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| Charles Maussion Walking Man No. 3 1950 oil and crayon on canvas Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich |
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| Barbara Hepworth Self Portrait 1950 oil and pencil on board National Portrait Gallery, London |
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| Norman Phillips Lifting On (Derailed Tub) ca. 1950 oil on board National Coal Mining Museum for England, Wakefield |
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| John Craxton Four Figures in a Mountain Landscape 1950-51 oil on canvas Bristol Museum and Art Gallery |
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| Bernard Dunstan The Zip Fastener ca. 1950-60 oil on board Touchstones Rochdale, Lancashire |
Revelations in the Key of K
I came awake in kindergarten,
under the letter K chalked neat
on a field-green placard leaned
on the blackboard's top edge. They'd caged me
in a metal desk – the dull word writ
to show K's sound. But K meant kick and kill
when a boy I'd kissed drew me
as a whiskered troll in art. On my sheet,
the puffy clouds I made to keep rain in
let torrents dagger loose. "Screw those
who color in the lines," my mom had preached,
words I shared that landed me on a short chair
facing the corner's empty, sheetrock page. Craning up,
I found my K high above.
You'll have to grow to here, its silence said.
And in the surrounding alphabet, my whole life hid –
names of my beloveds, sacred vows I'd break.
With my pencil stub applied to wall,
I moved around the loops and vectors,
Z to A, learning how to mean, how
in the mean world to be.
But while I worked the room around me
began to smudge – like a charcoal sketch my mom
was rubbing with her thumb. Then
the instant went, the month, and every season
smeared, till with a wrenching arm tug
I was here, grown, but still bent
to set down words before the black eraser
swipes our moment into cloud, dispersing all
to zip. And when I blunder in the valley
of the shadow of blank about to break
in half, my being leans against my spinal K,
which props me up, broomstick straight,
a strong bone in the crypt of meat I am.
– Mary Karr (2005)
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| John Minton Painter and Model 1953 oil on canvas Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth |
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| Louis Le Brocquy Aging Man Washing 1954 oil on canvas Rugby Art Gallery and Museum, Warwickshire |
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| Michael Andrews Four People Sunbathing 1955 oil on board Southbank Centre, London |
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| Joan Eardley Sleeping Nude 1955 oil on canvas Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh |
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| Duncan MacPherson Académie 1956 oil on canvas Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen |
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| Gerard de Rosé Wrestlers 1956 oil on canvas Touchstones Rochdale, Lancashire |
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| Robert Sivell Bathers 1958 oil on panel Aberdeen Art Gallery |
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| Enid Mitchell Académie 1958 oil on board Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen |
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| Bernard Fleetwood-Walker Joan ca. 1959 oil on canvas Birmingham City University (West Midlands) |
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| Ken Etheridge Rugby Changing Room, Carmarthen 1959 oil on canvas World Rugby Museum, Twickenham (London) |