Saturday, July 4, 2026

Asunder

Anonymous Artist
Severed Head of St Januarius
17th century
oil on canvas
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands

Gandhara Culture
Head of an Ascetic
4th century AD
schist
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Cherubino Alberti
Antique Sculpture of Roman Emperor
before 1615
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Teodor Lubieniecki
Antique Cartouche among Ruins
1696
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Leonardo da Vinci
Drapery Study for Madonna Litta
ca. 1490-95
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous German Artist
Veronica's Veil
ca. 1470
hand-colored woodcut
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anonymous Italian Artist
Antique Torso of Aristogeiton
16th century
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Ivar Arosenius
Antique Head of Niobid
1897
drawing
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Thanassis Apartis
Torso of Portuguese Man
1921
bronze
National Gallery, Athens

Eugène Carrière
Self Portrait
ca. 1901
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg

Roman Empire
Athlete
1st century AD
marble
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Jan van Troyen after Domenico Fetti
Sudarium
ca. 1650-60
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Heinrich Dittmers
Académie
ca. 1650
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Wilhelm Füssli
Head of the Ludovisi Juno
1863
drawing
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Frans Floris
Studies of Antique Sculpture
ca. 1540-50
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstmuseum Basel

Emil Orlik
Schall und Rauch
1901
lithograph
(poster for nightclub)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

For afterwards all Greece, as a man may say, was in commotion; and quarrels arose everywhere between the patrons of the commons, that sought to bring in the Athenians, and the few, that desired to bring in the Lacedaemonians.  Now in time of peace they could have had no pretence nor would have been so forward to call them in; but being war and confederates to be had for either party, both to hurt their enemies and strengthen themselves, such as desired alteration easily got them to come in.  And many and heinous things happened in the cities through this sedition, which though they have been before and shall be ever as long as human nature is the same yet they are more calm and of different kinds according to the several conjunctures.  For in peace and prosperity as well cities as private men are better minded because they be not plunged into necessity of doing anything against their will.  But war, taking away the affluence of daily necessaries, is a most violent master and conformeth most men's passions to the present occasion.  The cities therefore being now in sedition and those that fell into it later having heard what had been done in the former, they far exceeded the same in newness of conceit, both for the art of assailing and for the strangeness of their revenges.  The received value of names imposed for signification of things was changed into arbitrary.  For inconsiderate boldness was counted true-hearted manliness; provident deliberation, a handsome fear; modesty, the cloak of cowardice; to be wise in everything, to be lazy in everything.  A furious suddenness was reputed a point of valour.  To re-advise for the better security was held for a fair pretext of tergiversation.  He that was fierce was always trusty, and he that contraried such a one was suspected.  He that did insidiate, if it took, was a wise man; but he that could smell out a trap laid, a more dangerous man than he.  But he that had been so provident as not to need to do the one or the other was said to be a dissolver of society and one that stood in fear of his adversary.  In brief, he that could outstrip another in the doing of an evil act or that could persuade another thereto that never meant it was commended.  

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)

Pinks

Herman Saftleven
Study of Pinks
1682
watercolor on paper
British Museum


Joseph Cornell
Beehive
1934
wood box, printed paper, copper screen and found objects
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Mark Rothko
Untitled
1955
oil and acrylic on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Corneille van Clève
La Loire et le Loiret
1707
marble
Musée du Louvre

Herman Saftleven
Cottages among Trees
ca. 1630-40
drawing (print study)
British Museum

Joseph Cornell
Roses des Vents
1942-53
wood box with compasses set into panel
above tray with found objects and map-lined cover
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Mark Rothko
No. 5 / No. 22
1950
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Corneille van Clève
La Loire et le Loiret
1707
marble
Musée du Louvre

Herman Saftleven
Scene with a Barge
before 1685
drawing
British Museum

Joseph Cornell
Taglioni's Jewel Casket
1940
wood box, velvet, glass, paper and found necklace
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Mark Rothko
Orange and Tan
1954
oil and glue on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Antoine-Denis Chaudet
Cupid
1817
marble
Musée du Louvre

Herman Saftleven
Travelers on a Mountain Road
1648
drawing
British Museum

Joseph Cornell
Roses des Vents
1942-53
wood box with compasses set into panel
above tray with found objects and map-lined cover
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Mark Rothko
Untitled
1970
acrylic on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Antoine-Denis Chaudet
Cupid
1817
marble
Musée du Louvre

Herman Saftleven
View of the Moat outside a Walled Town
1648
drawing
British Museum

    Perhaps, however, the ordinary reader finds Beddoes' lack of construction a less distasteful quality than his disregard of the common realities of existence.  Not only is the subject-matter of the greater part of his poetry remote and dubious; his very characters themselves seem to be infected by their creator's delight in the mysterious, the strange, and the unreal.  They have no healthy activity; or, if they have, they invariably lose it in the second act; in the end, they are all hypochondriac philosophers, puzzling over eternity and dissecting the attributes of Death. 

