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| Milton Avery The Baby 1944 oil on canvas Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio |
-c1944-watercolor-and-gouache-on-paper-McNay-Art-Museum-San-Antonio-Texas.jpg) |
| Eugene Berman Backdrop Design for Danses Concertantes by George Balanchine 1944 watercolor and gouache on paper McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas |
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| Arshile Gorky How My Mother's Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life 1944 oil on canvas Seattle Art Museum |
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| Hans Hofmann Untitled 1944 gouache on paper Wichita Art Museum, Kansas |
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| Walt Kuhn Acrobat in White and Silver 1944 oil on canvas Wichita Art Museum, Kansas |
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| Jacques Lipchitz The Road to Exile 1944 etching, engraving and aquatint Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia |
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| Barbara Morgan Berenice Abbott with a Cat 1944 gelatin silver print Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia |
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| Max Weber Woman Carrying Picture 1944 oil on canvas Walker Art Center, Minneapolis |
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| Robert Motherwell The Painter 1944 oil paint, crayon and collage on canvas Wichita Art Museum, Kansas |
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| Isamu Noguchi Remembrance 1944 bronze Walker Art Center, Minneapolis |
-Untitled-1944-lithograph-NSU-Art-Museum-Fort-Lauderdale-Florida.jpg) |
| Carl-Henning Pedersen Untitled 1944 lithograph NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida |
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| Jackson Pollock Untitled 1944 drawing Wichita Art Museum, Kansas |
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| Birger Sandzén Autumn (Smoky Hill River, Kansas) 1944 oil on canvas, mounted on panel Tacoma Art Museum |
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| Houghton Cranford Smith Near Los Andes 1944 oil on canvas Wichita Art Museum, Kansas |
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| William Sommer Portrait of Miss Eunice Merton 1944 watercolor on paper Akron Art Museum, Ohio |
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| Paul Bough Travis Still Life 1944 oil on panel Akron Art Museum, Ohio |
from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)
I
Expecting your arrival tomorrow, I find myself thinking I love You: then comes the thought – I should like to write a poem which would express exactly what I mean when I think these words.
II
Of any poem written by someone else, my first demand is that it be good (who wrote it is of secondary importance); of any poem written by myself, my first demand is that it be genuine, recognizable, like my handwriting, as having been written, for better or worse, by me. (When it comes to his own poems, a poet's preferences and those of his readers often overlap but seldom coincide.)
III
But this poem which I should now like to write would not only have to be good and genuine: if it is to satisfy me, it must also be true.
I read a poem by someone else in which he bids a tearful farewell to his beloved: the poem is good (it moves me as other good poems do) and genuine (I recognize the poet's "handwriting"). Then I learn from a biography that, at the time he wrote it, the poet was sick to death of the girl but pretended to weep in order to avoid hurt feelings and a scene. Does this information affect my appreciation of his poem? Not in the least: I never knew him personally and his private life is no business of mine. Would it affect my appreciation if I had written the poem myself? I hope so.
– W.H. Auden (1959)