Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1952)

Ruth Orkin
Hollywood Party, with Lana Turner and Fernando Lamas
1952
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Jackson Pollock
No. 2-A
1952
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

James Brooks
K-1952
1952
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Elaine De Kooning
Double Portrait of Selima Stavola
1952
oil on canvas
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Robert Frank
Paris
1952
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Philip Kouwen
Studio Wall
1952
oil on paper
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Agnes Martin
Winter Yellow
1952
watercolor on paper
Seattle Art Museum

Rollie McKenna
Caitlin and Dylan Thomas, Millbrook, New York
1952
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Rollie McKenna
Carnegie Hall, New York City
1952
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Henry Moore
Study for Time-Life Frieze
1952
bronze
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Robert Motherwell
Île de France
1952
watercolor and ink on paper
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Ben Nicholson
Jan 3 52 (Cromlech)
1952
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Grace Robertson
The Connoisseur, Tate Gallery
1952
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Charley Toorop
Fruit and Autumn Leaves
1952
oil on panel
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Co Westerik
Bus at Night
1952
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Co Westerik
Woman in Labor
1952
oil and tempera on canvas, mounted on panel
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)

                                                          

                                                           XXVII

The I-feeling: a feeling of being-responsible-for. (It cannot accompany a verb in the passive.) I wake in the morning with a violent headache and cry Ouch!  This cry is involuntary and devoid of I-feeling. Then I think – "I have a hangover"; some I-feeling accompanies this thought – the act of locating and identifying the headache is mine – but very little. Then I think – "I drank too much last night." Now the I-feeling is much stronger. I could have drunk less. A headache has become my hangover, an incident in my personal history. (I cannot identify my hangover by pointing to my head and groaning, for what makes it mine is my past act and I cannot point to myself yesterday.)

                                                           XXVIII

The You-feeling: a feeling of attributing-responsibility-to. If, when I think You are beautiful, this thought is accompanied by the You-feeling, I mean that I hold you responsible, in part at least, for your physical appearance; it is not merely due to a lucky combination of genes.

                                                            XXIX

Common to both the I- and the You-feeling: a feeling of being-in-the-middle-of-a-story. I cannot think I love You without including the thoughts I have already loved You (if only for a moment) and I shall still love You (if only for a moment). If therefore, I attempt, as I should like to do in this poem, to express what I mean by this thought, I turn myself into a historian, faced with a historian's problems. Of the documents at my disposal (memories of myself, or You, of what I have heard on the subject of love), some have probably been doctored, some may even be downright forgeries; where I have no documents, I cannot tell if this is because they never existed or because they have been lost or hidden and, if so, what difference it would make to my historical picture if they could be recovered. Even were I gifted with total recall, I should still be faced with the task of interpreting them and assessing their relative importance. 

– W.H. Auden (1959)

Perceptions

Leopold Zinnögger
Hazelnuts
1851
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Franz Théobald Horny
Pumpkins, Pomegranates, Fig, Peach
before 1824
watercolor and gouache on paper
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Georg Flegel
Tulips
ca. 1630
watercolor and gouache on paper
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anton Tomschik
Studies of Apricots
1857
gouache on paper
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

August Rokert
Ornithogalum umbellatum
ca. 1840
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Katharina, Baroness von Röthlein
Botanical Study
1819
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anonymous Dutch Artist
Assorted Shells
17th century
watercolor on paper
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Bernd and Hilla Becher
Cooling Towers
1963-72
gelatin silver prints
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Jacques de Gheyn II
Flies
ca. 1600
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Christo
56 Barrels
1977
acrylic paint on paper
(design sketch for installation)
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Jan Beutener
Interior
1972
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Bartholomäus Westheimer (Basel)
ca. 1540
woodcut
(serpent and arrow)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Aldus Manutius (Venice)
ca. 1500
woodcut and letterpress
(dolphin and anchor)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Wenceslaus Hollar
Muffs
ca. 1645-46
etching
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Laura Gilpin
Nesting Tables made by Frank Gilpin
ca. 1930
platinum print
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Barnett Newman
Tertia
1964
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

In Ovid, Pygmalion is a sculptor who wants to fashion a woman after his own heart and falls in love with the statue he makes.  He prays to Venus for a bride modeled after that image, and the goddess turns the cold marble into a living body.  It is a myth that has naturally captivated the imagination of artists, the solemn and somewhat maudlin dreams of Burne-Jones no less than the irreverent mockery of Daumier.  Without the underlying promise of this myth, the secret hopes and fears that accompany the act of creation, there might be no art as we know it.  One of the most original young painters in England, Lucien [sic] Freud, wrote very recently: "A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art.  The promise of it is felt in the act of creation, but disappears towards the completion of the work.  For it is then that the painter realizes that it is only a picture he is painting.  Until then he had almost dared to hope that the picture might spring to life."

"Only a picture," says Lucien [sic] Freud.  It is a motif we find in the whole history of Western art: Vasari tells of Donatello at work on his Zuccone, looking at it suddenly and threatening the stone with a dreadful curse, "Speak, speak – favella, favella, che ti venga il cacasangue!"  And the greatest wizard of them all, Leonardo da Vinci, extolled the power of the artist to create.  In that hymn of praise to painting, the Paragone, he calls the painter "the Lord of all manner of people and of all things."  "If the painter wishes to see beauties to fall in love with, it is in his power to bring them forth, and if he wants to see monstrous things that frighten or are foolish or laughable or indeed to be pitied, he is their Lord and God."  

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960).