– Lytton Strachey on Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1907)

Friday, July 3, 2026

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1917)

David Young Cameron
Old Museum, Beauvais
1917
etching and drypoint
Art Institute of Chicago

James Daugherty
The Ships Are Coming
1917
lithograph (poster)
Wichita Art Museu, Kansas

Charles Demuth
Acrobats in Red
1917
watercolor on paper
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Theo van Doesburg
Composition IX, Opus 18
1917
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Gordon Grant
Eyes for the Navy
1917
lithograph (poster)
Wichita Art Museum,Kansas

Adrianus Johannes Grootens
Cubist Still Life
1917
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Ludwig Hohlwein
The Great War by Hanns von Zobeltitz
1917
lithograph (poster advertising book)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Vilmos Huszár
Composition with White Head
1917
encaustic on panel
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Alexei Jawlensky
Niobe
(series, Mystical Heads)
1917
encaustic on board
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Willem van Konijnenburg
Portrait of Peter Spaan
1917
oil on panel
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Bart van der Leck
Composition no. 8
1917
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Otto Carl Lendecke
The New Frock
1917
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Henri Matisse
Head of a Girl
1917
oil on panel
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Martin Mower after Anonymous Photographer
Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner
1917
oil on canvas
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Jules Pascin
Figures on Beach, Coney Island
1917
watercolor and ink on paper
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Adolphe Valette
Self Portrait
1917
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

from Lullaby

Let your last thinks all be thanks:
praise your parents who gave you
a Super-Ego of strength
that saves you so much bother, 
digit friends and dear them all,
then pay fair attribution
to your age, to having been
born when you were. In boyhood
you were permitted to meet 
beautiful old contraptions,
soon to be banished from earth,
saddle-tank loks, beam-engines
and over-shot waterwheels. 

– W.H. Auden (1972)

Solid

Ancient Greek Culture in South Italy
Ganymede, with Zeus as Eagle
3rd century BC
terracotta
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Etruscan Culture
Draped Young Woman
3rd century BC
terracotta
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

attributed to Luca della Robbia
Virgin and Child with Angels
ca. 1430-40
terracotta relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Donatello
Madonna and Child with Cherubs
ca. 1440-50
terracotta relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

attributed to Donatello
Madonna and Child with Cherubs
ca. 1445-50
terracotta relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Andrea della Robbia
Tondo with Portrait of a Youth
ca. 1470-80
glazed terracotta
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

workshop of Antonio Benintendi
Posthumous Portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici
ca. 1515-20
terracotta
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Giovanni della Robbia
David with the Head of Goliath
ca. 1510-20
partly-glazed terracotta
Bode Museum, Berlin

Benedetto da Rovezzano
David with the Head of Goliath
ca. 1525
terracotta
Bode Museum, Berlin

Jacopo Sansovino
St John the Evangelist
ca. 1550
terracotta
Bode Museum, Berlin

Pieter Xavery
The Sheriff
1673
terracotta
(element in sculpture group)
Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden

Giovanni Giuliani
Venus Anadyomene
1705
terracotta
(modello for sculpture)
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Massimiliano Soldani
Descent from the Cross
ca. 1710-20
terracotta relief
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Joseph Chinard
Perseus and Andromeda
ca. 1785
terracotta
Detroit Institute of Arts

Gustave Deloye
Portrait of Therese, Countess Kinsky
garlanded by Putti

1871
terracotta
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Moissey Kogan
Seated Woman
ca. 1933
terracotta
Clemens-Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

About the time that this fleet was out, they [the Athenians] had surely the most galleys (besides the beauty of them) together in action in these employments; yet in the beginning of the war they had both as good and more in number.  For a hundred attended the guard of Attica, Euboea, and Salamis; and another hundred were about Peloponnesus, besides those that were at Potidaea and other places, so that in one summer they had in all two hundred and fifty sail.  And this, together with Potidaea, was it that most exhausted their treasure.  For the men of arms that besieged the city had each of them two drachmes a day, one for himself and another for his man, and were three thousand in number that were sent thither at first and remained to the end of the siege, besides sixteen hundred more that went with Phormio and came away before the town was won.  And the galleys had all the same pay.  In this manner was their money consumed and so many galleys employed, the most indeed that ever they had manned at once.

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)