Oldenburg - Roberts - Brassaï - Jillposters

Claes Oldenburg
The Letter Q as Beach House with Sailboat
1972
lithograph
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Claes Oldenburg
Geometric Mouse
1969-71
painted aluminum and steel
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Claes Oldenburg
Ice Cream Soda with Cookie
1963
painted plaster and glass with found objects
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Claes Oldenburg
Ice Bag (scale B)
1971
mixed-media construction
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Tom Roberts
Madame Hartl
1909-1910
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Tom Roberts
Smike Streeton, age 24
1891
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Tom Roberts
Study of Lena Brasch
ca. 1893
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Tom Roberts
Eileen
1892
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Brassaï
English Showgirl, Folies Bergère
1932
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Brassaï
Stagehand Asleep, Folies Bergère
ca. 1932
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Brassaï
Masked Women in Carnival Sideshow
ca. 1933
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Brassaï
Women on Parade in Carnival Sideshow
ca. 1933
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jillposters (feminist collective in Melbourne)
Stop Uranium Sales to France
ca. 1983-87
screenprint (postcard)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jillposters (feminist collective in Melbourne)
Agitate for Nuclear-free Fish
ca. 1983-87
screenprint (postcard)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jillposters (feminist collective in Melbourne)
No Child Need Ever Worry
1983
screenprint (poster)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Jillposters (feminist collective in Melbourne)
Direct from Grower to You
1984
screenprint (poster)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

from A Walk after Dark

A cloudless night like this
Can set the spirit soaring:
After a tiring day

The clockwork spectacle is

Impressive in a slightly boring

Eighteenth-century way.

It soothed adolescence a lot

To meet so shameless a stare;

The things I did could not

Be so shocking as they said

If that would still be there

After the shocked were dead.

Now, unready to die

But already at the stage

When one starts to resent the young,

I am glad those points in the sky

May also be counted among

The creatures of middle age.

It's cosier thinking of night

As more an Old People's Home
Than a shed for a faultless machine,

That the red pre-Cambrian light
Is gone like Imperial Rome

Or myself at seventeen.

Yet however much we may like
The stoic manner in which

The classical authors wrote,

Only the young and the rich

Have the nerve or the figure to strike
The lacrimae rerum note.

– W.H. Auden (1948)

Reverent European Renderings of Antiquities

Pseudo Pacchia
Antique Sculpture Group -
Romulus and Remus with She-Wolf
ca. 1530
drawing
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Study after the Antique
ca. 1533
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

workshop of Jacopo Tintoretto
Studies of Antique Sculpture
ca. 1570
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Willem Panneels
The Belvedere Antinoüs
ca. 1628-30
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst,
Copenhagen

Anonymous Italian Artist
Study of Antique Torso
ca. 1650
drawing
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Luis Paret y Alcázar
Roman Military Trophies
ca. 1770
drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Anonymous Italian Artist after Polidoro da Caravaggio
Roman Military Trophies
ca. 1775-1800
drawing
Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Felice Giani
Ancient Sacrifice and Head of Satyr
ca. 1790
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Theodor Kittelsen
Classical Torso
ca. 1875
drawing
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Thorolf Holmboe
Classical Torso
1890
drawing
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Jerry Uelsmann
Untitled
1964
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

John Skippe
Classical Figure holding Salver aloft
ca. 1781-83
chiaroscuro woodcut
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Nicolas Beatrizet
Antique Sculpture of Oceanus
1560
engraving
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Clodion
Minerva
1766
terracotta
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Artist
Crouching Venus
ca. 1697
lead cast of antique sculpture
National Trust, Knole, Sevenoaks, Kent

Jacob van der Kool
The Spinario
(pastiche of antique sculpture)
ca. 1725-40
faience
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Logic

A trailed and lagging grass, a pin-point island
Drags the clear current's face it leans across
In ripple-wrinkles. At a touch

It has ravelled the imaged sky till it could be

A perplexity of metal, spun

Round a vortex, the sun flung off it

Veining the eye like a migraine – it could

Scarcely be sky. The stones do more, until we say

We see there meshes of water, liquid

Nets handed down over them, a clear

Cross-hatching in the dance of wrinkles that

Re-patterns wherever it strikes.

So much for stones. They seem to have their way.

But the sway is the water's: it cannot be held

Though moulded and humped by the surfaces

It races over, though a depth can still

And a blade's touch render it illegible. 

Its strength is here: it must

Account for its opposite and yet remain

Itself, of its own power get there. 

Water is like logic, for it flows

Meeting resistance arguing as it goes:

And it arrives, having found not the quickest

Way, but the way round, the channel which

Entering, it may come to a level in,

Which must admit, in certain and crowding fusion,

The irrefutable strength which follows it. 

