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| Walt Kuhn Chico in Top Hat 1948 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Madrid |
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| Edward Hopper Hotel Room 1931 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Georgia O'Keeffe White Iris no. 7 1957 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
The Dead
Our business is with fruit and leaf and bloom.
Though they speak with more than just the season's tongue –
the colors that they blaze from the dark loam
all have something of the jealous tang
of the dead about them. What do we know of their part
in this, those secret brothers of the harrow,
invigorators of the soil – oiling the dirt
so liberally with their essence, their black marrow?
But here's the question: are they flower and fruit
held out to us in love, or merely thrust
up at us, their masters, like a fist?
Or are they the lords, asleep amongst the roots,
granting to us in their great largesse
this hybrid thing – part brute, force part mute kiss?
– from Orpheus : a version of Rilke's Die Sonette an Orpheus by Don Patterson (Faber & Faber, 2006)
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| Josef Albers Structural Constellation Alpha 1954 incised vinyl Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Arthur Dove U.S. 1940 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Jackson Pollock Brown and Silver I ca. 1951 enamel and silver paint on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Willem de Kooning Abstraction, 1949-50 oil on cardboard Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Charles Sheeler Canyons 1951 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Georgia O'Keeffe From the Plains II 1954 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Stuart Davis Pochade 1956-58 canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Josef Albers Casa Blanca B ca. 1947-54 oil on cardboard Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Guy Pène du Bois Forty-second Street 1945 oil on canvas Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Reginald Marsh Smoko the Human Volcano 1933 watercolor on masonite Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| Joseph Cornell Blue Soap Bubble 1949-50 mixed-media construction Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
I am grateful for the excellent reproductions from Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.