 |
| workshop of Philips Galle Christ with Cross atop Golgotha posing for ten painters 1601 engraving (book illustration) British Museum |
from Zone
It is Christ who better than airmen wings his flight
Holding the record of the world for height
Pupil Christ of the eye
Twentieth pupil of the centuries it is no novice
And changed into a bird this century soars like Jesus
The devils in the deeps look up and say they see a
Nimitation of Simon Magus in Judea
Craft by name by nature craft they cry
About the pretty flyer the angels fly
Enoch Elijah Apollonius of Tyana hover
With Icarus round the first airworthy ever
– Guillaume Apollinaire (1913), translated by Samuel Beckett (1950)
 |
| Rembrandt Artist drawing from a cast by candle light ca. 1641 etching British Museum |
 |
| Giuseppe Maria Mitelli after Pietro de' Rossi Accademici Scontornati (group of grotesques drawing a hunchbacked model) 1686 etching British Museum |
 |
| Frederik Bloemaert after Abraham Bloemaert Artist and his Models (drawing in the studio from casts of sculptures) ca. 1679-1702 engraving and chiaroscuro woodcut British Museum |
 |
| Benoît Louis Prévost after Charles Nicolas Cochin fils The Study of Drawing (artists and students drawing from models and casts by lamplight) 1773 etching, engraving (book illustration for the Encylcopédie) British Museum |
 |
| Philippe Joseph Tassaert Drawing Academy (students drawing by lamplight from a reduced copy of the Borghese Gladiator) 1764 drawing British Museum |
 |
| William Pether after Joseph Wright of Derby Art Academy (students drawing a cast of a statue of Venus by lamplight) 1772 mezzotint British Museum |
 |
| J.J. Grandville Drawing School (monkey-artists drawing and painting monkey-headed model) 1829 hand-colored lithograph British Museum |
Scarcely Disfigured
Farewell sadness
Greeting sadness
Thou art inscribed in the lines of the ceiling
Thou art inscribed in the eyes that I love
Thou art not altogether want
For the poorest lips denounce thee
Smiling
Greeting sadness
Love of the bodies that are lovable
Mightiness of love that lovable
Starts up as a bodiless beast
Head of hope defeated
Sadness countenance of beauty
– Paul Eluard (1932), translated by Samuel Beckett (1932)
 |
| Muirhead Bone A Nude Man 1899 drypoint British Museum |
 |
| Jean-Louis Forain Le repos du modèle (première planche) 1909 etching British Museum |
 |
| Jean-Louis Forain Le repos du modèle (quatrième planche) 1909 etching British Museum |
 |
| Anders Zorn Model (standing before a painting of herself on an easel in the studio) 1910 etching, aquatint, drypoint British Museum |
 |
| Terry Frost Female Model 1948-49 color monotype British Museum |
 |
| Avigdor Arikha The Model and her Painter 1991 lithograph British Museum |
what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where every instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the paintings the frenzies towards succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above its ballast dust
– Samuel Beckett (1948, translated from his own French text)
All excerpts are from Collected Poems in English and French by Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove Press, 1977)