Showing posts with label wood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wood. Show all posts

Monday, August 25, 2025

Expectedness (Sixties)

Lester Johnson
Beethoven with Stove
1964
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC


Joan Jonas
Mirror Piece I
1969
C-print
Guggenheim Museum, New York

David Hockney
Savings and Loan Building
1967
acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

David Hockney
Ordinary Picture
1964
acrylic on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

David Hockney
Cubist (American) Boy with Colourful Tree
1964
acrylic on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Jonah Kinigstein
Christ among the Clowns
1962
oil on board
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Hans Hofmann
Fermented Soil
1965
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Hans Hofmann
Elysium
1961
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Hans Hofmann
Trophy
1961
oil on panel
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Lee Krasner
Siren
1966
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Peter Krasnow
K-6 1961
1961
oil on panel with attached wood elements
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

R.B. Kitaj
Novella
(series, Great Ideas)
1967
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Anatolij Krivtschikov
Die Kreuzigung
1963
screenprint
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Menashe Kadishman
Open Suspense
1968
steel
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Menashe Kadishman
Segments
1968
painted aluminum and glass
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Nancy Grossman
Wood Collage #14
1963
painted wood, cork and glass
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Nancy Grossman
Wood Collage #13
1963
painted wood, metal and rubber
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

SONNET – A word sometimes, in former days, loosely applied to any short poem, especially of an amatory nature; often nowadays almost as improperly limited to a special Italian form of the true sonnet.  This latter is a poem of fourteen lines, of the same length generally and (except by exception) decasyllables (originally, of course, hendecasyllables) arranged in varying rhyme-schemes.  Its exact origin is unknown; but it is first found in Italian-Sicilian poets of the thirteenth century, and it became enormously popular in Italy very soon.  It did not spread northward for a considerable time, the first French sonnet occurring not very early in the sixteenth century; the first English, not till near its middle.  A great sonnet-outburst took place at the end of that century with us; but the form fell into disuse in the seventeenth, though championed by Milton; and it was not till the extreme end of the eighteenth century that it became, and has since remained, something of a staple.  Partly the absence of the Italian plethora of similar endings, and partly something else, made the earliest English practitioners select an arrangement with final rhymed couplet, the twelve remaining lines being usually arranged in rhymed, but not rhyme-linked, quatrains: and this form, immortalised by Shakespeare, is probably the best suited to English.  It is, at any rate, absolutely genuine and orthodox there.  But Milton, Wordsworth, and especially Dante and Christina Rossetti, have given examples of the sonnet which, divided mostly into octave and sestet, have this latter arranged in inter-twisted rhymes.  This form is susceptible of great beauty, but has no prerogative, still less any primogeniture, in our poetry. 

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

Thursday, August 21, 2025

Modernistic Expectedness

Louise Bourgeois
Maquette for Facets of the Sun
1978
wood
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC


Giorgio de Chirico
The Nostalgia of the Poet
1914
oil on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Giorgio de Chirico
Il Trovatore
ca. 1924
oil on canvas
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Man Ray
Sotheby's Sale from the Estate of Juliet Man Ray
2014
offset-lithograph
(cover of auction announcement)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Man Ray
Still Life
ca. 1912-16
lithograph
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Man Ray
Seguidilla
1919
gouache, colored pencil and graphite on board
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Man Ray
Promenade
1967
(artist's replica of work created in 1916)
mixed media on paper
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Man Ray
Shakespearean Equation: Twelfth Night
1948
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Man Ray
Shakespearean Equation: King Lear
1948
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Alexander Calder
Portrait of Man Ray
1974
lithograph
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Alexander Calder
Violin
ca. 1960
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

René Magritte
Empire of Light
1953-54
oil on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Joan Miró
Landscape (The Hare)
1927
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Joan Miró
Two Figures and a Dragonfly
1936
gouache and watercolor on paper
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Joan Miró
Seated Woman II
1939
oil on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Joan Miró
The Red Sun
1948
oil on canvas
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Joan Miró
Painting
1953
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

EPANAPHORA ("referring" or "repetition") – The repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive lines.  This, originally a rhetorical figure, becomes, especially with some of the Elizabethans and with Tennyson, a not unimportant prosodic device; and, in the hands of the latter, assists powerfully in the construction of the verse-paragraph.

EPANORTHOSIS ("setting up again," with a sense also of "correction") – Also a rhetorical figure and meaning the repetition of some word, not necessarily at the beginning of clause or line. This also can be made of considerable prosodic effect; for repetition, especially if including some slight change, is necessarily associated with emphasis, and this emphasis colours and weights the line variously. 

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

Tuesday, August 5, 2025

Singular Objects - III

Ancient Greek Culture
Sphinx
570 BC
limestone
(grave statue excavated in Attica)
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

Thørbjorn Lie-Jørgensen
Loom
1935
watercolor on paper
Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Norway

Kari Mølstad
Smoky Crystal
2019
blown glass
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Lilo Raymond
Pitcher
1980
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Roman Empire
Bottle
1st century AD
blown glass
Musée d'Art Classique de Mougins

Philip von Schantz
Bark
1978
lithograph
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Chaїm Soutine
Carcass of Beef
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Jan Terwey
Cuffs and Collar
ca. 1920
pastel on paper
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Kjell Anderson
Hat
1971
etching and aquatint
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Anonymous German Sculptor
Capital with Foliage Ornament
ca. 1160-70
sandstone
Bode Museum, Berlin

Peter Behrens
AEG Metallfaden-Lampe
ca. 1907-1910
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Roland Borén
Cheval de Frise
1985
painted sheet-metal
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Antonio Chichi
Model of the Temple of Vesta in the Forum Boarium, Rome
ca. 1777-82
cork and wood
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Jean Dubuffet
Stèle (forme de jambe)
1968
painted polyester
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Max Ernst
The Wheel of Light
1926
collotype
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Caspar David Friedrich
Hut in Snow
1827
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Then we crossed the river where there was a ford, and discovered some vines of a marvelous kind; they had firm, thick stems lower down, but the upper parts were female figures, complete in every detail from the flanks up.  They looked just like the pictures ones sees of Daphne turning into a tree just as Apollo takes hold of her.  The vine shoots, loaded with grapes, grew from the tips of their fingers; the hair of their heads also was tendrils and leaves and fruit.  They gave us welcome as we approached and greeted us in Lydian, Indian, and – the majority of them – Greek.  They also kissed us, and anyone who was kissed became drunk immediately and began to stagger about.  But they would not let us pluck the fruit, crying out in pain as we tugged at it.  Some of them even evinced sexual passion; two of my comrades embraced them, only to find themselves caught by the genitals and unable to free themselves.  They became one with the plants and took root beside them; their fingers at once put forth shoots, tendrils grew all over them, and they too were on the point of bearing fruit.

We left them and hastily regained the ship; there we told those who had stayed behind everything that had happened, including our comrades' affair with the vines.  Then we took some jars to fill with water and also with river-wine, and camped for the night on the shore near the boat.

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