Margaret Bourke-White

Margaret Bourke-White
Bottles designed by John Vassos
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington DC

Margaret Bourke-White
Iron Puddler, Stalingrad
1930
gelatin silver print
Detroit Institute of Arts

Margaret Bourke-White
U.S.S. Airship Akron
1931
gelatin silver print
(custom frame constructed of "Duralumin")
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Margaret Bourke-White
Hugh Cooper
1931
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Margaret Bourke-White
Studio designed for Bourke-White by John Vassos
1932
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Margaret Bourke-White
Self Portrait
ca. 1933
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Margaret Bourke-White
Sierra Madres
1935
gelatin silver print
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Margaret Bourke-White
Boulder Dam under Construction
1935
gelatin silver print
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Margaret Bourke-White
Fort Peck Dam, Montana
(used for the inaugural cover of Life magazine)
1936
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Margaret Bourke-White
World's Highest Standard of Living
1937
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Margaret Bourke-White
Tulips in the Rudolph Wurlitzer Garden
ca. 1938
gelatin silver print
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Philippe Halsman
Margaret Bourke-White
1943
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Margaret Bourke-White
Vultures of Calcutta, India
1946
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Margaret Bourke-White
Industrial Landscape, Pittsburgh
1955
gelatin silver print
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Margaret Bourke-White
Industrial Landscape, Pittsburgh
1955
gelatin silver print
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Margaret Bourke-White
American Iron and Steel Works, Pittsburgh
ca. 1955-56
gelatin silver print
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Margaret Bourke-White
Industrial Landscape, Pittsburgh
1956
gelatin silver print
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

from Nux

I the poor nuttree, joyning to the way,

Offend not any: and yet every day

By idle travailers, that passe along

Each stone or cudgel at my pate is flong.

Theeves led to hanging oft are stond, they say,

When peoples furie brooks not lawes delay.

I nere offend, unlesse it seeme a crime

To yeeld my owner yeerely fruit in time. 

Though by the sunne I often scorched be

Thers none with watring that refresheth me.

But when my nut with ripenesse cleaves her hull,

Then comes the Pole and threats my crowne to pull. 

    My pulpe for second course men use to have,

A thriftie housewife doth my choice nuts save.

These are the tooles of boyes-play, Cockupall,

Cobnut, and Five holes trundling like a ball:

And Castle-nut, where one on three doth sit,

He winnes the fourth, that any one can hit:

Another downe a steepe set board doth throw,

And winnes by hitting any nut below.  

– Ovid (43 BC-AD 17), translated by Thomas Hoy (1682)

Heavies (Econ)

Seth Tobocman
Why Are Apartments Expensive?
1986
screenprint (poster)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Carlos Cortez
The Gilded Age
Chicago during the Reign of Money
1992
linocut (exhibition poster)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Stanislaw Zagorski
Is Capitalism Working?
1980
tempera on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Peter Young
Capitalist Masterpiece Number 19
1969
acrylic on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Larry Clark
Homeless in America
1990
pastel and ink on paper
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Clayton Pond
The Working End of My Gas Space-Heater
(from the portfolio, Bicentennial Prints)
1975
lithograph
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

William Heath Robinson
How To Dispense With Servants In The Dining-Room
1921
ink and watercolor on paper
(illustration for The Sketch)
British Museum

Wanda Gág
The Forge
1932
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Ford Madox Brown
Study of Arm
1861
drawing
(study for the painting, Work)
British Museum

Sam Contis
Hold-Down
2014
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Alexander Henderson
Locomotive and Snowplow at work
ca. 1870
albumen silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Filippo Napoletano (Filippo Angeli)
Transport of an Obelisk by Sea on a Raft with Sail
ca. 1615-25
drawing
British Museum

Charles Parrocel
Sailors pulling Boat
 ca. 1727-30
drawing (print study)
British Museum

Joseph Koch
Circus Day
ca. 1948
oil on board
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Saul Leiter
Shoe of the Shoeshine Boy
ca. 1950
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Eugène-Louis Lami
Footmen outside a Bond Street Shop
(series, Voyage en Angleterre)
1829
hand-colored lithograph
British Museum

Abraham Bloemaert
Crippled Beggar
before 1651
drawing (print study)
British Museum

    "Everything that ever gets done in this world is done by madmen," Mr. Scogan went on.  Denis tried not to listen, but the tireless insistence of Mr. Scogan's discourse gradually compelled his attention.  "Men such as I am, such as you may possibly become, have never achieved anything.  We're too sane; we're merely reasonable.  We lack the human touch, the compelling enthusiastic mania.  People are quite ready to listen to the philosophers for a little amusement, just as they would listen to a fiddler or a mountebank.  But as to acting on the advice of the men of reason – never.  Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman.  For the madman appeals to what is fundamental, to passion and the instincts; the philosophers to what is superficial and supererogatory – reason."

    They entered the garden; at the head of one of the alleys stood a green wooden bench, embayed in the midst of a fragrant continent of lavender bushes.  It was here, though the place was shadeless and one breathed hot, dry perfume instead of air – it was here that Mr. Scogan elected to sit.  He thrived on untempered sunlight.

    "Consider, for example, the case of Luther and Erasmus."  He took out his pipe and began to fill it as he talked. "There was Erasmus, a man of reason if ever there was one.  People listened to him at first – a new virtuoso performing on that elegant and resourceful instrument, the intellect; they even admired and venerated him.  But did he move them to behave as he wanted them to behave – reasonably, decently, or at least a little less porkishly than usual?  He did not.  And then Luther appears, violent, passionate, a madman insanely convinced about matters in which there can be no conviction.  He shouted, and men rushed to follow him.  Erasmus was no longer listened to; he was reviled for his reasonableness.  Luther was serious, Luther was reality – like the Great War.  Erasmus was only reason and decency; he lacked the power, being a sage, to move men to action.  Europe followed Luther and embarked on a century and a half of war and bloody persecution."