Perceptions

Anonymous Austrian Artist 
Orange
ca. 1800-1850
gouache on paper
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Hans Thoma
ABC Bilderbuch - Lemon
ca. 1905
drawing
(print study for book illustration)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Jacopo Ligozzi
Study of Spruce Twigs
ca. 1590-1610
watercolor on vellum
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anonymous German Artist
Ex Libris - Bibliothek zu Augsburg
ca. 1550-1600
hand-colored woodcut
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Anonymous German Artist 
Sacred Heart
15th century
hand-colored woodcut
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anonymous Russian Artist
Ex Libris - Gubar
ca. 1922
zincograph
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Carl Krahl
Arms of Lower Austria
ca. 1850
watercolor and gouache on paper
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Max Eckhardt
Stone-Carved Coat-of-Arms
on Cannon-Boring Mill near Dresden
1901
watercolor on paper
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Gustav Klimt
Initial G
1897-98
drawing
(illustration for Secessionist magazine Ver Sacrum)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Charles-Alexandre Mairet
Initial P with Press Workers
ca. 1910-20
color woodblock print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Franz von Seitz
Design for Nautilus Vessel
ca. 1865-75
watercolor and gouache on paper
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Alexandre Chaponnière
Study of Foot
ca. 1780-90
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Anonymous Italian Artist
Reliquary shaped as Arm, with Hand in Blessing
ca. 1470
gilt bronze with rock-crystal inset
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Adolf Wölfli
Schähren-Hall und Schährer-Skt: Adolf Ring
1926
drawing (colored pencils)
Aargauer Kunsthaus, Switzerland

Anonymous Printmaker after Andrea Palladio
Ground Plane - Bramante's Tempietto, Rome
1581
woodcut
(page from Palladio's Quattro Libri dell'Architettura)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Adolphe-François Appia
Espace Rythmique - La Porte Ouverte
1909
drawing
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

From the point of view of information there is surely no difficulty in discussing portrayal.  To say of a drawing that it is a correct view of Tivoli does not mean, of course, that Tivoli is bounded by wiry lines.  It means that those who understand the notation will derive no false information from the drawing – whether it gives the contour in a few lines or picks out "every blade of grass" as Richter's friends wanted to do.  The complete portrayal might be the one which gives as much correct information about the spot as we would obtain if we looked at it from the very spot where the artist stood.

Styles, like languages, differ in the sequence of articulation and in the number of questions they allow the artist to ask: and so complex is the information that reaches us from the visible world that no picture will ever embody it all.  That is not due to the subjectivity of vision but to its richness.  Where the artist has to copy a human product he can, of course, produce a facsimile which is indistinguishable from the original.  The forger of banknotes succeeds only too well in effacing his personality and the limitations of a period style.  

But what matters to us is that the correct portrait, like the useful map, is an end product on a long road through schema and correction.  It is not a faithful record of a visual experience but the faithful construction of a relational model.  

Neither the subjectivity of vision nor the sway of conventions need lead us to deny that such a model can be constructed to any required degree of accuracy.  What is decisive here is clearly the word "required."  The form of a representation cannot be divorced from its purpose and the requirements of the society in which the given visual language gains currency.

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960).

Coordination

Reidun Tordhol
Still Life
1984
oil on panel
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Issey Miyake
Dress
1995
polyester
Groninger Museum, Netherlands

Moritz Tettelbach
Roses
1833
gouache on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Viktor & Rolf
Harlequin Suit
1998
cotton and rayon
Groninger Museum, Netherlands

Achille Laugé
Flowers and Pears
1909
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcassonne

Viktor & Rolf
Dress and Tunic
1999
printed silks
Groninger Museum, Netherlands

Felix Tobeen
Bouquet
ca. 1927
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Dirk Jacobsz Vellert
Warrior supporting Coat-of-Arms
1522
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Gaetano Vascellini
Statues of Youths by Domenico Pieratti
in Giardino di Boboli, Florence
1789
etching
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Jan Verkolje the Elder after Godfrey Kneller
Portrait of Steffan Wolters
1684
mezzotint
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Endpapers to Umbra Vitae by Georg Heym
1924
woodcuts on colored paper
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anton Koberger (printer)
Moses and Aaron changing the Rivers of Egypt to Blood
ca. 1479-83
hand-colored woodcut
(Bible illustration)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Wassily Kandinsky
Impression III (Concert)
1911
oil on canvas
Lenbachhaus Munich

Anton Tomschik
Study of Pears
1857
gouache on paper
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Italian Artist
Apollo and the Muses
ca. 1520
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Helen Verhoeven
The Taking of Christ
2017
acrylic on linen
Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht

In this speech did Pericles endeavour to appease the anger of the Athenians towards himself and withal to withdraw their thoughts from the present affliction.  But they, though for the state in general they were won and sent to the Lacedaemonians no more but rather inclined to the war, yet they were everyone in particular grieved for their several losses; the poor because entering the war with little, they lost that little; and the rich because they had lost fair possessions, together with goodly houses and costly furniture in them, in the country; but the greatest matter of all was that they had war instead of peace.  And altogether, they deposed not their anger till they had first fined him [Pericles] in a sum of money.  Nevertheless, not long after (as is the fashion of the multitude) they made him general again and committed the whole state to his administration.  For the sense of their domestic losses was now dulled, and for the need of the commonwealth they prized him more than any other whatsoever.  For as long as he was in authority in the city in time of peace, he governed the same with moderation and was a faithful watchman of it; and in his time it was at the greatest.  And after the war was on foot, it is manifest that he therein also foresaw what it could do.  He lived after the war began two years and six months.  And his foresight in the war was best known after his death. 

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)