Showing posts with label 1920s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1920s. Show all posts

Sunday, November 3, 2024

Faces of the 1920s

Frank Dobson
Two Heads
1921
sandston
Courtauld Gallery, London

Heinrich Stegemann
Portrait of Ingeborg Krause Stegemann
1925
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Alvar Cawén
Self Portrait
1923
oil on canvas
Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

Max Beckmann
Double Portrait
1923
oil on canvas
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

André Lhote
Portrait of Anne F.
1928
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

James Ensor
Girl with Masks (Communion)
1921
oil on canvas
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Philip de László
Portrait of Clarice de Rothschild
1925
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Gaston Schnegg
Self Portrait
1924
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

Anita Rée
Portrait of Hildegard Heise
1927
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Karl Kluth
Portrait of a Young Man
1923
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Otto Dix
Portrait of Josef May
1926
tempera and oil on board
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Otto Rodewald
Portrait of Gerda Margarethe Rück
1929
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Lovis Corinth
Last Self Portrait
1925
oil on canvas
Kunsthaus, Zürich

Walt Kuhn
Woman with a Black Necklace
1928
oil on canvas
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha

Jean Hugo
Double Portrait of Jean Cocteau
1923
drawing
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Chaїm Soutine
Le Valet de Chambre
1927-28
oil on canvas
Denver Art Museum

A strange, unserviceable thing,
A fragile, exquisite, pale shell,
That the vast troubled waters bring
To the loud sands before day has broken.
The storm arose and suddenly fell
Amid the dark before day had broken.
What death? what discipline?
What bonds no man could unbind,
Being imagined within
The labyrinth of the mind,
What pursuing or fleeing,
What wounds, what bloody press,
Dragged into being
This loveliness?

– W.B. Yeats (1919)

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Visual Relics (1928-1930)

Albert Renger-Patzsch
Orchids
ca. 1928
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

André Kertész
Soligny-sur-Orne - In the Cloister
1928
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Josef Sudek
Silk Textile
ca. 1928
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Brassaï
Eiffel Tower
1929
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

T. Lux Feininger
Bauhaus Students - Karla Grosch and Georg Hartmann
ca. 1929
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

T. Lux Feininger
Paris Opera House
ca. 1929
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Ralph Steiner
Old NYC Post Office
1930
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Tina Modotti
Mural Study, Mexico
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Angus McBean
Mr Edgar Ritchard
1930
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Man Ray
Sleeping Woman
1930
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Man Ray
Solarized Double Portrait
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Wendell MacRae
People entering the RCA Building
1930
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Cecil Beaton
Portrait of W.H. Auden
1930
bromide print
National Portrait Gallery, London

Lucien Aigner
La Paix, La Guerre
1930
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Untitled
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

August Sander
The Dadaist Raoul Hausmann, posing
1930
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

                                 "When tomorrow's Titan
first shows his rays of light, reveals the world,
Aeneas and unhappy Dido plan
to hunt together in the forest. Then
while horsemen hurry to surround the glades 
with nets, I shall pour down a black raincloud,
in which I have mixed hail, to awaken all
the heavens with my thundering. Their comrades
will scatter under cover of thick night.
Both Dido and the Trojan chief will reach
their shelter in the same cave. I shall be there."

– Juno's scheme for Dido and Aeneas, from Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid, translated by Allen Mandelbaum (1971)

Friday, January 26, 2024

Visual Relics (1923-1928)

Emil Otto Hoppé
Portrait of Rebecca West
1923
chlorobromide print
National Portrait Gallery, London

August Sander
Cretin
1924
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

August Sander
Painter's Daughter
1925
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Edward Steichen
La Duchesse de Gramont
(fashion shot for Vogue)
1924
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Edward Steichen
Foxgloves, France
1926
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Edward Steichen
Portrait of Beatrice Lillie
1926
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, London

Alexander Rodchenko
Portrait of Vladimir Mayakovsky
1924
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Alexander Rodchenko
Balconies
1925
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Alexander Rodchenko
House of Mosselprom
1925
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Alexander Rodchenko
Columns of the Museum of Revolution
1926
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Alexander Rodchenko
Cigarette Girl, Pushkinskaya Square
1927
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Consuelo Kanaga
Portrait of Alice Rohrer
ca. 1925
gelatin silver print
Brooklyn Museum

