Showing posts with label Modernism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Modernism. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Representing Human Hands in Western Art - IV

Gerard Allebé
Study of Right Hand
1826
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Henricus Wilhelmus Couwenberg after Jacob Gottlob Rugendas
Study of Hand holding a Needle
ca. 1830-45
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Sybrand Altmann
Studies of Left Hand
ca. 1840
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Daniel Huntington
Study of Hand holding Communion Wafer
1844
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum


Auguste Vacquerie
La Main de Madame Hugo
ca. 1853-54
salted paper print
George Eastman House, Rochester, New York

Georges Seurat
The Hand of Poussin, after Ingres
ca. 1875-77
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Adolph Menzel
Two Studies of Gripping Right Hand
1884
drawing
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Hand of Banner Bearer
late 19th century
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Alphonse Legros
Studies of Hands
late 19th century
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Gilbert Tompkins
Rendering of Casts of Hands
1902
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Dutch Photographer
Pair of Hands
before 1915
gelatin silver print from X-Ray film
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Alfred Stieglitz
Georgia O'Keeffe—Hand
1918
palladium print
Art Institute of Chicago

Alfred Stieglitz
Georgia O'Keeffe—Hands and Thimble
1919
palladium print
Art Institute of Chicago

John Heartfield
The Hand has Five Fingers
1928
lithograph
Art Institute of Chicago

Willard van Dyke
Boxer's Hands
ca. 1932
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Saturday, November 23, 2019

Painted World (Outdoors, Indoors) - France (19th century)

Frédéric Bazille
Landscape at Chailly
1865
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Frédéric Bazille
Self Portrait
1865-66
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Eugène Boudin
Approaching Storm
1864
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Wounded Eurydice
ca. 1868-70
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Arleux-Palluel, The Bridge of Trysts
ca. 1871-72
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Obsession

Grands bois, vous m'effrayez comme des cathédrales;
Vous hurlez comme l'orgue; et dans nos cœurs maudits,
Chambres d'éternel deuil où vibrent de vieux râles,
Répondent les échos de vos De profundis.

Je te hais, Océan! tes bonds et tes tumultes,
Mon esprit les retrouve en lui; ce rire amer
De l'homme vaincu, plein de sanglots et d'insultes,
Je l'entends dans le rire énorme de la mer.

Comme la neige immense un corps pris de roideur;
Dont la lumière parle un langage connu!
Car je cherche le vide, et le noir, et le nu!

Mais les ténèbres sont elles-mêmes des toiles
Où vivent, jaillissant de mon œil par milliers,
Des êtres disparus aux regards familiers.

– Charles Baudelaire (1857)


Forest, I fear you! in my ruined heart
your roaring wakens the same agony
as in cathedrals when the organ moans
and from the depths I hear that I am damned.

Ocean, I hate you! for I recognize
the sobs and insults of  my own despair,
the bitter laughter of a beaten man
repeated in the sea's huge gaiety.

Night! you'd please me more without these stars
which speak a language I know all too well –
I long for darkness, silence, nothing there . . .

Yet even shadows have their shapes which live
where I imagine them to be, the hordes
of vanished souls whose eyes acknowledge mine.

– translation by Richard Howard (1982)

Paul Cézanne
Madame Cézanne in Yellow Chair
ca. 1888-90
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Cézanne
Bathers
ca. 1890-94
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Edgar Degas
Four Studies of a Jockey
1866
oil and gouache on paper
Art Institute of Chicago

Gustave Courbet
Rêverie (Portrait of Gabrielle Borreau)
1862
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Gustave Courbet
The Rock of Hautepierre
ca. 1869
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Jean-Léon Gérôme
Portrait of a Woman
1851
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Henri Fantin-Latour
The Corner of the Table
1872
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Camille Pissarro
Haymaking at Éragny
1892
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Camille Pissarro
Woman and Child at the Well
1882
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Ernest Meissonier
L'Endymien
before 1891
watercolor
Art Institute of Chicago

Monday, November 18, 2019

Modernist Narratives, Encounters, Designs

Giorgio de Chirico
The Philosopher's Conquest
1913-14
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Giorgio de Chirico
Horses
before 1947
color stencils on paper
Art Institute of Chicago

Jacques Lipchitz
Combat
ca. 1940-50
etching
Art Institute of Chicago

Jacques Lipchitz
Study
ca. 1947
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

On the Endurance of the Flesh of the World

Miraculously, weather continued its patterns – daylight
               Entered each window on its vast singular

               Mission: clouds rose majestic on the distant
                        Horizon, carrying with them libations for

The far-flung provinces. Not all storms stayed, but some
               Storms lingered. Which is to say day had

               Not been deformed by grief's arduous trials.
                        Warmth in April was again undercut by

A cool blade of wind. Autumn's return stayed rugged,
               The russet, parched leaves curling; at nightfall

               Soot still hung in air, and the young birches
                        Amid oak, shone forth like rooted lightning.

