Saturday, August 22, 2026

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1964)

Duane Michals
Escalator
1964
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Robert Allen Nelson 
Icarus
1964
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Alexander Calder
Octopus
1964
painted steel
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Christo (Christo Javacheff)
Wrapped Box
1964
cardboard box, brown paper, twine
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Stuart Davis
Any as Given
1964
screenprint
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Raoul Hague
Angel Millbrook Walnut
1964
walnut
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Robert Frank
Raoul Hague with his sculpture
Angel Millbrook Walnut

1964
gelatin silver print
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Manuel Neri
Carla V
1964
painted plaster
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

Irving Penn
Courrèges Fashion with Slate, Paris
1964
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Roy Lichtenstein
Sandwich and Soda
1964
screenprint on mylar
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

George Segal
Woman Brushing Hair on Green Chair
1964
plaster, chair, hairbrush
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Bob Thompson
Untitled (Appropriation Fountain in Rome)
1964
gouache on paper
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Walasse Ting
1-cent Life
1964
lithograph
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Andy Warhol
Brillo Box
1964
screenprints on wooden block
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Robert Rauschenberg
Front Roll
1964
lithograph
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Garry Winogrand
World's Fair, New York
1964
gelatin silver print
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

from Horae Canonicae

                                      V. VESPERS (part II)

     You can see, then, why, between my Eden and his New Jerusalem, no
treaty is negotiable.

     In my Eden a person who dislikes Bellini has the good manners not to
get born: In his New Jerusalem a person who dislikes work will be very
sorry he was born.

     In my Eden, we have a few beam-engines, saddle-tank locomotives,
overshot waterwheels and other beautiful pieces of obsolete machinery
to play with: In his New Jerusalem even chefs will be cucumber-cool ma-
chine minders.

     In my Eden our only source of political news is gossip: In his New
Jerusalem, there will be a special daily in simplified spelling for non-
verbal types.

     In my Eden, each observes his compulsive rituals and superstitious
tabus but we have no morals: In his New Jerusalem the temples will be 
empty but all will practise the rational virtues.

     One reason for his contempt is that I have only to close my eyes, cross
the iron footbridge to the tow-path, take the barge through the short
brick tunnel and 

     there I stand in Eden again, welcomed back by the krum-horns,
doppions, sordumes of jolly miners and a bob major from the Cathedral
(romanesque) of St. Sophie (Die Kalte):

     One reason for my alarm is that, when he closes his eyes, he arrives,
not in New Jerusalem, but on some august day of outrage when hellikins
cavort through ruined drawing-rooms and fishwives intervene in the
Chamber or

     some autumn night of delations and noyades, when the unrepentant
thieves (including me) are sequestered and those he hates shall hate
themselves instead. 

     So with a passing glance we take the other's posture. Already our steps
recede, heading, incorrigible each, towards his kind of meal and evening.

     Was it (as it must look to any god of cross-roads) simply a fortuitous
intersection of life-paths, loyal to different fibs?

     Or also a rendezvous between two accomplices who, in spite of them-
selves, cannot resist meeting

     to remind the other (do both, at bottom, desire truth?) of that half of
their secret which he would most like to forget,

     forcing us both, for a fraction of a second, to remember our victim
(but for him I could forget the blood, but for me he could forget the
innocence),

     on whose immolation (call him Abel, Remus, whom you will, it is one
Sin Offering) arcadias, utopias, our dear old bag of a democracy are alike
founded:

     For without a cement of blood (it must be human, it must be innocent)
no secular wall will safely stand.

– W.H. Auden (1954)