Showing posts with label ceramics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ceramics. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 7, 2026

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1987)

Katharina Fritsch
Brain
1987
plaster
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Tina Barney
Jill and Polly in the Bathroom
1987
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

Charles Bechtle
Sea Storm
1987
watercolor on paper
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

Ken Kelly
Secret Blood
1987
oil on canvas
Seattle Art Museum

Richard Misrach
Bomb Crater (Pink) - Bravo 20 Bombing Range, Nevada
1987
C-print
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

David Bates
The Dock Builder
1987
oil on canvas
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Theophilus Brown
Untitled (Industrial Cityscape)
1987
acrylic on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento

Richard Diebenkorn
Blue with Red
1987
color woodblock print
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

John Fraser
H.O. (Home Office)
1987
collage on paper
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Vernon Fisher
Study for the Construction of Oranges (Parachute)
1987
mixed media on paper
Dallas Museum of Art

Margaret Ponce Israel
Lidded Vessel
1987
painted and glazed whiteware
Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin
 
James Hayward
Spartan
1987
oil paint and wax on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Michael Kenna
Sand Mounds, Kyoto
1987
gelatin silver print
San Diego Museum of Art

Kyle Highsmith
Crepe Myrtle, Hot Sunday
1987
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Anonymous Spanish Photographer
Punks
1987
gelatin silver print
San Diego Museum of Art 

Marsha Burns
Alessandro, Rome
1987
gelatin silver print
Dallas Museum of Art

Fleet Visit

The sailors come ashore
Out of their hollow ships,
Mild-looking middle-class boys 
Who read the comic strips;
One baseball game is more
To them than fifty Troys.

They look a bit lost, set down
In this unamerican place
Where natives pass with laws
And futures of their own;
They are not here because
But only just-in-case.

The whore and ne'er-do-well
Who pester them with junk
In their grubby ways at least
Are serving the social Beast;
They neither make nor sell –
No wonder they get drunk.

But their ships on the vehement blue
Of this harbor actually gain
From having nothing to do;
Without a human will
To tell them whom to kill
Their structures are humane

And, far from looking lost,
Look as if they were meant
To be pure abstract design
By some master of pattern and line,
Certainly worth every cent
Of the billions they must have cost.

– W.H. Auden (1951)

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

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)

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1979)

Kenneth Price
Red Top
1979
glazed whiteware
Menil Collection, Houston

Reginald Rowe
Oracle I
1979
acrylic and collage on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Otmar Thormann
Still Life, after Paul Outerbridge
1979
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Donald Sultan
Hats
1979
graphite and ink on paper, mounted on panel
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Philip Pearlstein
Tintern Abbey
(series, Ruins and Landscapes)
1979
aquatint
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Mary Peck
Stoa, Samothrace
1979
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Mario Algaze
Carretas, Guatemala
1979
gelatin silver print
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Max Yavno
Imperial Hotel, Jerusalem
1979
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Katherine Porter
Five Tornadoes and Full Moon
1979
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

James Granberry Davis
Oracle II: Incident in the Desert
1979
oil on canvas
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Phyllis Sloane
Women in Red Room
1979
screenprint
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Joel Sternfeld
Rustic Canyon, Santa Monica, California
1979
C-print
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Eve Arnold
Wrestlers, Inner Mongolia
1979
 dye transfer print
San Diego Museum of Art

Don Shields
Sinking Blue Dirigible
1979
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film Still #44
1979
gelatin silver print
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film Still #50
1979
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Nocturne

Appearing unannounced, the moon 
Avoids a mountain's jagged prongs
And sweeps into the open sky
Like one who knows where she belongs.

To me, immediately, my heart:
"Adore Her, Mother, Virgin, Muse,
A Face worth watching Who can make
Or break you as Her fancy choose."

At which the reflex of my mind:
"You will not tell me, I presume,
That bunch of barren craters care
Who sleeps with or who tortures whom."

Tonight, like umpteen other nights,
The baser frankness wins of course,
My tougher mind which dares admit
That both are worshippers of force.

Granted what both of them believe,
The Goddess, clearly, has to go,
Whose majesty is but the mask
That hides a faceless dynamo;

And neither of my natures can
Complain if I should be reduced
To a small functionary whose dreams
Are vast, unscrupulous, confused.

Supposing, though, my face is real
And not a myth or a machine,
The moon should look like x and wear
Features I've actually seen,

My neighbor's face, a face as such,
Neither a status nor a sex,
Constant for me no matter what
The value I assign to x;

That gushing lady, possibly, 
Who brought some verses of her own,
That hang-dog who keeps coming back
For just a temporary loan;

A counter-image, anyway, 
To balance with its lack of weight
My world, the private motor-car
And all the engines of the State.

– W.H. Auden (ca. 1951)

Sunday, July 12, 2026

Contact

Peter Paul Rubens
Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1613-15
oil on panel
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts


Paulus van Somer I
Portrait of a Young Woman
ca. 1620
oil on panel
Denver Art Museum

Sassoferrato (Giovanni Battista Salvi)
Portrait of a Boy
ca. 1650
oil on copper
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Hyacinthe Rigaud
Portrait of the Marquise d'Usson de Bonnac
1707
oil on canvas
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Henri Rousseau
Girl with Doll
ca. 1892
oil on canvas
Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris

Edward Steichen
Cyclamen: Mrs. Philip Lydig (Rita de Acosta)
ca. 1905
carbon print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Joseph Simpson
Portrait of Field Marshal Roberts
ca. 1910
watercolor and ink on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Alfred Stieglitz
Ellen Koeniger, Lake George
1916
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Konstantin Somov
Lady with a Dog
1928
gouache on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

August Sander
Schoolteacher
1928
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Rosalind Solomon
William Eggleston - Memphis, Tennessee
1977
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Akiyoshi Taniguchi
Two Priests in the Car, Los Angeles
1986
inkjet print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

David Robbins
Jenny Holzer
1986
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Thomas Ruff
Portrait (R. Eisch)
1999
C-print
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Leo Rubinfien
Calle de Serrano, Madrid
2004
inkjet print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Lucas Samaras
Cindy Sherman
2010
inkjet print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Julian Schnabel
Portrait of arts patron Agnes Gund
2021
oil paint, auto-body filler and broken plates on panel
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from Statement

    One charms by thickness of wrist; one by variety of positions; one has a beautiful skin, one a fascinating smell.  One has prominent eyes, is bold at accosting.  One has water sense; he can dive like a swallow without using his hands.  One is obeyed by dogs, one can bring down snipe on the wing.  One can do cart wheels before theatre queues; one can slip through a narrow ring.  One with a violin can conjure up images of running water; one is skilful at improvising a fugue; the bowel tremors at the pedal-entry.  One amuses by pursing his lips; or can imitate the neigh of a randy stallion.  One casts metal in black sand; one wipes the eccentrics of a great engine with cotton waste.  One jumps out of windows for profit.    

– W.H. Auden, The Orators (1931)