And all knowledge was still temporary, and demanded
               Renewal. But the body, bearing as it did joy's

               Eclipse, remained skeptical listening to the news,
                        Insistently denying that seas still rushed

Impatient to the harbors of the world, and that the equator
               Remained reconciled to its miraculous girth.

               Yes, despite sorrow's gravity, twilight still
                        Lay liquid – slate-grey – in deep shadow,

And morning's return was luminous, in its own fashion.
               As reported to the ear, drizzle's voice endured

               Discreetly, rain's temper, incessant. Unseen,
                        Water rose briefly in towers against a siege

Of wind; and sand persisted – pressed its hand into all
               The crevices of the hours: for turning as it did

               In its own tight ether, the soul knew not that,
                        Even in seclusion, the elements beat true

                        Against the hard frame of the mind.

– Ellen Hinsey (The White Fire of Time, Wesleyan University Press, 2002)

Pablo Picasso
Abstraction - Background with Blue Cloudy Sky
1930
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Pablo Picasso
Minotaur and Wounded Horse
1935
drawing (ink, crayon, graphite)
Art Institute of Chicago

Pablo Picasso
The Minotaur
1933
wash drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Pablo Picasso
Centaur Nessus abducting Dejanira
1920
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Henri Matisse
Daisies
1939
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Lovis Corinth
Odysseus and Nausicaä
1918
lithograph
Art Institute of Chicago

Lovis Corinth
Flight into the Ark
1923
lithograph, with added watercolor
Art Institute of Chicago

Lovis Corinth
Freedom from the Ark
1923
lithograph, with added watercolor
Art Institute of Chicago

Saul Steinberg
Cornices
1952
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Raoul Dufy
Flowers, Oranges and Cherries
(fabric design for Bianchini Férier, Lyon)
ca. 1911
block-printed silk
Art Institute of Chicago

Human Subjects Exploited by Artists (Early 20th Century)

Thomas Eakins
An Actress
(Portrait of Suzanne Santje)

1903
oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Pablo Picasso
Head of a Woman
1909
gouache, watercolor, colored chalk on paper
Art Institute of Chicago

Pablo Picasso
Study of Seated Man
1905
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Oskar Kokoschka
Alma Mahler
1913
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Emil Nolde
Head of a Man in the Dark
1907
lithograph
Art Institute of Chicago

from On The Improbability of Wonder

The light was alabaster: at her feet lay all of the world's treasures – the yellow music of mathematics, and the alpha axis of the compass; the curved perfection of the globe and music's invisible colonnades; color's liquid harmonics, and the blade and the bell – all wonders laid before her, but lifeless under her inward languid gaze –

All bitter herbs – bad luck, calamity of circumstance.

Moreover for her pleasure: the magnetic needle of distance and the crystal's frozen palace; physics' blizzard of forces and logic's inlaid ivory – the affection of dogs, the astrolabe and the axe, lovers' trials and the barbed arrow of attainment –

All chains, weight, cast-up refuse 

– Ellen Hinsey (The White Fire of Time, Wesleyan University Press, 2002)

Emil Nolde
Portrait of Mary Wigman
ca. 1920
watercolor
Art Institute of Chicago

Lovis Corinth
Corinth's Son Rowing
1919
drypoint
Art Institute of Chicago

Lovis Corinth
Guitar Player
1919
drypoint
Art Institute of Chicago

Lovis Corinth
Death and the Artist
1916
drypoint
Art Institute of Chicago

Henri Matisse
Woman before an Aquarium
1921-23
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Gerald Brockhurst
Corinne
1925
etching
Art Institute of Chicago

Gerald Brockhurst
The Dancer
1925
etching
Art Institute of Chicago

Jean-Louis Forain
Widow selling her Paintings
1926
gouache
Art Institute of Chicago

El Lissitzky
USSR Russian Exhibition
1929
lithograph (poster)
Art Institute of Chicago