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| John Bellany Conversation with Fate 1989 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
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| Howard Hodgkin Memories 1997-99 oil on panel Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh |
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| Patrick Hayman The Heroes of Thermopylae 1976 oil on canvas Southampton City Art Gallery |
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| Stephen Conroy The Red Room 1987-88 oil on canvas Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester |
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| Gillian Ayres Stratie II 1997 oil on canvas Government Art Collection, London |
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| Norman Blamey Margaret through Studio Window ca. 1972 oil on canvas Royal Academy of Arts, London |
In the Secular Night
In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn Miller
with his big-band sound,
and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,
and cried for a while because you were not dancing,
and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple.
Now, forty years later, things have changed,
and it's baby lima beans.
It's necessary to reserve a secret vice.
This is what comes from forgetting to eat
at the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,
drain, add cream and pepper,
and amble up and down the stairs,
scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl,
talking to yourself out loud.
You'd be surprised if you got an answer,
but that part will come later.
There is so much silence between the words,
you say. You say, The sensed absence
of God and the sensed presence
amount to much the same thing,
only in reverse.
You say, I have too much white clothing.
You start to hum.
Several hundred years ago
this could have been mysticism
or heresy. It isn't now.
Outside there are sirens.
Someone's been run over.
The century grinds on.
– Margaret Atwood (1995)
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| David Hockney Egyptian Head Disappearing Into Descending Clouds 1961 oil on canvas York City Art Gallery |
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| Peter Harris Totally in the Dark by Rolf Harris, 1974 1998 oil and applied lettering on board Bristol Museum and Art Gallery |
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| Jack Pagan Still Life 1972 acrylic on canvas McManus Gallery, Dundee, Scotland |
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| Graham Sutherland Cathedral (Study of Rocks) ca. 1974-76 oil on canvas National Museum Cardiff, Wales |
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| Bernard Dunstan Opening of Vienna Secession Exhibition at the Royal Academy 1971 oil on panel Bristol Museum and Art Gallery |
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| Richard Hamilton Desk 1964 oil and collage on photograph mounted on panel Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh |
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| Anthony Green The Dinner Party 1966 oil on canvas Southampton City Art Gallery |
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| Robert Medley Yellow and White Figuration 1965 oil on canvas Southbank Centre, London |
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| Peter Greenham Jane and Mary 1969 oil on canvas Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |