Sunday, October 25, 2026

Designated

Edward R. Dickson
Branch Abstraction
ca. 1913
platinum print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC


Marsden Hartley
Berlin Abstraction
1914-15
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Edward Wadsworth
Abstract Composition
1915
gouache and ink on paper
Tate Modern, London

Paul Strand
Abstraction Porch Shadows, Connecticut
1916
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Sophie Tauber-Arp
Oval Composition with Abstract Motifs
ca. 1922
wool
Arp Museum Bahnhof-Rolandseck, Remagen, Germany

Georgia O'Keeffe
Abstraction Blue
1927
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Wilfred Zogbaum
Abstraction
ca. 1939
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Irene Rice Pereira
Abstraction
1940
oil on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Virginia Admiral
Abstraction no. 1
1941
oil on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Eric Wilson
Abstract: The Kitchen Stove
1943
mixed media on panel
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Edward Wadsworth
Abstract with Rose (for F,)
1945
tempera on linen, mounted on panel
private collection

Ad Reinhardt
Abstract Painting (Blue)
1952
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

William Turnbull
Abstract #25
1958
oil on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Wes Walters
Early Abstract 3
1960
oil on canvas
private collection

Derwent Wise
Abstract Architecture
1965
painted wood and formica
Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Brett Weston
Large Abstraction
1968
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

John Clem Clarke
Abstract 34
1972
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

The Listeners

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
    Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
    Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
    Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
    'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
    No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
    Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
    That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
    To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
    That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
    By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
    Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
    'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
    Louder and lifted his head: –
'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
    That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
    Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
    From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
    And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
    When the plunging hoofs were gone.

– Walter de la Mare (1912)