
1961
pigment in synthetic resin on gauze
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Yves Klein
Untitled Monogold (MG-24)
1961
gold leaf on panel
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Yves Klein
Monochrome Blue (YKB-73)
1961
pigment in synthetic resin on panel
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Yves Klein
Anthropometrie
1962
oil on paper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Yves Klein
Portrait Relief (PR-3)
1962
painted bronze relief mounted on gilded panel
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Yves Klein
Winged Victory of Samothrace
1962
painted plaster statuette on stone base
Kunsthalle Mannheim

from The Tragedie of Sophonisba

SYPHAX: 

Since heaven helpes not, deepest hell welle try.

Here in this desart the great soule of Charmes,

Dreadful Erichtho lives whose dismall brow,

Contemnes all roofes or civill coverture,

Forsaken graves and tombes the Ghosts forcd out,

She joyes to inhabit.

A loathsome yellowe leannessse spreades her face,

A heavy hell-like palenes loades hir cheekes

Unknowne to a cleare heaven: but if darke windes,

Or thick black cloudes drive back the blinded stars,

When her deep magicque makes forc'd heven quake

And thunder spite of Jove, Erichtho then

From naked graves stalkes out, heaves proud hir head,

With long unkemde haire loaden, and strives to snatch

The Night's quick sulphar: then she bursts up tombes

From half rot searcloths then she scrapes dry gummes

For hir black rites: but when she finds a corse

New gravd, whose entrailes yet not turne

To slymie filth with greedy havock then

She makes fierce spoile: and swells with wicked triumph

To bury hir leane knuckles in his eyes,

Then doeth she knaw the pale and or'egrowne nailes

From his dry hand: but if she find some life

Yet lurking close she bites his gelled lips,

And sticking her black tongue in his drie throat,

She breathes dire murmurs, which inforce him beare

Her banefull secrets to the spirits of horror.

– Lucan (AD 39-65), translated by John Marston (1606)

Depths

Herri met de Bles
Landscape with Forge
ca. 1535
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Philip Galle after Maarten van Heemskerck
Colossus of Rhodes
1572
hand-colored engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jan de Bisschop
View of The Hague from the Northwest
ca. 1660-65
ink and watercolor on paper 
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Georg Balthasar
Outskirts of Amsterdam
ca. 1775
hand-colored engraving (peep-show scene)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Antonio Carnicero
Ascent of a Balloon in the Presence of the Court of Charles IV of Spain
ca. 1783
oil on canvas
Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Spain

John Sell Cotman
Mousehold Heath, Norwich
1810
watercolor on paper
British Museum

Edward Lear
View of Monaco
ca. 1864
watercolor and gouache on paper
British Museum

Jean-Léon Gérôme
Prayer in the Mosque
1871
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Vincent van Gogh
Landscape with Snow
1888
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Willem Roelofs
Landscape near Gouda
before 1897
drawing
British Museum

Williams, Brown & Earle (Philadelphia)
La Grande Charmille, Château de Voisins
1936
hand-colored lantern-slide
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

Sali Herman
McElhone Stairs
1944
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Christo (Christo Javacheff)
Running Fence, Project for Sonoma and Marin Counties
1976
collage and mixed media on paper
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Geoffrey James
Giardino Storico di Valsanzibio, Villa Barbarigo
1984
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Eric Meola
California
1991
C-print
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Andreas Gursky
Atlanta
1996
C-print
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Mitch Epstein
Century Wind Project - Blairsburg, Iowa
2008
C-print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Madrigal

Like the Idalian queen,

Her hair about her eyne, 

With neck and breasts ripe apples to be seen,

At first glance of the morn

In Cyprus garden gathering those fair flowers

Which of her blood were born,

I saw, but fainting saw, my paramours.

The Graces naked danced about the place,

The winds and trees amazed

With silence on her gazed;

The flowers did smile, like those upon her face,

And as their aspen stalks those fingers band,

That she might read my case,

A hyacinth I wished me in her hand.

– William Drummond of Hawthornden (ca. 1614)