Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1983)

Mary McFadden
Jacket and Trousers
1983
embroidered silk velvet
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Robert Zakanitch
Pearl Fishers (Sofa Series)
1983
acrylic on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

David Wojnarowicz
Untitled
1983
spray enamel, ink and collage on board
Art Institute of Chicago

John Sexton
Boulder & Trees, Merced River
1983
gelatin silver print
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Fritz Scholder
Portrait with Shadow
1983
acrylic on canvas
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Emilio Sánchez
Casita Doble
1983
lithograph
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Gerhard Richter
Glenn Branca an die 120 Dezibel
1983
screenprint (poster)
Dallas Museum of Art

Joseph Nicoletti
Blue Table
1983
oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Alden Mason
Call Her Mabel
1983
acrylic on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Mary Ellen Mark
Tiny in her Halloween Costume, Seattle
1983
gelatin silver print
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Michael Lucero
Small Dreamer Study
1983
glazed ceramic
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Susan Lipper
Portrait of Donna Zakowski
1983
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Barbara Kruger
We will not become what we mean to you
1983
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Al Held
Pisa I
1983
acrylic on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Scott Heiser
Big Apple Circus, New York
1983
gelatin silver print
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

José Guerrero
Comienzo
1983
oil on canvas
Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada, Spain

from Five Songs

Make this night loveable,

Moon, and with eye single

Looking down from up there

Bless me, One especial,

And friends everywhere.

With a cloudless brightness

Surround our absences;

Innocent be our sleeps, 

Watched by great still spaces,

White hills, glittering deeps.

Parted by circumstance,

Grant each your indulgence

That we may meet in dreams

For talk, for dalliance

By warm hearths, by cool streams.

Shine lest tonight any,

In the dark suddenly, 

Wake alone in a bed

To hear his own fury

Wishing his love were dead. 

– W.H. Auden (1953)

Value

Jacob Gerrit Weyand
Portrait of Sara Izaaks
1912
oil on board
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands

Carl Larsson
The Verger
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Philip Guston
Multiplied
1972
oil on canvas
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Anthony van Dyck
St Jerome
ca. 1615-16
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Jean-Raymond Hippolyte Lazerges
Christ at the Column
1867
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Wyndham Lewis
Seated Figure
ca. 1921
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Curt Querner
Portrait of a Woman
(Regina in Red)
1939
oil on canvas
Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden

Lorenzo Lotto
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1500-1505
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Joseph J. Gould
Lippincott's - June
1896
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Vilhelm Tveteraas
Salome
1950
color woodblock print
Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Norway

Maurice Biais
Wintergarten Saharet
1902
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Curt Behrends
Der Clou Berlins ist das zweite U.T.
1910
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hans Lindenstaedt
Runges Tinte ist überall
1899
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Otto Eckmann
Monogram U.P.
ca. 1896
lithograph
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Peter Klasen
French Revolution Bicentennial
1989
screenprint (poster)
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Bjarne Holst
Pas de Deux
1992
oil on canvas
Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø

"The Middle Ages accepted and developed rather than studied and restored the heritage of the past.  They copied classical works of art and used Aristotle and Ovid much as they copied and used works of contemporaries.  They made no attempt to interpret them from an archaeological, philological, or "critical," in short, from an historical, point of view.  For, if human existence could be thought of as a means rather than an end, how much less could the records of human activity be considered as values in themselves."  

"Some historians seem to be unable to recognize continuities and distinctions at the same time.  It is undeniable that humanism, and the entire Renaissance movement, did not spring forth like Athena from the head of Zeus.  But the fact that Lupus of Ferrières emended classical texts, that Hildebert of Lavardin had a strong feeling for the ruins of Rome, that the French and English scholars of the twelfth century revived classical philosophy and mythology, and that Marbod of Rennes wrote a fine pastoral poem on his small country estate, does not mean that their outlook was identical with that of Petrarch, let along of Ficino or Erasmus.  No mediaeval man could see the civilization of antiquity as a phenomenon complete in itself and historically detached from the contemporary world; as far as I know, mediaeval Latin has no equivalent to the humanistic "antiquitas" or "sacrosancta vetustas."  And just as it was impossible for the Middle Ages to elaborate a system of perspective based on the realization of a fixed distance between the eye and the object, so it was equally impossible for this period to evolve an idea of historical disciplines based on the realization of a fixed distance between the present and the classical past."

