Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1998)

Melissa Ann Pinney
Washroom, Disney World
1998
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

David Salle
To be Titled #2
1998
oil and acrylic on canvas
Hall Collection, Schloss Derneburg, Germany

Frank Stella
Cantahar
1998
lithograph, screenprint, etching, engraving and aquatint
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Gerhard Richter
Orchid I
1998
offset-print between plexiglas plates
Dallas Museum of Art

Katy Schneider
Family Portrait
1998
oil on panel
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Maria Porges
The Virtues and Vices of History
1998
wax, wood, plexiglas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Ole Jørgen Ness
Portrait
1998
oil on canvas
Stortingets Kunstsamling, Oslo

Neo Rauch
Choice
1998
oil on canvas
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Claire Van Vliet
Clay Cliffs
1998
vitreograph print
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Comme des Garçons (Japan)
Jacket and Asymmetrical Vest
1998
wool twill and cotton
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Comme des Garçons (Japan)
Jacket and Asymmetrical Vest - detail
1998
wool twill and cotton
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Mary Heilmann
21st century Fox
1998
color etching
San Diego Museum of Art, California

James Doolin
Psychic
1998
oil on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Eldon Garnet
Breathless #3
1998
C-print
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia

Victor Landweber
Auduboniana: Passenger Pigeon,
Federal Building, Oakland CA
1998
pigment print
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Katherine Knight
Erica and Bubble
1998
gelatin silver print
Ottawa Art Gallery, Ontario

from Part One of The Age of Anxiety

     But now the radio, suddenly breaking in with its banal noises upon their separate senses of themselves, by compelling them to pay attention to a common world of great slaughter and much sorrow, began, without their knowledge, to draw these four strangers closer to each other. For in response to its official doctored message:

     Now the news. Night raids on

     Five cities. Fires started.

     Pressure applied by pincer movement

     In threatening thrust. Third Division

     Enlarges the beachhead. Lucky charm

     Saves sniper. Sabotage hinted

     In steel-mill stoppage. Strong point held

     By fanatical Nazis. Canal crossed

     By heroic marines. Rochester barber

     Fools foe. Finns ignore

     Peace feeler. Pope condemns

     Axis excesses. Underground

     Blows up bridge. Thibetan prayer-wheels

     Revolve for victory. Vital crossroads

     Taken by tanks. Trend to the left

     Forecast by Congressman. Cruiser sunk

     In Valdivian Deep. Doomed sailors

     Play poker. Reporter killed. 

– W.H. Auden (1944-46)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1974)

Joyce & Co. (Dutch arts collective)
Erwin (a novel)
1974
offset print (poster)
Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam

Billy Al Bengston
Punta Tintorera Dracula
1974
acrylic on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Joan Brown
Lamp on Table
1974
enamel on canvas
Seattle Art Museum

John Cole
Still Life in Yellow
1974
oil on canvas
Tacoma Art Museum, Washington State

Gene Davis
Untitled
1974
screenprint
Dallas Museum of Art

Terry Evans
Family with Tractor
1974
gelatin silver print
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Walker Evans
Going Out of Business IV
1974
dye diffusion transfer print
Art Institute of Chicago

Leonard Freed
Farmer collecting Water from a Spring, Gangi, Sicily
1974
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Jane Freilicher
One Cat, Two Fish
1974
oil on linen
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Mark Goodman
Donald York, Jr. standing beside his Father's Wrecker
Millerton, New York
1974
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Grace Hartigan
The Far-Away Places
1974
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Paul Jenkins
Phenomenon Jenkins-Land
1974
watercolor on paper
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Jasper Johns
Torso
1974
lithograph
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Alex Katz
Young Washington
1974
lithograph
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee

Karl Korab
Untitled
1974
lithograph
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Lucebert (Lubertus Jacobus Swaanswijk)
Four Figures against Blue
1974
watercolor, crayon and ink on paper
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

The Managers

In the bad old days it was not so bad:

