Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1993)

Eric Avery
Blue Smallpox
1993
relief photo-engraving and linocut over monotype
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Poupee Boccaccio
El Politico
1993
screenprint
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Lynne Cohen
Spa
1993
gelatin silver print
Ottawa Art Gallery, Ontario

Elaine Duillo
Arrow to the Heart
1993
acrylic on board
(design for paperback cover)
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Scott Gentling
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1993
watercolor and gouache on paper
Amon Carter Museum Fort Worth, Texas

Lorraine Gilbert
Monty and Kelly, Invermere, British Columbia
1993
C-print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Hisao Hanafusa
Untitled (Subway Station at 14th St)
1993
oil on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Grace Hartigan
Little Junk Shop
1993
oil on canvas
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee

Nathan Oliveira
Stelae #10
1993
oil on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Kenneth Price
Western Sunset
1993
screenprint
Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California

Frank Stella
Bower in Arsacides
1993
lithograph, etching, aquatint and collagraph
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Frank Stella
Extracts
1993
lithograph, screenprint, etching and aquatint
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Frank Stella
The Monkey Rope
1993
lithograph, etching, aquatint and screenprint
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Kristina Rogers
Untitled
1993
gelatin silver print (diptych)
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Alex Katz
Pas de Deux Series
1993
screenprints
(artists posed as couples modeling clothing by Norma Kamali for Esquire Magazine)
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Becky Cohen
Conical Topiary, Parc de Sceaux
1993
gelatin silver print
San Diego Museum of Art

from the Prologue to Part One of The Age of Anxiety 

     Looking up from his drink, Quant caught the familiar eye of his reflection in the mirror behind the bar and wondered why he was still so interested in that tired old widower who would never be more now than a clerk in a shipping office near the Battery.

     More, that is, as a public figure: for as so often happens in the modern world – and how much restlessness, envy and self-contempt it causes – there was no one-to-one correspondence between his social or economic position and his private mental life. He had come to America at the age of six when his father, implicated somehow in the shooting of a landlord, had had to leave Ireland in a hurry, and, from time to time, images, some highly-colored, some violent, derived from a life he could not remember, would enter unexpectedly and incomprehensibly into his dreams. Then, again, in early manhood, when unemployed during the depression, he had spent many hours one winter in the Public Library reading for the most part – he could not have said why – books on Mythology. The knowledge gained at that time had ever since lain oddly around in a corner of his mind like luggage left long ago in an emergency by some acquaintance and never reclaimed.

– W.H. Auden (1944-46)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1983)

Richard Anuszkiewicz
Temple of Red with Orange
1983
acrylic on panel
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Don Bachardy
Christopher Isherwood
1983
acrylic on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Francis Bacon
Seated Figure
1983
etching
(adaptation of an earlier painting)
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Richard Bosman
Double Trouble
1983
woodcut
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Wil Bouthoorn
Grimm Fairytale
1983
oil on panel
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Marilyn Bridges
Monument Valley, Arizona
1983
gelatin silver print
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

James Brooks
Bharatt
1983
acrylic on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

William Christenberry
Red Building in Forest, Hale County, Alabama
1983
C-print
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Charles Clough
8 Dextram
1983
enamel over color photograph
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

Willem De Kooning
Untitled XLVII
1983
oil on canvas
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Richard Diebenkorn
Ochre
1983
color woodblock print
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Jim Dine
A Heart at the Opera
1983
lithograph
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Don DuBroff
Oriental Theatre, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
1983
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

Michael Eastman
Marcella's Resort
1983
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

John Eide
Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris
1983
gelatin silver print
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

John Eide
Le Bassin de Latone, Versailles
1983
gelatin silver print
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

from Five Songs

"When rites and melodies begin,

     To alter modes and times,

And timid bar-flies boast aloud

     Of uncommitted crimes,

And leading families are proud

     To dine with their black sheep,

What promises, what discipline,

     If any, will Love keep?"

          So roared Fire on their right:

               But Tamino and Pamina

               Walked past its rage,

          Sighing O, sighing O,

     In timeless fermatas of awe and delight

          (Innocent? Yes. Ignorant? No.)

               Down the grim passage.

"When stinking Chaos lifts the latch,

     And Grotte backward spins,

And Helen's nose becomes a beak,

     And cats and dogs grow chins,

And daisies claw and pebbles shriek

     And Form and Color part,

What swarming hatreds then will hatch

     Out of Love's riven heart?"

          So hissed Water on their left:

               But Pamina and Tamino 

               Opposed its spite

          With his worship, with her sweetness –

     O look now! See how they emerge from the cleft

          (Frightened? No. Happy? Yes.)

               Out into sunlight. 

