Comme il faut

Anonymous German Artist
Künstler-Redoute, Centraltheater Leipzig
ca. 1903
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Curt Behrends
Heute gehen wir zur Rollschuh Bahn
ca. 1910
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Henri Chachoin
La Teddy
(brand of suspenders)
ca. 1925
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hans Rudi Erdt
Wintersport in Saarow
1911
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Joseph J. Gould
Lippincott's - October
1896
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Dudley Hardy
Cinderella - Drury Lane
1896
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Josef Rudolf Witzel
Wienrestaurant Volkstheater
1908
lithograph
(poster - proof before lettering)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Ludwig Hohlwein
Boll's Kindergarderobe, Munich
1908
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Ernst Heilemann
Wolfframm Piano, Dresden
1903
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Ernst Deutsch (called Dryden)
Der Trainer
(silent film)
1914
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Adolf Höfer
E.O. Merzbacher Furs, Munich
ca. 1909-1911
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Moritz Veit
Mademoiselle Milly Dagmar and her Performing Dogs
1906
lithograph
(poster - proof before lettering)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Edward Penfield
Harper's - Christmas
1896
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Emile Schneider
Strasbourg Tramline - Timetable
1897
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Ludwig Hohlwein
Tanz-Palast Blumen-Säle
1913
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous British Artist
The New Woman has Arrived
ca. 1896
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

And just as the historian can never explain the individual work of art with all the decisions involved in making it, so the psychologist can never fully interpret its meaning to the questioning art lover.  This admission may come as a surprise to any reader who has felt troubled by so much rationalism in the face of art.  Yet it is rational, I think, to maintain that the meaning of human expression will always elude scientific explanation.  Have we not seen that our responses to facial expressions or speech sounds are always immediate, global, unanalyzed, and in that sense intuitive?  Where we understand we understand directly, as we understand the meaning of a musical phrase or the inflection of a voice.  The mystic and irrationalist errs only in thinking that such intuition must always be superior to reason, infallible.  There are misunderstandings of expression as there are other false responses.  The rational approach can help to eliminate such mistakes by showing what a work of art cannot have meant within the framework of its style and situation.  Having thus narrowed down the area of misunderstandings it must retire; for the particular in all its richness is bound to slip through the clumsy net of general concepts which we make by asking our twenty questions.  Created as a tool to help us find our way through the world of things, our language is notoriously poor when we try to analyze and categorize the inner world.

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

Litho - IV

Anonymous German Artist
No. 4711 Face Powder
ca. 1905
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Moriz Jung
Plastische Posen
c. 1905-1915
lithograph
(postcard produced by Wiener Werkstätte)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Maximilian Liebenwein
Pallas Athena
1906
lithograph
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Leopoldo Metlicovitz
Opening of the Simplon Tunnel
1906
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Julius Klinger
Lustige Blätter (magazine)
1909
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hans Günther Reinstein
Mozart Pianos
1909
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous Austrian Artist
Veteran Artists of the Chat Noir, Paris -
Three Performances at Saal Ehrbar, Vienna
1910
lithograph (poster)
Graphische-Sammlung-Albertina-Vienna

Hans Rudi Erdt
Die Woche (magazine)
1910
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Géza Faragó
Digestol Glück
1910
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Hollerbaum & Schmidt (printers)
Hohlfeld Roller
(ledger-supporting platform on wheels)
ca. 1910
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Rudolf Kalvach
Inspiration
ca. 1910
lithograph
(postcard produced by Wiener Werkstätte)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Aristide Maillol
Juno
ca. 1910
lithograph
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Emil Ranzenhofer
Cig Shoe-Polish Stick
1910
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Oskar Kokoschka
Der Sturm (magazine)
1911
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Ewald Dülberg
Aida - Hamburger Stadt Theater
1912
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Egon Schiele
Self Portrait
1912
lithograph
Städtisches Museum, Braunschweig

But the Athenians stirred not from Aegina; but those that remained at Athens, both young and old, under the conduct of Myronides went to Megara; and after they had fought with doubtful victory, they parted asunder again with an opinion on both sides not to have had the worse in the action.  And the Athenians, who notwithstanding had rather the better, when the Corinthians were gone away erected a trophy.  But the Corinthians, having been reviled at their return by the ancient men of the city, about twelve days after came again prepared and set up their trophy likewise, as if the victory had been theirs.  Hereupon the Athenians sallying out of Megara with a huge shout both slew those that were setting up the trophy and, charging the rest, got the victory.