Anonymous Photographer
Gilbert Roland as Armand Duval in Camille
(publicity still for silent film)
1926
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

André Kertész
Chez Mondrian, Paris
1926
gelatin silver print
Denver Art Museum

Charles Sheeler
Staircase, Doylestown
ca. 1926
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

Karl Blossfeldt
Salvia
ca. 1928
photogravure
Denver Art Museum

As soon as Jove's dear wife sees that her Dido
is in the grip of such a scourge and that
no honor can withstand this madness, then
the daughter of Saturn faces Venus: "How
remarkable indeed: what splendid spoils
you carry off, you and your boy; how grand
and memorable is the glory if
one woman is beaten by the guile of two
gods."

– Juno reproaches Venus for inciting Dido to love Aeneas, from Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid, translated by Allen Mandelbaum (1971)

Friday, December 1, 2023

Visual Relics (1928-1930)

Man Ray
Nancy Cunard
1928
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Margaret Bourke-White
Garden of Mrs Homer H. Johnson
ca. 1928
gelatin silver print
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Margaret Bourke-White
Plow Blades, Oliver Chilled Plow Company
1929
gelatin silver print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Eugen Wiškovský
Untitled (Shirt Collars)
ca. 1929
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Emil Otto Hoppé
Foyles Booksellers, London
1929
gelatin silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Edward Steichen
Helen Wills
1929
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

George Hurrell
Norma Shearer
1929
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Lotte Stam-Beese
Katt Both
ca. 1929
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Léonard Misonne
Pied de Géants
1929
bromoil print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Charles Sheeler
Chartres - Buttresses from the South Porch
1929
gelatin silver print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Albert Renger-Patzsch
Untitled
ca. 1929
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Berenice Abbott
Cherry Street, New York City
1930
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Claude Cahun
Aveux Non Avenus
1930
platinum print (photo-collage)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Claude Cahun
Aveux Non Avenus
1930
platinum print (photo-collage)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous Photographer
Women in Top Hats behind Bride
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Baron Adolf De Meyer
Maria, Duchesse de Gramont
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Tract

I will teach you               my townspeople
how to perform                a funeral –
for you have it               over a troop
of artists –
unless one should               scour the world –
you have the ground sense               necessary.

See! the hearse leads.
I begin with               a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake               not black –
nor white either –               and not polished!
Let it be weathered –               like a farm wagon –
with gilt wheels               (this could be
applied fresh               at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to               drag over the ground.

Knock the glass out!
My God – glass,               my townspeople!
For what purpose?               Is it for the dead
to look out or               for us to see
how well he is housed               or to see
the flowers or               the lack of them –
or what?
To keep the rain               and snow from him?
He will have a               heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt               and what not.
Let there be no glass –
and no upholstery               phew!
and no little               brass rollers
and small easy wheels               on the bottom –
my townspeople               what are you thinking of?

A rough               plain hearse then
with gilt wheels               and no top at all.
On this               the coffin lies
by its own weight.

               No wreathes please –
especially no               hot house flowers.
Some common memento               is better,
something he prized               and is known by:
his old clothes –               a few books perhaps –
God knows what!               You realize
how we are               about these things
my townspeople –
something will be found –               anything
even flowers               if he had come to that.
So much for               the hearse.

For heaven's sake though               see to the driver!
Take off               the silk hat! In fact
that's no place               at all for him –
up there               unceremoniously
dragging our friend out               to his own dignity!
Bring him down –               bring him down!
Low and inconspicuous!               I'd not have him ride
on the wagon at all –               damn him –
the undertaker's               understrapper!
Let him hold               the reins
and walk               at the side
and inconspicuously               too!

Then briefly               as to yourselves:
Walk behind –               as they do in France,
seventh class, or               if you ride
Hell take curtains!               Go with some show
of inconvenience;               sit openly –
to the weather               as to grief.
Or do you think               you can shut grief in?
What – from us?               We who have perhaps
nothing to lose?               Share with us
share with us –               it will be money
in your pockets.
                                    Go now
I think you are               ready.

– William Carlos Williams (1923)