Showing posts with label ruins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ruins. Show all posts

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)

Wednesday, August 26, 2026

Temples

Emilie Gehler
Temple of Minerva Medica, Rome
ca. 1800
gouache on paper
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Domenico Montaigù
Temple of Juno, Baiae
ca. 1750
etching
Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome

Hubert Robert
Temple of the Sibyl, Tivoli
ca. 1785
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Anonymous Photographer
Temple of the Sibyl, Tivoli
ca. 1855
albumen print
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Rudolf von Alt
Temple of the Sibyl, Tivoli
1835
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Bartholomeus Breenbergh
Temple of Sibylla Tiburtina, Tivoli
ca. 1627
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Antonio Labacco (publisher)
Cutaway of Roman Temple
1552
engraving
(book illustration)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Anonymous Printmaker after Andrea Palladio
Entablature, Capital Base and Soffit
from the Temple of Castor and Pollux, Rome

1581
woodcut
(page from Palladio's Quattro Libri dell'Architettura)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Thomas Ender
Encounter outside a Temple in Pompei
ca. 1830
watercolor on paper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Jean Barbault
Ruined Temple with Statue of Aesculapius
1754
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers

Giovanni Ghisolfi
Capriccio of Ruins with the Temple of Vespasian
before 1683
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Temple of Janus, Rome
ca. 1769-71
etching
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Claude-Joseph Vernet
Temple of Diana, Pozzuoli
ca. 1750-55
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Alexandre Calame
Temple Ruins at Paestum
1844
etching and drypoint
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Isabelle van Berchem
West Front of the Parthenon
1893
albumen print
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Frédéric Boissonnas
West Front of the Parthenon - Detail
ca. 1903
gelatin silver print
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

No wonder the boldest of these experiments led to the conviction that the artist's vision is entirely subjective.  With impressionism the popular notion of the painter became that of the man who paints blue trees and red lawns and who answers every criticism with a proud, "That is how I see it."  This is one part of the story but not, I believe, the whole.  This assertion of subjectivity can also be overdone.  There is such a thing as real visual discovery, and there is a way of testing it despite the fact we may never know what the artist himself saw at a certain moment.  Whatever the initial resistance to impressionist paintings, when the first shock had worn off, people learned to read them.  And having learned this language, they went into the fields and woods, or looked out of their windows onto the Paris boulevards, and found to their delight that the visible world could after all be seen in terms of these bright patches and dabs of paint.  The transposition worked.  The impressionists had taught them, not, indeed, to see nature with an innocent eye, but to explore an unexpected alternative that turned out to fit certain experiences better than did any earlier paintings.  The artists convinced art lovers so thoroughly that the bon mot "nature imitates art" became current.

Those who have experienced the thrill of such visual discoveries have generally expressed their gratitude in the words that only art has taught them to see.  Even in classical antiquity Cicero had marveled at the many things painters saw in shade and light that we ordinary mortals do not see.  No doubt this is true, and yet it is not the whole truth.  Seeing in itself is so complex and miraculous a process of interaction and integration that not even art could teach us that.  The current idea that we look lazily into the world only as far as our practical needs demand it while the artist removes this veil of habits scarcely does justice to the marvels of everyday vision.  I believe that André Malraux here came much nearer to the truth when he stressed that all seeing is a purposeful activity, the artist's purpose being painting.  

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

Monday, August 17, 2026

Waldemar Deonna

Waldemar Deonna
Temple of Apollo, Corinth
1905
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Sphinx in the Aegina Museum
1905
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Temple of Aphaea, Aegina 
1905
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Funerary Steles in the Aegina Museum
1905
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Temple of Apollo, Delphi
1905
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Temple of Apollo, Delphi
1905
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Treasury of the Athenians, Delphi
(reconstructed from rubble, 1903-1906)
1905
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Treasury of the Athenians, Delphi
(reconstructed from rubble, 1903-1906)
1929
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Achilleion Palace, Corfu
(built ca. 1890 for Empress Elisabeth of Austria)
1905
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Urchin minding Turkeys, Athens
1905
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Propylaia on the Acropolis, Athens
1931
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Rue du Théâtre, Delos
1906
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Quartier du Théâtre, Delos
1906
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Cast of Diadumenos, Delos
1906
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Stairs to the Acropolis, Thasos
1907
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Waldemar Deonna
Theater, Epidaurus
1939
gelatin bromide print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

