Thursday, December 6, 2018

Twentieth-Century Efforts to Catch the Eye

Raphael Tuck & Sons (publisher)
A Valentine Message
ca. 1910
lithographic postcard
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Edward McKnight Kauffer
Vigil - The Pure Silk
1919
lithograph
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Edward McKnight Kauffer
Victoria & Albert Museum, South Kensington
(for London Underground)
1921
lithograph
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Rockwell Kent
Bookplate for Chicago Latin School
1928
relief print
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Latin Lecturer
(The last class before summer)

Whatever his own eye troubles to make clear,
As the eagle plunges, ideal swimmer and angel,
He saw, and seizes.

If the falcon signal,
Flying as semaphore:
Life of an eye, a wing,
With the hush of a train. . . .

If the sparrow roister,
Stranded on backs of temples
              like moving freights,
Are Roman, sometimes reclining,
His own invention. . . .

Remember how also amid the clang and report
              of the yard –
Its auction disquiet,
Its surge of girls in the plaid –

He can make you think of the rain
And a landing in Britain:

       The tremulous knees, the waiting,
       The massing for stations,
       The shield curt to the face,
       As onward the cold cliff,
       Then the leg is suddenly chalked
       By the shore and the stiffness;

       Till caught in an updraft and ready,
       They found themselves sanded,
       Too many and too strong
       For that strip of shore.

And he takes to himself his watch
As the face of an elder –
Its shielded, impassioned wheel:
And feeling unsteady,
Senses the loss of his objects.

The lime and the envy burn
In trans-Alpine snow;
The birds like jacks
Have tracked the plain and crossed it
And flown like nail-prints.

And the evening comes over water –
Sets in a clutch of boughs
Like a hen or a vacancy;
And he knows, but loves, what he is.

Oh water, be under us like a shine.
The floor we played on,
The linoleum we paid for,
The life we led.

– Rosalie Moore (published in Poetry, 1957)

Rockwell Kent
Bookplate for George Milburn
ca. 1928
relief print
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Hans Casparius
London
1930
gelatin silver print
Tate Gallery

Emil Ganso
Self-portrait with Model
ca. 1931
relief print
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Mimmo Rotella
With a Smile
1962
printed paper collage
Tate Gallery

Roger Hilton
Untitled
1971
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Roger Hilton
Foliage with Orange Caterpillar
1974
gouache on paper
Tate Gallery

Robert Rauschenberg
Preview
1974
lithograph and screenprint on fabric
Tate Gallery

Richard Long
Two Straight Twelve Mile Walks on Dartmoor
1980
screenprint
Tate Gallery

Jasper Johns
Savarin
1982
lithograph
Tate Gallery

William Kentridge
Casspirs Full of Love
1989
etching
Tate Gallery