– Charles Tomlinson (1967)

Binns - Michals - Malevich - Crane

Vivienne Binns
Untitled
1966
gouache and felt pen on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Vivienne Binns
Untitled
1966
gouache and felt pen on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Vivienne Binns
Vag Dens
1967
acrylic and enamel on board
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Vivienne Binns
Repro Vag Dens
1975-76
vitreous enamel on steel
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Duane Michals
There Was Something Between Them
(series, Homage to Cavafy)
1978
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Duane Michals
The Son Came Home
(series, Homage to Cavafy)
1978
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Duane Michals
Two Friends Are Playing Cards
(series, Homage to Cavafy)
1978
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Duane Michals
When He Was A Young Man
(series, Homage to Cavafy)
1978
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Kasimir Malevich
Red Square on Black Ground
ca. 1922
oil on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Kasimir Malevich
House under Construction
ca. 1915-16
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Kasimir Malevich
A Game in Hell
1914
lithograph (book cover)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Kasimir Malevich for Dulevo Manufactory (Soviet Union)
Cup and Saucer
ca. 1925-30
porcelain
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Walter Crane for Minton Hollins & Co. (Staffordshire)
A Little Cock Sparrow sat on a High Tree
ca. 1880
glazed ceramic tile
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Walter Crane for Minton Hollins & Co. (Staffordshire)
Jack and Jill
ca. 1880
glazed ceramic tile
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Walter Crane for Minton Hollins & Co. (Staffordshire)
The North Wind Doth Blow
ca. 1880
glazed ceramic tile
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Walter Crane for Minton Hollins & Co. (Staffordshire)
Sur le Pont d'Avignon
ca. 1880
glazed ceramic tile
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

from For the Time Being

O where is that immortal and nameless Centre from which our points of
     Definition and death are all equi-distant? Where
The well of our wish to wander, the everlasting fountain
     Of the waters of joy that our sorrow uses for tears?
O where is the garden of Being that is only known in Existence
     As the command to be never there, the sentence by which
Alephs of throbbing fact have been banished into position,
     The clock that dismisses the moment into the turbine of time?

O would I could mourn over Fate like the others, the resolute creatures,
     By seizing my chance to regret. The stone is content
With a formal anger and falls and falls; the plants are indignant
     With one dimension only and can only doubt
Whether light or darkness lies in the worse direction; and the subtler
     Exiles who try every path are satisfied
With proving that none have a goal: why must Man also acknowledge
     It is not enough to bear witness, for even protest is wrong?

Earth is cooled and fire is quenched by his unique excitement,
     All answers expire in the clench of his questioning hand,
His singular emphasis frustrates all possible order:
     Alas, his genius is wholly for envy; alas,
The vegetative sadness of lakes, the locomotive beauty
     Of choleric beasts of prey, are nearer than he
To the dreams that deprive him of sleep, the powers that compel him to idle,
     To his amorous nymphs and his sanguine athletic gods.

How can his knowledge protect his desire for truth from illusion?
     How can he wait without idols to worship, without
Their overwhelming persuasion that somewhere, over the high hill,
     Under the roots of the oak, in the depths of the sea,
Is a womb or a tomb wherein he may halt to express some attainment?
     How can he hope and not dream that his solitude
Shall disclose a vibrating flame at last and entrust him forever
     With its magic secret of how to extemporise life?

– W.H. Auden (1941-42)

Anatomical Studies by Venerable Observers

Frank Wollaston Moody
The Study of Anatomy
1868
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
(commissioned to decorate a gallery at the V&A)

Bartolomeo Passarotti
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1570
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Bartolomeo Passarotti
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1570
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous Artist
Sheet of Studies
17th century
drawing
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Francesco Fontebasso
Figure of Apollo and Studies of the Artist's Hand
ca. 1730-32
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Willem Panneels
Study of Leg (écorché)
ca. 1628-30
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst,
Copenhagen

Willem Panneels
Study of Striding Figure (écorché)
ca. 1628-30
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Willem Panneels
Study of Torso (écorché)
ca. 1628-30
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Cesare da Sesto
Male and Female Figures, from the front
ca. 1508-1512
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Cesare da Sesto
Female and Male Figures, from the back
ca. 1508-1512
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Sir James Thornhill after Raphael
Figure Study
(from tapestry cartoon at Hampton Court,
preparatory to painting copies)
ca. 1730
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

John Singer Sargent
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1910
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

John Singer Sargent
Figure Studies for Judgment
ca. 1905-1915
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

John Singer Sargent
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1919-20
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

John Singer Sargent
Figure Studies for Triumph of Religion
ca. 1891
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Henry Moore
The Artist's Hand V
(at age 81)
1979
lithograph
Tate Gallery

Clouds

How should the dreamer, on those slow

     Solidities, fix his wandering adagio,
Seizing, bone-frail, blown
     Through the diaphanous air of their patrols,
Shadows of fanfares, grails of melting snow?
     How can he hope to hold that white
Opacity as it endures, advances,
     At a dream's length? Its strength
Confounds him with detail, his glance falls
     From ridge to ridge down the soft canyon walls,
And, fleece as it may seem, its tones
     And touch are not the fleece of dream,
But light and body, spaced accumulation
     The mind can take its purchase on:
Cloudshapes are destinies, and they,
     Charging the atmosphere of a common day,
Make it the place of confrontation where
     The dreamer wakes to the categorical call
And clear cerulean trumpet of the air. 

– Charles Tomlinson (1967)