– Aldous Huxley, from Crome Yellow (1921)

Confrontations with Toil

Monogrammist M
Vegetable Seller
ca. 1850
watercolor on paper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Gabriel Max
Portrait of the artist's wife Ernestine
peeling Mushrooms
1896
oil on canvas
Lenbachhaus, Munich

Frank Dicksee
P is for Parlourmaid
1878
drawing
(print study for the Cornhill Magazine)
British Museum

Julius Bloch
Monday Morning
1934
lithograph
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Rebecca Davenport
Lady at the Laundromat
1974
oil on canvas
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Hubert von Herkomer
Low Lodging House, St Giles's
1872
wood-engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jean-François Millet
Gleaners
ca. 1853
drawing (study for painting)
British Museum

Monogrammist FG after Francesco Primaticcio (School of Fontainebleau)
Penelope and her Women Weaving
ca. 1540-50
engraving
British Museum

Heinrich Reinhold after Friedrich Reinhold
Loading a Boat with Hay
1817
etching
British Museum

James Havard Thomas
Italian Woman threshing Rye
ca. 1899-1906
drawing
British Museum

Edward Melcarth
Litter
1948
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Agnes Miller Parker
Sheep Dipping in Wales
1927
wood-engraving
Art Institute of Chicago

Léon-Augustin Lhermitte
Making Hay
1887
oil on canvas
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Arthur Herschel Lidov
Railroading
ca. 1941
tempera on board
(study for Post Office mural)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Diego Rivera
Cargado de Petate
1943
watercolor on paper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Edme Bouchardon
Baker Boy
ca. 1730-40
drawing
British Museum

Jean-Jacques de Boissieu
Interior of Flour Mill
1767
drawing
British Museum

    "One suffers so much," Denis went on, "from the fact that beautiful words don't always mean what they ought to mean.  Recently, for example, I had a whole poem ruined, just because the word 'carminative' didn't mean what it ought to have meant.  Carminative – it's admirable, isn't it?"

    "Admirable," Mr. Scogan agreed. "And what does it mean?"

    "It's a word I've treasured from my earliest infancy," said Denis, "treasured and loved.  They used to give me cinnamon when I had a cold – quite useless, but not disagreeable.  One poured it drop by drop out of narrow bottles, a golden liquor, fierce and fiery.  On the label was a list of its virtues, and among other things it was described as being in the highest degree carminative.  I adored the word.  'Isn't it carminative?' I used to say to myself when I'd taken my dose.  It seemed so wonderfully to describe that sensation of internal warmth, that glow, that – what shall I call it? – physical self-satisfaction which followed the drinking of cinnamon.  Later, when I discovered alcohol, 'carminative' described for me that similar, but nobler, more spiritual glow which wine evokes not only in the body but in the soul as well.  The caminative virtues of burgundy, of rum, of old brandy, of Lacryma Christi, of Marsala, of Aleatico, of stout, of gin, of champagne, of claret, of the raw new wine of this year's Tuscan vintage – I compared them, I classified them.  Marsala is rosily, downily carminative; gin pricks and refreshes while it warms.  I had a whole table of carminative values.  And now" – Denis spread out his hands, palm upwards, despairingly – "Now I know what carminative really means."

    "Well, what does it mean?" asked Mr. Scogan, a little impatiently.   

    "Carminative," said Denis, lingering lovingly over the syllables, "carminative.  I imagined vaguely that it had something to do with carmen-carminis, still more vaguely with caro-carnis, and its derivatives, like carnival and carnation.  Carminative – there was the idea of singing and the idea of flesh, rose-coloured and warm, with a suggestion of the jollities of mi-Carême and the masked holidays of Venice.  Carminative – the warmth, the glow, the interior ripeness were all in the word.  Instead of which . . . "

    "Do come to the point, my dear Denis," protested Mr. Scogan. "Do come to the point."

    "Well, I wrote a poem the other day," said Denis; "I wrote a poem about the effects of love."

    "Others have done the same before you," said Mr. Scogan. "There is no need to be ashamed."

    "I was putting forward the notion," Denis went on, "that the effects of love were often similar to the effects of wine, that Eros would intoxicate as well as Bacchus.  Love, for example, is essentially carminative.  It gives one the sense of warmth, the glow.

                                "And passion carminative as wine . . ."

was what I wrote.  Not only was the line elegantly sonorous; it was also, I flattered myself, very aptly and compendiously expressive.  Everything was in the word carminative – a detailed, exact foreground, an immense, indefinite hinterland of suggestion.

                                "And passion carminative as wine . . ."

I was not ill-pleased.  And then suddenly it occurred to me that I had never actually looked up the word in a dictionary.  Carminative had grown up with me from the days of the cinnamon bottle.  It had always been taken for granted.  Carminative: for me the word was as rich in content as some tremendous, elaborate work of art; it was a complete landscape with figures. 

                                "And passion carminative as wine . . ."

It was the first time I had ever committed the word to writing, and all at once I felt I would like lexicographical authority for it.  A small English-German dictionary was all I had at hand.  I turned up C, ca, car, carm.  There it was: "Carminative: windtreibend."  Windtreibend! he repeated.  Mr. Scogan laughed.  Denis shook his head.  "Ah," he said, "for me, it was no laughing matter."

– Aldous Huxley, from Crome Yellow (1921)