     The top of the ladder

Was an amusing place to sit; success

     Meant quite a lot – leisure

And huge meals, more palaces filled with more

     Objects, books, girls, horses

Than one would ever get round to, and to be

     Carried uphill while seeing

Others walk. To rule was a pleasure when

     One wrote a death-sentence

On the back of the Ace of Spades and played on

     With a new deck. Honors

Are not so physical or jolly now,

     For the species of Powers

We are used to are not like that. Could one of them

     Be said to resemble

The Tragic Hero, the Platonic Saint,

     Or would any painter

Portray one rising triumphant from a lake

     On a dolphin, naked,

Protected by an umbrella of cherubs? Can

     They so much as manage

To behave like genuine Caesars when alone

     Or drinking with cronies,

To let their hair down and be frank about

     The world? It is doubtful.

The last word on how we may live or die

     Rests today with such quiet

Men, working too hard in rooms that are too big,

     Reducing to figures

What is the matter, what is to be done.

     A neat little luncheon

Of sandwiches is brought to each on a tray,

     Nourishment they are able

To take with one hand without looking up

     From papers a couple

Of secretaries are needed to file,

     From problems no smiling

Can dismiss. The typewriters never stop

     But whirr like grasshoppers

In the silent siesta heat as, frivolous

     Across their discussions,

From woods unaltered by our wars and our vows,

     There drift the scents of flowers

And the songs of birds who will never vote

     Or bother to notice

Those distinguishing marks a lover sees

     By instinct and policemen

Can be trained to observe. Far into the night

     Their windows burn brightly

And, behind their backs bent over some report,

     On every quarter,

For ever like a god or a disease

     There on the earth the reason

In all its aspects why they are tired, the weak,

     The inattentive, seeking

Someone to blame. If, to recuperate

     They go a-playing, their greatness

Encounters the bow of the chef or the glance

     Of the ballet-dancer

Who cannot be ruined by any master's fall.

     To rule must be a calling,

It seems, like surgery or sculpture, the fun

     Neither love nor money

But taking necessary risks, the test

     Of one's skill, the questions,

If difficult, their own reward. But then

     Perhaps one should mention

Also what must be a comfort as they guess

     In times like the present

When guesses can prove so fatally wrong,

     The fact of belonging

To the very select indeed, to those

     For whom, just supposing

They do, there will be places on the last

     Plane out of disaster.

No, no one is really sorry for their

     Heavy gait and careworn

Look, nor would they thank you if you said you were. 

– W.H. Auden (1948)

Aline Fruhauf – MIdcentury Tastemakers

Aline Fruhauf
Muriel King (fashion designer)
1939
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Louise Barnes Gallagher (fashion designer)
1942
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Helen Cramp Cookman (fashion designer)
1939
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Aline Bernstein (stage designer)
1943
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Clare Potter (fashion designer)
1939
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Fira Benenson (fashion designer)
1942
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Nettie Rosenstein (fashion designer)
1939
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Omar Kiam (fashion designer)
1942
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Tom Brigance (fashion designer)
1939
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
William Pahlmann (interior designer)
1939
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Sally Victor (milliner)
1942
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Lilly Daché (milliner)
1942
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Pola Stout (textile designer)
1941
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
James Berryman (cartoonist)
1949
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Aline Fruhauf
Duncan Phillips (art collector)
1949
ink and watercolor on paper
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

from Santarém

Of course, I may be remembering it all wrong

after, after – how many years?

That golden evening I really wanted to go no farther;

more than anything else I wanted to stay while

in that conflux of two great rivers, Tapajós, Amazon,

grandly, silently flowing, flowing east.

Suddenly there'd been houses, people, and lots of mongrel

riverboats skittering back and forth

under a sky of gorgeous, under-lit clouds,

with everything gilded, burnished along one side,

and everything bright, cheerful, casual – or so it looked.

I liked the place; I liked the idea of the place.

Two rivers. Hadn't two rivers sprung

from the Garden of Eden? No, that was four

and they'd diverged. Here only two

and coming together. Even if one were tempted

to literary interpretations

such as: life/death, right/wrong, male/female

– such notions would have resolved, dissolved, straight off

in that watery, dazzling dialectic. 

