Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1962)

Kati Horna and Leonora Carrington
Máscara
1962
gelatin silver print
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Kati Horna and Leonora Carrington
Ode to Necrophilia
1962
gelatin silver print
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Hans Hofmann
Sic Itur ad Astra
1962
oil on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Renato Guttoso
À Marat, à David
1962
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Mario Giacomelli
People of the South: Scanno
1962
gelatin silver print
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Jim Dine
Three-Panel Study for Child's Room
1962
oil paint, charcoal and found objects on canvas
Menil Collection, Houston

Corneille (Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo)
Untitled
1962
oil paint on vellum
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Hugo Claus
Koniga
1962
watercolor and gouache on paper
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Henri Cartier-Bresson
Catholic Congress, Hanover, Germany
1962
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Ashley Bryan
Studio Still Life, Tremont Avenue, Bronx NY
1962
oil on canvas
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

Stern Bramson
Baron LaVelle in his Home Theatre
1962
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Ernst Benkert
Half-Inch Grid
1962
oil on canvas
Fleming Museum of Art, Burlington, Vermont

Leonard Baskin
William Blake
1962
etching
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Hans Arp
Composition in a Circle
1962
colored paper collage
Art Institute of Chicago

Josef Albers
Study for Homage to the Square: High Spring
1962
oil on panel
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Frank Auerbach
E.O.W. looking into the Fire I
1962
oil on board
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

from Horae Canonicae

                        IV. NONES (part I)

What we know to be not possible,

     Though time after time foretold

By wild hermits, by shaman and sybil

     Gibbering in their trances,

Or revealed to a child in some chance rhyme

     Like will and kill, comes to pass

Before we realize it. We are surprised

     At the ease and speed of our deed

And uneasy: It is barely three,

     Mid-afternoon, yet the blood

Of our sacrifice is already

     Dry on the grass, we are not prepared

For silence so sudden and so soon;

     The day is too hot, too bright, too still,

Too ever, the deed remains too nothing.

     What shall we do till nightfall?

The wind has dropped and we have lost our public.

     The faceless many who always

Collect when any world is to be wrecked,

     Blown up or burnt down, cracked open,

Felled, sawn in two, hacked through, torn apart,

     Have all melted away. Not one

Of these who in the shade of walls and trees

     Lie sprawled now, calmly sleeping,

Harmless as sheep, can remember why

     He shouted or what about

So loudly in the sunshine this morning;

     All if challenged would reply

– "It was a monster with one red eye

     A crowd that saw him die, not I." –

The hangman has gone to wash, the soldiers to eat:

     We are left alone with our feat.

– W.H. Auden (1950)

Ferdinand Hodler

Ferdinand Hodler
Self Portrait
1879-80
oil on canvas
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Ferdinand Hodler
The Drinkers
1886
oil on canvas
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Ferdinand Hodler
Self Portrait
1886
drawing, with added gouache
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Ferdinand Hodler
The Dispute
1894
oil on canvas
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Ferdinand Hodler
Spring
1901
mixed media on canvas
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Ferdinand Hodler
Forest Stream near Leissigen
1904
oil on canvas
Kunsthaus Zürich

Ferdinand Hodler
Landscape at Lake Geneva
ca. 1906
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Ferdinand Hodler
Student at Jena in 1813 
ca. 1908
oil on canvas
(study for fresco)
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Ferdinand Hodler
Lake Thun with Symmetrical Reflections
1909
oil on canvas
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Ferdinand Hodler
Woman in a Transport
1911
oil on canvas
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Ferdinand Hodler
Unanimity
1911-12
oil on canvas
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Ferdinand Hodler
Portrait of Mathias Morhardt
1913
oil on canvas
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Ferdinand Hodler
Portrait of Félix Vibert
1915
oil on canvas
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Ferdinand Hodler
Valentine Godé-Darel on her Deathbed
1915
gouache and oil paint on paper
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Ferdinand Hodler
Self Portrait
ca, 1916
oil on paper
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Ferdinand Hodler
Self Portrait
ca. 1917-18
drawing
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Cézanne's much-quoted advice to Bernard to look at nature in terms of simple shapes of known property, that is, in terms of cylinders, cones, and spheres, aims at exactly the same type of reclassification.  It surely has nothing to do with cubism but rather with the type of art teaching in French schools which was current at the time Cézanne was young and which he wished to pass on to his young admirer.  Art teaching, then, like that of most painters' manuals, still proceeds on the basis of what may be called a "common sense version" of traditional Western philosophy.  The world consists of substances which have sensory qualities of varying permanence.  Beech leaves "are" small, lozenge-shaped, and bright green, distant mountains "look" blue.  The artist's business is simply to analyse appearances down into these qualities and to match those he can in his medium.  There is no essential difference, in this view, between the artist who paints a landscape and another who copies a picture.  Both are concerned with piecemeal matching, much as a mosaicist would be who works from a cartoon and selects one stone after another that comes as close as possible to the corresponding hue of his prototype, arranging them in the shapes he sees in front of him. 