The Corinthians, being overcome, went their way; but a good part of them, being hard followed and missing their way, lighted into the enclosed ground of a private man, which fenced with a great ditch had no passage through.  Which the Athenians perceiving, opposed them at the place by which they entered with their men of arms and, encompassing the ground with their light armed soldiers, killed those that were entered with stones.  This was a great loss to the Corinthians, but the rest of their army got home again.  

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

Litho - II

Kenyon Cox
Scribner's
The Last Quarter Century in America
1895
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Hermann-Paul
Salon des Cent
1895
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Max Laeuger
Schiedmayer Pianofortefabrik
1895
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Giulio Angelo Liberale
Paprika Schlesinger
ca. 1895
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Emil Orlik
Orlik - Prague
(logo for haberdasher)
ca. 1895
lithograph
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

William McGregor Paxton
The Boston Sunday Herald
1895
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Eduard Veith
Jos. & Em. Bratmann - Olive Oil - Vienna
ca. 1895
lithograph
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Hermann Behrens
C.C. Meinhold & Sons, Dresden
1896
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Robert Fowler
Autumn Exhibition of Pictures
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
1896
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Edvard Munch
Death in the Sickroom
1896
lithograph
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Armand Rasenfosse
L'Art Indépendant
1896
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Louis John Rhead
Cassell's Magazine
1896
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Félix Vallotton
The Green Hat
1896
lithograph
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Edward Penfield
Harper's - April
1897
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Alfred Roller
Exhibition of Max Slevogt at Kunstsalon Eugen Artin
1897
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Osmar Schindler
Internationale Kunstausstellung, Dresden
1897
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The Lacedaemonians, when the war against those in Ithome grew long, amongst other their confederates sent for aid to the Athenians, who also came with no small forces under the command of Cimon.  They were sent for principally for their reputation in mural assaults, the long continuance of the siege seeming to require men of ability in that kind, whereby they might perhaps have gotten the place by force.  And upon this journey grew the first manifest dissension between the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians.  For the Lacedaemonians when they could not take the place by assault, fearing lest the audacious and innovating humour of the Athenians, whom withal they esteemed of a contrary race, might, at the persuasion of those in Ithome, cause some alteration if they stayed, dismissed them alone of all the confederates, not discovering their jealousy but alleging that they had no farther need of their service.  But the Athenians, perceiving that they were not sent away upon good cause but only as men suspected, made it a heinous matter, and conceiving that they had better deserved at the Lacedaemonians' hands, as soon as they were gone left the league which they had made with the Lacedaemonians against the Persians and became confederates with their enemies the Argives; and then both Argives and Athenians took the same oath and made the same league with the Thessalians. 

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

Fashion in Pictures

Mary Cassatt
The Fitting
ca. 1890-91
drypoint and color aquatint
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Georges Lepape
Laquelle?
(Robe de soirée de Paul Poiret)
ca. 1912
lithograph and pochoir
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Georges Lepape
Dieu! Qu'il fait froid . . .
(Manteau d'hiver de Paul Poiret)
ca. 1913
lithograph and pochoir
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Maurice Taquoy
L'Entr'Acte
(Robe de soir de Worth)
1913
lithograph and pochoir
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Dagobert Peche
Fashion Illustration - Woman in Garden
1914
hand-colored woodcut
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Man Ray
Peggy Guggenheim wearing Paul Poiret
1924
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Georges Barbier
L'Air
1925
lineblock and pochoir
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Cecil Beaton
Ruth Ford modeling Satin Cape
ca. 1930-40
gelatin silver print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Charles James
Fashion Studies
1962
drawing
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Charles James
Fashion Study
1962
drawing
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Boris Chaliapin
Rudi Gernreich
1967
gouache and graphite on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

David  Bailey
Penelope Tree for British Vogue
1968
gelatin silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Arthur Leipzig
Pauline Trigère creating a Garment
1968
gelatin-silver-print-
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Judy McGuggart
John Fairchild, editor of Women's Wear Daily
1970
needlepoint on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Ann Weir
Study of a Dress
1984
drawing
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Zoe Leonard
Geoffrey Beene Fashion Show
1990
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Margaret Strickland
Easter Dress
2007
inkjet print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Sandpiper

The roaring alongside he takes for granted,

and that every so often the world is bound to shake.

He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,

in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.

The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet

of interrupting water comes and goes

and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.

He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.

– Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them,

where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains

rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,

he stares at the dragging grains.

The world is a mist. And then the world is

minute and vast and clear. The tide

is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which.

His beak is focussed, he is preoccupied,

looking for something, something, something.

Poor bird, he is obsessed!

The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray, 

mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.

– Elizabeth Bishop (1962)