In front of the church, the Cathedral, rather,

there was a modest promenade and a belvedere

about to fall into the river,

stubby palms, flamboyants like pans of embers,

buildings one story high, stucco, blue or yellow,

and one house faced with azulejos, buttercup yellow. 

The street was deep in dark gold river sand

damp from the ritual afternoon rain,

and teams of zebus plodded, gentle, proud,

and blue, with down-curved horns and hanging ears,

pulling carts with solid wheels.

The zebus' hooves, the people's feet

waded in golden sand,

dampered by golden sand,

so that almost the only sounds

were creaks and shush, shush, shush.

Two rivers full of crazy shipping – people

all apparently changing their minds, embarking, 

disembarking, rowing clumsy dories.

(After the Civil War some Southern families

came here; here they could still own slaves.

They left occasional blue eyes, English names,

and oars. No other place, no one

on all the Amazon's four thousand miles

does anything but paddle.)

– Elizabeth Bishop (1978)

Conspicuous Brushwork - IV

Joseph Beuys
King's Daughter Sees Iceland
1960
gouache on paper, mounted on felt over board
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Alan Davie
Study for The Key
1960
oil on canvas
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Richard Diebenkorn
Black Table
1960
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Per Erik Hagdahl
Branches II
1963
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Knut Rumohr
Landscape
1963
tempera on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Karel Appel
Rocking in a Boat
1964
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Arne Ekeland
Parnassus
1964
acrylic on paper
Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Norway

Asger Jorn
You Dog
1965
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Bram van Velde
Composition
1970
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Jurjen de Haan
Paaseiland
1978
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Sigrid Burton
Frenesi
1979
acrylic on canvas
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art,
Sarasota, Florida

Runi Langum
Situation II
1981
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Georg Baselitz
Die Verspottung (The Mocking)
1984
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Tina Juretzek
June Women
1987
mixed media on cardboard
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Helmut Pfeuffer
Stierfeld
1989
oil on canvas
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Johanne Hansen-Krone
Double Spiral
1996
oil on canvas
Stortingets Kunstsamling, Oslo

[Enter a Herald]

Herald:  I have to announce the opinion and the decision of the people's council of this city of Cadmus.  It has been resolved that Eteocles here, on account of his loyalty to his country, shall be buried in the loving recesses of the earth; for he found death while keeping out the enemy at the gates, and in pious defence of the temples of his fathers he has died blamelessly where it is honourable for the young to die.  That is what I have been instructed to say about him, but his brother, the dead Polynices here, is to be cast out unburied, a prey for the dogs, as one who would have been the destroyer of the land of Cadmus, had not some god stood up to hinder his armed attack.  Even in death he shall bear the pollution and curse of his ancestral gods, whom he insulted when he tried to capture the city, bringing a foreign army to attack it.  So it is decided that he should get his due reward by receiving a dishonourable funeral from the flying birds; that he should neither lie under a laboriously raised burial-mound nor be dignified with high-pitched musical wailings; and that he should not have the honour of a funeral procession from his family.  Such is the decision of the aforementioned Cadmean authorities. 

Antigone:  And I say to the leaders of the Cadmeans: if no one else is willing to join in burying this man, I will bury him, I will brave the danger of burying my brother, and I will not be ashamed to display such disobedient insubordination to the city.  The power of the common womb from which we are sprung, children of a wretched mother and a miserable father, is a formidable thing.  Therefore, my soul, with a sister's heart, living with dead, share willingly in the sufferings that he endures unwillingly.  His flesh shall not be eaten by dogs or birds nor torn by hollow-bellied wolves – let no one think it will; for I shall myself, woman though I am, contrive to provide him with a funeral and burial, carrying it* in the fold of my fine linen robe, and myself cover him up – and let no one think otherwise.  Courage will find a means to do it.

– Aeschylus, from Seven Against Thebes (467 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

*i.e. the earth to throw over the body