Now the facsimile, like the photograph, has mainly served the aestheticians as a foil to stress the creative element necessary to art.  One may admit that the creation of indistinguishable duplicates is of greater interest to the forgers of banknotes than to artists, but we have seen, I hope, that psychologically the making of any likeness is far from being a trivial achievement.  

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)

Groups

Édouard Manet
Musique aux Tuileries
1862
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Giulio Marchetti
Drowned
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
Palazzo Cybo Malaspina, Carrara

Rocco Marconi
Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery
before 1529
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy (Netherlandish painter)
Virgo inter Virgines
ca. 1500
oil on panel
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Roger Mayne
Teddy-Boy Group, Princedale Road, North Kensington, London
1956
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Daniel McCarthy
UCB Briefcase Drill Team
1982
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Hans Memling
Jeering Crowd
(fragment from The Mocking of Christ)
before 1494
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Joel Meyerowitz
Cocktail Party - Wellfleet, Massachusetts
1977
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Martin van Meytens
Empress Maria Theresa with Husband and Children
ca. 1756
oil on canvas
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Francesco Mosca
Diana and Actaeon
ca. 1550-75
terracotta modello for marble relief
Musée du Louvre

Luigi Mussini
Chess Challenge at the Court of Philip II
1882
oil on canvas
Collezioni della Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena

Mark Neville
Boys at Devol, Port Glasgow
2005
C-print
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Nicola da Urbino
Apollo and the Muses
ca. 1525-26
maiolica plate (lacking the rim)
Musée du Louvre

Plinio Nomellini
Nuova Gente
1909
oil on canvas
Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Genoa

Gérard van Opstal
Cupids defending Woman from Centaurs
before 1668
ivory relief
Musée du Louvre

Bill Owens
Housecoat Party with TV Trays, Northern California
ca. 1969
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Martin Parr
Strawberry Tea - Malvern Girls' College
ca. 1986
C-print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,

    My friends forsake me like a memory lost;

I am the self-consumer of my woes,

    They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;

And yet I am, and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

    Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,

    But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;

And e'en the dearest – that I loved the best –

Are strange – nay, rather stranger than the rest.

– John Clare (1845)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1961)

Arnold Newman
Martha Graham, New York City
1961
gelatin silver print
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Enrico Sarsini
Untitled
1961
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Joan Mitchell
Untitled
1961
oil on canvas
Dayton Art Institute, Ohio

Henry Botkin
The Letter
1961
mixed media on board
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin

Robert Beauchamp
Presences
1961
oil on canvas
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Robert Motherwell
Capriccio
1961
pochoir
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Gunther Gerzsó
Cecilia
1961
oil on panel
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Morris Louis
Number 28
1961
acrylic on canvas
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Wojciech Fangor
Yellow Cross
1961
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Robert Indiana
Four Star Love
1961
oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Josef Albers
Study for Homage to the Square: Michoacan
1961
oil on panel
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Francis Bacon
Paralyzed Child on All Fours (after Muybridge)
1961
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Svea Nyman
White Tulips
1961
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

George Segal
Untitled
1961
pastel on paper
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Larry Rivers
Dead Veteran
1961
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Pierre Cardin
Coat Dress
1961
wool bouclé
Denver Art Museum

from Horae Canonicae

                        III. SEXT 

                               III

Anywhere you like, somewhere

on broad-chested, life-giving Earth,

anywhere between her thirstlands

and undrinkable Ocean,

the crowd stands perfectly still,

its eyes (which seem one) and its mouths

(which seem infinitely many)

expressionless, perfectly blank.

The crowd does not see (what everyone sees)

a boxing match, a train wreck,

a battleship being launched,

does not wonder (as everyone wonders)

who will win, what flag she will fly,

how many will be burned alive,

is never distracted

(as everyone is always distracted)

by a barking dog, a smell of fish,

a mosquito on a bald head:

the crowd sees only one thing

(which only the crowd can see),

an epiphany of that

which does whatever is done.

Whatever god a person believes in,

in whatever way he believes

(no two are exactly alike),

as one of the crowd he believes

and only believes in that

in which there is only one way of believing.

Few people accept each other and most

will never do anything properly,

but the crowd rejects no one, joining the crowd

is the only thing all men can do.

Only because of that can we say

all men are our brothers,

superior, because of that,

to the social exoskeletons: When

have they ever ignored their queens,

for one second stopped work

on their provincial cities, to worship

The Prince of this world like us,

at this noon, on this hill,

in the occasion of this dying?

– W.H. Auden (1954)