– W.H. Auden (1953)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1980)

Anne Noggle
Yolanda in her Silk Hat
1980
gelatin silver print
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Jean-Pierre Sudre
La cheminée de ma mère, Merville
1980
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Robert Reed
San Romano, Jefferson Red Devil
1980
acrylic on canvas
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Joan Semmel
Purple Diagonal
1980
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Will Barnet
Circe II
1980
lithograph
Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, West Virginia

Horst Antes
Mit gelber Tableta
1980
lithograph
Dallas Museum of Art

Manuel Neri
Posturing Series #3
1980
bronze
San Jose Museum of Art, California

George McNeil
Green Enchantress
1980
oil on canvas
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Robert Mapplethorpe
Larry D.
1980
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

James Moore
Still Life (2 Bottles)
1980
oil on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

David Mecalco
The Prostitute Maria Inezde gives thanks
to the Dear Virgin for having Work
1980
paint on metal (ex-voto)
Fowler Museum at UCLA

Jacob Kainen
Winter Night
1980
oil on canvas 
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Robert Motherwell
Paris Suite I (Spring)
1980
lithograph
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Frederick Linck
Rolf Koot
1980
gelatin silver print
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

André Kertész
Jardin des Tuileries, Paris
1980
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Alain Kirili
Commandment V
1980
forged iron
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

First Things First 

Woken, I lay in the arms of my own warmth and listened
To a storm enjoying its storminess in the winter dark
Till my ear, as it can when half-asleep or half-sober,
Set to work to unscramble that interjectory uproar,
Construing its airy vowels and watery consonants
Into a love-speech indicative of a Proper Name.

Scarcely the tongue I should have chosen, yet, as well
As harshness and clumsiness would allow, it spoke in your praise,
Kenning you a god-child of the Moon and the West Wind
With power to tame both real and imaginary monsters,
Likening your poise of being to an upland country,
Here green on purpose, there pure blue for luck.

Loud though it was, alone as it certainly found me,
It reconstructed a day of peculiar silence
When a sneeze could be heard a mile off, and had me walking
On a headland of lava beside you, the occasion as ageless
As the stare of any rose, your presence exactly
So once, so valuable, so there, so now.

This, moreover, at an hour when only too often
A smirking devil annoys me in beautiful English,
Predicting a world where every sacred location
Is a sand-buried site all Texans do,
Misinformed and thoroughly fleeced by their guides,
And gentle hearts are extinct like Hegelian Bishops.

Grateful, I slept till a morning that would not say
How much it believed of what I said the storm had said
But quietly drew my attention to what had been done
– So many cubic meters the more in my cistern
Against a leonine summer –, putting first things first:
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.

– W.H. Auden (1956)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1963)

Milton Avery
Seaside Strollers
1963
oil on board
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Edward Boccia
Marriage of Pythoness
1963
oil on canvas
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Dan Budnik
David Smith with Cubi IV and Cubi V,
Terminal Iron Works, Bolton's Landing, NY
1963
gelatin silver print
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Paul Caponigro
Two Leaves, Brewster, New York
1963
gelatin silver print
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Corneille (Guillaume Cornelis van Beverloo)
Jardin dans le soleil d'été
1963
lithograph
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Paul Damian
Room with Banquet Lamp
1963
oil on paper (grisaille)
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin

Paul Damian
Room with French Chairs
1963
oil on paper (grisaille)
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin

William Freed
Still Life - Fruit and Bottle
1963
oil on canvas
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Lee Friedlander
New York City
1963
gelatin silver print
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Philip Guston
Painting
1963
oil on board
New Orleans Museum of Art

Bits Hayden
Second Feature
1963
oil on panel
Frye Art Museum, Seattle

Barbara Hepworth
Squares with Two Circles (Monolith)
1963
bronze
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

Robert Indiana
Four Numbers Summing Thirty
1963
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Ivan Kabish
To the Mausoleum (Red Square)
1963
oil on canvas
Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina

André Kertész
Two Friends, Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris
1963
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Sergio Larraín
Bar in the House of Seven Mirrors, Valparaiso, Chile
1963
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

from Horae Canonicae

                        IV. NONES (part III)

Soon cool tramontana will stir the leaves,

     The shops will re-open at four,

The empty blue bus in the empty pink square

     Fill up and depart: we have time

To misrepresent, excuse, deny,

     Mythify, use this event

While, under a hotel bed, in prison,

     Down wrong turnings, its meaning

Waits for our lives. Sooner than we would choose

     Bread will melt, water will burn,

And the great quell begin, Abaddon

     Set up his triple gallows

At our seven gates, far Belial make

     Our wives waltz naked, meanwhile

It would be best to go home, if we have a home,

     In any case good to rest.

That our dreaming wills may seem to escape

     This dead calm, wander instead

On knife edges, on black and white squares,

      Across moss, baize, velvet, boards,

Over cracks and hillocks, in mazes

     Of string and penitent cones,

Down granite ramps and damp passages,

     Through gates that will not relatch

And doors marked Private pursued by Moors

     And watched by latent robbers,

To hostile villages at the heads of fjords,

     To dark chateaux where wind sobs

In the pine-trees and telephones ring,

     Inviting trouble, to a room,

Lit by one weak bulb, where our Double sits

     Waiting and does not look up.

That, while we are thus away, our own wronged flesh

     May work undisturbed, restoring

The order we try to destroy, the rhythm

     We spoil out of spite: valves close

And open exactly, glands secrete,

     Vessels contract and expand

At the right moment, essential fluids

     Flow to renew exhausted cells,

Not knowing quite what has happened, but awed

     By death like all the creatures

Now watching this spot, like the hawk looking down

     Without blinking, the smug hens

Passing close by in their pecking order,

     The bug whose view is balked by grass,

Or the deer who shyly from afar

     Peer through chinks in the forest.

– W.H. Auden (1954)