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| Duane Michals Escalator 1964 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Robert Allen Nelson Icarus 1964 oil on canvas Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas |
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| Alexander Calder Octopus 1964 painted steel Walker Art Center, Minneapolis |
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| Christo (Christo Javacheff) Wrapped Box 1964 cardboard box, brown paper, twine Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia |
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| Stuart Davis Any as Given 1964 screenprint Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami |
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| Raoul Hague Angel Millbrook Walnut 1964 walnut Akron Art Museum, Ohio |
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| Robert Frank Raoul Hague with his sculpture Angel Millbrook Walnut 1964 gelatin silver print Akron Art Museum, Ohio |
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| Manuel Neri Carla V 1964 painted plaster Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas |
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| Irving Penn Courrèges Fashion with Slate, Paris 1964 gelatin silver print Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Roy Lichtenstein Sandwich and Soda 1964 screenprint on mylar Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia |
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| George Segal Woman Brushing Hair on Green Chair 1964 plaster, chair, hairbrush Walker Art Center, Minneapolis |
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| Bob Thompson Untitled (Appropriation Fountain in Rome) 1964 gouache on paper New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut |
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| Walasse Ting 1-cent Life 1964 lithograph NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida |
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| Andy Warhol Brillo Box 1964 screenprints on wooden block Walker Art Center, Minneapolis |
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| Robert Rauschenberg Front Roll 1964 lithograph McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas |
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| Garry Winogrand World's Fair, New York 1964 gelatin silver print Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia |
from Horae Canonicae
V. VESPERS (part II)
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)



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