Paradigm

Winston Roeth
Alternator
1993
tempera on fiberglass
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Diane Arbus
Blaze Starr backstage, Baltimore Md.
1964
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Monogrammist PW of Cologne (German printmaker)
St George slaying the Dragon
ca. 1500
engraving
British Museum

Anonymous German Sculptor
Allegorical Group with a Cornucopia
ca. 1740
terracotta
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

David Salle
Splinter Man
1982
oil and acrylic on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Diane Arbus
Couple in Bed, N.Y.C.
1966
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Monogrammist PVL (Netherlandish printmaker)
Dice Game
ca. 1500-1525
engraving
British Museum

Anonymous German Sculptor
Allegorical Group with an Obelisk
ca. 1740
terracotta
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Chrysanne Stathacos
Hectic Cycle
1979
oil paint and encaustic on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Diane Arbus
David Nemerov on his Deathbed
[Arbus's father]
1963
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Monogrammist RR (German printmaker)
Esther before Ahasuerus
ca. 1515
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Anonymous German Sculptor
Angel with Censer
ca. 1470
painted oak
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Lucas Cranach the Elder
Portraits of two Electors of Saxony
1509
oil on panels (diptych)
National Gallery, London

Diane Arbus
Screaming Woman with Blood on her Hands
1961
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Monogrammist SM (German draughtsman)
Head of a Man
1515
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous German Sculptor
Christ of the Ascension
ca. 1500
painted wood
Musée du Louvre

Jan Gossaert
Portrait of Jean Carondelet with the Virgin and Child
1517
oil on panels (diptych)
Musée du Louvre

Homo Sapiens

        Were I (who to my cost already am

One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man)

A spirit free to choose, for my own share,

What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,

I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,

Or anything but that vain animal

Who is so proud of being rational.

        The senses are too gross, and he'll contrive

A sixth, to contradict the other five,

And before certain instinct, will prefer

Reason, which fifty times for one does err;

Reason, an ignis fatuus in the mind,

Which, leaving light of nature, sense, behind,

Pathless and dangerous wandering ways it takes

Through error's fenny bogs and thorny brakes;

Whilst the misguided follower climbs with pain

Mountains of whimsy, heaped in his own brain,

Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down

Into doubt's boundless sea, where, like to drown,

Books bear him up awhile, and make him try

To swim with bladders of philosophy

In hopes still to o'ertake th' escaping light;

The vapour dances in his dazzling sight

Till, spent, it leaves him to eternal night.

Then old age and experience, hand in hand,

Lead him to death, and make him understand,

After a search so painful and so long,

That all his life he has been in the wrong.

Huddled in dirt the reasoning engine lies,

Who was so proud, so witty, and so wise.

– John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680)