Expectedness (Sixties)

Francis Bacon
Triptych
1967
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

David Bailey
Goodbye Baby and Amen (Penelope Tree)
1969
gelatin silver print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Sydney Ball
Banyon Wall
1967-68
acrylic on canvas
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Elmer Bischoff
Figures: Back and Profile
1960
oil on canvas
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Elmer Bischoff
Two Bathers
1960
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Ilya Bolotowsky
Red, Yellow, White Diamond
1969
acrylic on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Christo (Christo Javacheff)
Package
1961
fabric and rope
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Robert Colescott
The Virgin Queen
ca. 1965
oil on canvas
Tacoma Art Museum, Washington State

Roy De Forest
Recollections of a Sword Swallower
1968
acrylic and glitter on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Roy De Forest
Silas Newcastle Goes Down
1966
acrylic on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Willem De Kooning
Woman
1962
oil on paper, mounted on board
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Sonia Delaunay
Rythme Couleur
1961
gouache on paper
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Burhan Dogançay
Walls V-II
1969
lithograph
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Robert Remsen Vickrey
America's Atomic Arsenal
1963
tempera on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Robert Remsen Vickrey
Twenty-Five and Under
1966
tempera and ink on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Tom Wesselmann
3-D Drawing (for Still Life no. 42)
1964
assemblage of objects gessoed, painted and mounted on wood panel
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Zao Wou-ki
Composition
1967
lithograph
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

BYRON, GEORGE GORDON, LORD (1788-1824) – Usually much undervalued as a prosodist, even by those who admire him as a poet.  Really of great importance in this respect, owing to the variety, and in some cases novelty, of his accomplishment, and to its immense popularity.  His Spenserians in Childe Harold not of the highest class, but the light octaves of Beppo and Don Juan the very best examples of the metre in English.  Some fine but rhetorical blank verse, and a great deal of fluent octosyllabic couplet imitated from Scott.  But his lyrics of most importance, combining popular appeal with great variety, and sometimes positive novelty, of adjustment and cadence.  Diction is his weakest point. 

– George Saintsbury, from Historical Manual of English Prosody (1910)

Singular Objects - I

Théodule Ribot
Leg of Mutton
ca. 1870
oil on canvas
Musée de Picardie, Amiens

Tom Sandberg
Untitled
1994
gelatin silver print
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Rosemarie Trockel
Death, So Adjustable
2014
C-print mounted on aluminum
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Matti Sumari
Sad Sour Cucumber Platter Handle
2021
cast metal
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Alfred Sisley
Haystack near the Banks of the Loing
1890
oil on canvas
Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai

Johann Maria Monsorno
Tomb by Antonio Canova
for Maria Christina, Archduchess of Austria
ca. 1800-1810
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Åsa Herrgård
Memories of Scents
2019
jesmonite and plaster
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Ancient Greek Culture
Votive Relief - Ear
3rd century BC
marble
(excavated at Pergamon)
Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Charley Toorop
Autumn Still Life with Bottle
1954
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Martin Mannig 
Untitled
2003
oil on canvas
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Bernd and Hilla Becher
Petroleum Tank, London
1966
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Maud Fredin
Tunic
1954
printed cotton
Röhsska Museet, Göteborg

Marit Tingleff
East Indian I
2005
glazed earthenware
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Eirik Gjedrem
Untitled
1990
glazed earthenware
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Jean-François Millet
Portrait of Madame Catherine Chancoigne
1841
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Patrick Nilsson
Wild Rose
2020
drawing
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

I set out one day from the Pillars of Hercules and sailed with a following wind into the western ocean.  My voyage was prompted by an active intellect and a passionate interest in anything new; the object I proposed to myself was to discover the limits of the ocean and what men dwelt beyond it.  For this reason I took a great deal of food on board, and plenty of water.  I got hold of fifty men of my own age and interests, as well as quite a store of arms, hired the best navigator I could find at a considerable salary, and strengthened the ship – a light transport – for a long and trying voyage.

For a day and a night we sailed along gently with land still in sight.  At dawn the next day the wind began to rise, the sea grew stormy, and the sky was overcast.  Soon we could not even take in sail; so we ran before the wind and let ourselves be tossed hither and thither for seventy-nine days.  On the eightieth the sun came out suddenly, and we saw a mountainous, thickly wooded island close by, with the sea murmuring gently around it – for by now the swell had almost subsided.  So we put in and went ashore.  There we lay on the ground for a long time, after our long ordeal; however, we did get up, and split ourselves into two parties, thirty staying to guard the ship and twenty coming with me to explore the island. 

– Lucian, from A True Story (2nd century AD), translated from Greek by B.P. Reardon (1989)

Mucha

Alphonse Mucha
Textile Design - Bellflowers
ca. 1895
watercolor and ink on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Alphonse Mucha
Textile Design - Honeysuckle and Hollyhocks
ca. 1897-98
watercolor and graphite on paper
Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

Alphonse Mucha (designer)
Textile Panel - Femme à Marguerite
ca. 1898-1900
screenprinted cotton
Art Institute of Chicago

Alphonse Mucha
Design for Biscuit Box
ca. 1897
lithograph
Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

Alphonse Mucha
Design for Biscuit Box
ca. 1897
lithograph
Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

Alphonse Mucha
Design for Biscuit Box
ca. 1897
lithograph
Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

Alphonse Mucha
Sarah Bernhardt in Gismonda
at Théâtre de la Renaissance
1894
lithograph (poster)
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Alphonse Mucha
Sarah Bernhardt in La Dame aux Camélias
at Théâtre de la Renaissance
1896
lithograph (poster)
Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum

Alphonse Mucha
Sarah Bernhardt in La Samaritaine
at Théâtre de la Renaissance
1897
lithograph (poster)
Art Institute of Chicago

Alphonse Mucha
Laurel
1902
lithograph
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Alphonse Mucha
Salomé
1897
lithograph
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Alphonse Mucha
L'Estampe Moderne
1898
lithograph (poster)
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Alphonse Mucha
Leslie Carter
1908
lithograph (poster)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Alphonse Mucha
Exposition Universelle et Internationale de St Louis
1903
lithograph (poster)
Milwaukee Art Museum

Alphonse Mucha
The Seasons
1897
lithographs
Art Institute of Chicago

Alphonse Mucha
Summer
1902
lithograph
Chrysler Museum of Art Norfolk, Virginia

Alphonse Mucha
Monaco - Monte Carlo
Chemins de Fer P.L.M.
1897
lithograph (poster)
Detroit Institute of Arts

from The Art of Poetry

A Paynter if he shoulde adjoyne

    unto a womans heade

A longe maires necke, and overspred

    the corps in everye steade

With sondry feathers of straunge huie,

    the whole proportioned so

Without all good congruitye:

    the nether partes do goe

Into a fishe, on hye a freshe

    welfavord womans face:

My friends let in to see the sighte

    could you but laugh a pace?

– Horace (65-8 BC), translated by Thomas Drant (1567)