– Erwin Panofsky, from The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (1940)

Spectacles

Edward Weston
Violet Romer with Peacock Fan
ca. 1917
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Gaspare Venturini
Allegory of the House of Este
1592-93
oil on canvas
Galleria Estense, Modena

Massimo Vignelli
Piccolo Teatro di Milano
1964
lithograph (poster)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein
Dante surrounded by ten episodes from the Divine Comedy
ca. 1842-44
oil on paper
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Weegee
Time Is Short
ca. 1942
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Andy Warhol
Nine Marilyns
1979-86
screenprint on linen
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

David Wojnarowicz
Earth
1987
acrylic and collage on panel
Museum of Modern Art, New York

David Wojnarowicz
Fire
1987
acrylic and collage on panel
Museum of Modern Art, New York

David Wojnarowicz
Water
1987
acrylic and collage on panel
Museum of Modern Art, New York

David Wojnarowicz
Wind (for Peter Hujar)
1987
acrylic and collage on panel
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Thomas Frederick Arndt
Inauguration Parade, Washington DC
1989
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Larry Towell
Untitled [Manhattan, September 11]
2001
digital print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Bob Thompson
St Matthew's Description of the End of the World
1964
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Pavel Tchelitchew
Stage Design for Der Blaue Cabaret Theatre, Berlin
ca. 1920-23
tempera on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Anonymous Flemish painter after engraving by Jacques Callot
Fiera di San Luca at Impruneta in Florence
after 1620
oil on canvas
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Joe Zucker
Pirate Junk with Gang Plank
1977
felt pen on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Edith Tudor-Hart
Chelsea Flower Show
ca. 1935
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Somewhere or Other

Somewhere or other there must surely be

        The face not seen, the voice not heard,

The heart that not yet – never yet – ah me!

        Made answer to my word.

Somewhere or other, may be near or far; 

        Past land and sea, clean out of sight;

Beyond the wandering moon, beyond the star

        That tracks her night by night.

Somewhere or other, may be far or near;

        With just a wall, a hedge, between;

With just the last leaves of the dying year

        Fallen on a turf grown green.

– Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1983)

Richard Anuszkiewicz
Temple of Red with Orange
1983
acrylic on panel
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Don Bachardy
Christopher Isherwood
1983
acrylic on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Francis Bacon
Seated Figure
1983
etching
(adaptation of an earlier painting)
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Richard Bosman
Double Trouble
1983
woodcut
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Wil Bouthoorn
Grimm Fairytale
1983
oil on panel
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Marilyn Bridges
Monument Valley, Arizona
1983
gelatin silver print
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

James Brooks
Bharatt
1983
acrylic on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

William Christenberry
Red Building in Forest, Hale County, Alabama
1983
C-print
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Charles Clough
8 Dextram
1983
enamel over color photograph
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Willem De Kooning
Untitled XLVII
1983
oil on canvas
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Richard Diebenkorn
Ochre
1983
color woodblock print
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Jim Dine
A Heart at the Opera
1983
lithograph
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Don DuBroff
Oriental Theatre, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
1983
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

Michael Eastman
Marcella's Resort
1983
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

John Eide
Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris
1983
gelatin silver print
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

John Eide
Le Bassin de Latone, Versailles
1983
gelatin silver print
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

from Five Songs

"When rites and melodies begin,

     To alter modes and times,

And timid bar-flies boast aloud

     Of uncommitted crimes,

And leading families are proud

     To dine with their black sheep,

What promises, what discipline,

     If any, will Love keep?"

          So roared Fire on their right:

               But Tamino and Pamina

               Walked past its rage,

          Sighing O, sighing O,

     In timeless fermatas of awe and delight

          (Innocent? Yes. Ignorant? No.)

               Down the grim passage.

"When stinking Chaos lifts the latch,

     And Grotte backward spins,

And Helen's nose becomes a beak,

     And cats and dogs grow chins,

And daisies claw and pebbles shriek

     And Form and Color part,

What swarming hatreds then will hatch

     Out of Love's riven heart?"

          So hissed Water on their left:

               But Pamina and Tamino 

               Opposed its spite

          With his worship, with her sweetness –

     O look now! See how they emerge from the cleft

          (Frightened? No. Happy? Yes.)

               Out into sunlight. 

– W.H. Auden (1953)