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| Imogen Cunningham Fageol Ventilators 1934 gelatin silver print San Francisco Museum of Modern Art |
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| Andreas Feininger Grain Elevator in Iowa 1952 gelatin silver print San Francisco Museum of Modern Art |
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| Magdalena Abakanowicz Standing Figures 1994-98 bronze Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
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| Ursula von Rydingsvard Blackened World 2008 cedar and graphite Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York |
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| Anonymous Russian Artist Miniature Traveling Iconostasis 17th century oil on panels edged and hinged with copper Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York |
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| John Wharlton Bunney Columns inside St Mark's Basilica, Venice ca. 1860 watercolor and gouache on paper Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| John Ruskin Duomo of San Martino, Lucca 1874 watercolor and gouache on paper Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
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| William England View of the International Exhibition of 1862, London 1862 hand-colored albumen silver prints from glass negative Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Eugène Piot Propylaea on the Acropolis, Athens 1852 salted paper print from paper negative Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| Eileen Gray Screen 1922 lacquered wood and metal rods Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| Pablo Palazuelo Diferencias XII 1987 gouache on paper Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
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| David Reed Untitled 1976 acrylic on paper Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York |
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| Elizabeth Murray Pink and Blue Steps 1974 oil on canvas Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
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| Anna Andreeva Fabric Panel 1967 printed cotton Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| Ralph Steiner Hanging Sheets ca. 1960 gelatin silver print Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| Bridget Riley Study '74 - Colour/Space Sequence 1974 gouache on paper Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| Makoto Nakamura Shiseido Nail Enamel 1978 photolithograph (poster) Museum of Modern Art, New York |
But what is it that makes the English reader fail to recognize the beauty and the power of such passages as these? Besides Racine's lack of extravagance and bravura, besides his dislike of exaggerated emphasis and far-fetched or fantastic imagery, there is another characteristic of his style to which we are perhaps even more antipathetic – its suppression of detail. The great majority of poets – and especially of English poets – produce their most potent effects by the accumulation of details – details which in themselves fascinate us either by their beauty or their curiosity or their supreme appropriateness. But with details Racine will have nothing to do; he builds up his poetry out of words which are not only absolutely simple but extremely general, so that our minds, failing to find in it the peculiar delights to which we have been accustomed, fall into the error of rejecting it altogether as devoid of significance. And the error is a grave one, for in truth nothing is more marvellous than the magic with which Racine can conjure up out of a few expressions of the vaguest import a sense of complete and intimate reality.
– Lytton Strachey on Racine (1908)