All thinking is sorting, classifying.  All perceiving relates to expectations and therefore to comparisons.  When we say that from the air houses appear like toys to us, or human beings like ants, we mean, I suggest, that we are startled by the unfamiliar sight of a house that compares to the familiar sight of a toy on the nursery floor.  We feel that but for our knowledge we might have been deceived and have almost mistaken the one for the other.  Our guesses and methods of testing them have become somewhat unsettled, and we try to describe the experience by indicating possibilities which flitted through our minds.  But, to repeat, there is no "objective" sense in which a human being can look "the size of an ant" simply because an ant crawling on our pillow will look gigantic in comparison with a man in the distance.  In Professor E.G. Boring's words, "Phenomenal size, like physical size, is relative and has no meaning except as a relation between objects."  

A penny is not more real when seen from above than when looked upon sideways.  But the frontal view happens to be the one which gives us most information.  It is this aspect which we call the "characteristic shape" of the object, the one (or sometimes two) which exhibit most of those distinctive features by which we classify and name the things of our world.  It is on these distinctive features, as we have seen, that primitive art will concentrate, not because it draws on knowledge rather than sight, but because it insists on clear classification.  

Now, this same insistence on distinctive features also influences our reactions in real life whenever we are confronted with an uncertainty.  It is therefore inexact to speak of our knowledge which influences our perception of the oblique penny.  Rather it is our search for knowledge, our effort after meaning.  In the terminology of this book, we would have to speak of expectations, guesses, hypotheses which influence our experiences.  We have frequently seen that these expectations can become so strong that our experience runs ahead of the stimulus situation.  Perception, in other words, is a process in which the next phase of what will appear when we test our interpretation is all but anticipated.  To experience the sight of a penny or dinner plate and to read it as such is to experience the anticipation that the shape will become rounder in a predictable way if we crane our neck a little and look at it from higher up.  

But is it different with the so-called "constancy of size?" We have seen that the stimulus pattern of the house or the penny alone can suggest no size because it might stand for an infinite number of objects "out there." If we still assign a size in our mind to images of pennies or houses this is due to the same habit of thinking of things in some standard situation in which we usually inspect them.  We compare the penny in the hand with the house across the road.  It is this imaginary standard distance which will influence the scale at which a child draws such objects and which will also determine our descriptions of ants and men.  The notorious question whether the moon looks as large as a dime or a dollar may not allow of a clear-cut answer, but most of us would protest if anyone suggested that it looks like a pinhead or an ocean steamer, easy though it would be to devise a situation where these statements would be true.

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

Thursday, August 13, 2026

Ink

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Self Portrait
ca. 1760
ink and wash on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford


Henri Matisse
Dahlias and Pomegranates
1947
ink on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Lyubov Popova
Long Live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!
(stage design for The Earth in Turmoil)
1923
ink and collage on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

John Faber the Elder
Portrait of a Man
1702
ink on vellum
British Museum

Lievin Cruyl
Piazza di S. Pietro, Rome
ca. 1664-70
ink on paper
British Museum

John Brown
Shoemaker's Room in Leicester Square
formerly used as Observatory by Isaac Newton

ca. 1857
ink and wash on paper
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Charles-Louis Clérisseau
Roman Fountain
ca. 1765-70
ink and watercolor on paper
British Museum

Charles-Louis Clérisseau
Temple of the Sibyl, Tivoli
ca. 1765-70
ink and watercolor on paper
British Museum

Willem van Nieulandt the Younger
Wooded Mountain Path
before 1635
ink and watercolor on paper
British Museum

Belisario Corenzio
Bishop-Saint in Heaven with Saints and Angels
before 1643
ink and wash on paper - design for vault decoration
British Museum

Joseph Middleton Jopling
Queen Victoria reviewing Troops
ca. 1845
ink and watercolor on paper
British Museum

Marino Marini
Acrobats and Horse
1951
ink and gouache on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

David Bomberg
Family Group 7
1919
ink and wash on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Mario Carreño
Sugar Cane Cutters
1943
ink and gouache on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Kurt Seligmann
Season's Greetings
1961-62
ink and crayon on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

William Baziotes
Puppets
1947
ink and watercolor on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Hannah Höch
Postcard to the artist's sister
1964
ink and watercolor on card
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from Prometheus Unbound

Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest
    Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,
And the souls of whom thou lovest
    Walk upon the winds with lightness,
Till they fail, as I am failing,
Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!

– Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)